Arc welding (by alaric)
As a treat, I've bought myself a manual metal arc welder!
Manual metal arc welding, however, is quite tricky to learn. Basically, the stages are:
- Being able to make the thing go at all. You need to create an arc, then maintain it, which needs a fair amount of practice and dexterity.
- Being able to then move the arc at the desired rate, in the desired direction, to leave a weld behind.
- Being able to do this well enough to produce a strong weld, rather than a rough blobby one that's only attached here and there
- Being able to do this well enough to produce a neat weld, which is the same as the previous hurdle, but now keeping the weld the same thickness all along, and nice and smooth
- All of the above again, but under trying circumstances such as when the objects being welded aren't nice and conveniently placed in front of you
I've just managed 1 today, and am part way through 2!
My medium-term goal is to make new crucible tongs - the previous ones are OK, but a little hair-raising to use since they don't grip the crucible perfectly. They were made by bending single lengths of steel, which constrained them a little. With welding mastered, I should be able to make crucible tongs that fit around the crucible much more snugly, so requiring less wiggling to get them in the clearance between crucible and furnace wall, and then a tighter grip of the crucible itself rather than just squeezing it at a few points...
Arc welding is fun!
Metalworking | alaric | 
Mon 20th Sep 2004 4:21 pm
3 Comments
Other Links to this Post
-
Snell-Pym » Learning basic manual metal arc (stick) welding and MIG welding — Sat 19th Jul 2008 @ 9:10 pm
-
Snell-Pym » TIG welding — Tue 21st Jul 2015 @ 10:17 pm
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Subscribe
By Derek, Fri 1st Oct 2004 @ 8:12 am
If you start with the right rod, its a bit easier. 6013 is just about foolproof. You can atempt to stick it right into the puddle and it'll keep on arcing. Get to #3 with that before you switch to something like 6010 (nasty), 7018 (very pretty looking), or 6011.
Personally I like TIG & MIG better. Stick welding is for rusty tractors.