redpill me on welding as a career path

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>>1098903
make good money outside of manufacturing/production welding, don't expect to live to retirement age due to fumes

>>1098910
What if I didn't have any lungs

>>1098910
there must be ways to protect from this? i mean it is almost 2017, isnt health and safety a thing yet?

>>1098914
respirators but from what i've seen people don't really use them all that much unless working with toxic metals

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>>1098914
>there must be ways to protect from this?
Yup
>>1098917
>respirators
No.

What you want to do is build or buy a re-breather unit, or an external remote input positive local pressure breathing unit.

The later is penis enters vagina level mechanically simple. All you need is
- A fan, a $5 box fan from wallmarts will be sufficient.
- A flexible duct leading to your welding mask

Simple, eh? The function is just as easily explained. The inlet hose from the fan creates a well of positive air pressure in your welding hood, as consequence no fumes can enter from the local work area, they are blown back by the air entering your mask.

Test out your rig though, a sound test is a smell test. Take some vanilla extract, open it up, dump it all over a piece of cardboard.

You will smell zip. Zero. Nothing. Turn off the fan, and you'll be socked in the face with delicious vanilla fumes.

Do not do a live test welding-- as many of the nasty customers you can't sense with your nose.

An extreme aromatic like vanilla, conversely, is ideal as a test.

Now, a re-breather is a bit more involved.

Simple to explain though
- Have a mouth piece of hood with a circular loop of pipe out of it then back into it.

This loop will have a flapper valve for one way movement of air thru it.

At a point in the loop there will be a 'T' fitting, off the T will be a ballast bag that inflates on out breath, collapses on in breath.

Now, obviously this set up will just make a guy rapidly pass out, then die. To mitigate this outcome, we will place a scrubber tube in line with the loop.

The scrubber's qualification is simple
[ ] Produces O2 on intercept of CO2 gas
[ ] Does this at normal temperatures
[ ] Doesn't gas off anything icky while working

An example: sodium trioxide.

In practice, just like jet engines, a simple concept becomes a mechanical cluster fuck.

Are you welding for the man or you want your own gear?
Boom in Alberta welderfags galore with their dualie trucks and Lincoln welding gensets.
They used to make good coin in the oilpatch. But now they got FA to do.

My welder buddy, molten spark burned hole through his pants and landed on his sack. He's wearing leather chaps now.

>>1098914
>there must be ways to protect from this?

Yes. They are thoroughly explained on professional welding sites whose content I refuse to recycle you lazy fuck. OSH standards are also, holy fuck, on the internet.

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>>1098946
>The later is penis enters vagina level mechanically simple.

you might need to explain

>>1098946
dude thank you so much i cant believe ive never thought to use a fucking a fan and tube thats so simple fuck me you just saved me like $1600

Prepare to switch jobs a lot depending on your location. All my buddies are welders and only one has had steady employment, he also doesnt make as much as most welders.

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>>1098909
this isn't /pol/ retard

>>1098903
welding isnt or shouldnt be your first career, by the time you got 20 years in you'll be mostly blind, and have the shakes bad enough to keep you from doing anything with your hands. Do something else first.

>>1098917
Depends whether you or your company push safety standards. Most of the guys I see, even old-timers, wear respirators when grinding and welding mild steel, not only when doing stainless and nickel shit. Mind you, it's all union work, so non-union outfits might be less concerned or more lax.

>>1099325
Welding shouldn't be a career at all. I got into it late during the oil boom in order to make money fast and get out. The downturn delayed my plans, but they haven't changed at all. If you're still stuck doing manual labor late in life, you've fucked up somewhere.

On the other hand, field welding is one of the harder things to automate because it needs a dextrous and mobile robot capable of operating in a variety of environments and tasks. So when accountants and doctors are in the unemployment office courtesy of automation, welders will still be jammed upside down in godforsaken holes with sparks going down their shirts. Mind you, by that time there would probably be universal basic income or some socialist thing, so you could just sit at home and wait for glorious post-scarcity while the few remaining wagecucks toil away.

>>1099429
Y u no go CWI and inspection/supervision career path? Less work and more CWI who can actually fucking weld vs. book smart would be a good thing.

>>1099932
That's one potential avenue. I'm planning on getting some visual inspection certs regardless, since it's easy as shit. But from what I've heard, breaking into the industry is challenging unless you have contacts (with which I am not too well endowed, being a 4chan type), since there are plenty of inspectors and not enough demand. Then again, it may be as you say, that demand for inspectors who aren't former taxi drivers and accountants may give an edge to employment. I'll do it anyway, and at least have some extra qualifications to keep in the back pocket if it doesn't work out.

I'm in the Boilermakers, so spring and fall shutdowns are the prime jobs, which allows me to take as much time in between jobs as I want. This is great for starting my own business (because who wants to work for the Man?), but that's another challenge within itself.

Either way, I'm not going to be one of the sad sacks climbing up 20 flights of stairs in the dead of winter in his 60's.

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>>1098946
they're called PAPRs, you twit

>>1099958
Some of us dont have a grand to dump on that shit

>>1100033
When you're talking about $1000 extending your life by any amount of years that $1000 doesn't seem like much.

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>>1098946
>>1099958
PAPRs just blow filtered air instead of you sucking it through a regular respirator like pic related. The air purity in either case depends on the filters used, not whether it is powered or not. The upside of PAPRs is cool air and not having to wear a sweaty mask, not safety.

>>1098903
Its for high school dropouts

>>1100033
So how much are functioning lungs worth to you then?

Apart from heath reasons, hacking up grinder dust buggers all the way home everyday gets pretty fucking old. Even if you aren't grinding on and off all day long, some one near you will be, count on it. Wear a respirator, dont be a dummy.

>>1100086
>hacking up grinder dust buggers all the way home everyday gets pretty fucking old.
This. When you can stick your finger in your nose and it comes out black, you know you should've worn a respirator.

>>1100070
Two things, one its still filtered with an as good or better filter than your usual respirator filters, two the location where its pulling the air from is away from where the welding fumes will be theoretically unless you're in a really shit spot; so the air its pushing will be fairly clean anyways.

But yeah they are foolishly overpriced for a respirator with an air fan. You can get full face respirators with tubes that relocate the filters to behind your back as well which do the job almost as well except maybe a bit harder breathing. I know north/honeywell made them, not sure about 3m.

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>>1100070
>>1100166
PAPRs are just as safe as other types of respirators, and in fact most of the cost is a result of testing and development qualifying the systems as adequate for respiratory protection. While a bit overkill for most tasks, they're very convenient for others where sucking on a mask all day isn't ideal.

If someone really wanted to make their own adequate DIY PAPR, it would use some DIN canister filters. They're a simple screw mount that are used for PAPRs and regular respirators, and are available from a number of suppliers.

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>>1100166
>full face respirators with tubes that relocate the filters to behind your back
Turns out the Russians were right all along with their respirator design...

>>1100278
they were more concerned with the canisters being heavy as fuck rather than the location of the canister relative to the body. when you're surrounded by a poisonous gas, the location of the canister isn't that important

>>1100286
They were thinking to the future. Respirators that could be used by soldiers on the front lines, and by welders back home in the reconstruction efforts. Truly comrade Stalin's genius knew no bounds.

>>1100287
Go pass a 6G pipe test wearing that commie gas mask and let us know how much fun it was.

>>1098903
Cancer.

Uncle died. It's really something that's inevitable. Try smoking as a healthier alternative.

>>1098914
no. this isn't alex jones.

>>1100033
>Some of us dont have a grand to dump on that shit

If you weld professionally, yes you do. Buy that instead of something else like beer or vidya games.

Hobby welding is easy to ventilate with some planning, and you can usually choose where you grind. I grind outdoors and do most of my welding there too. Conventional respirators are adequate for any hobby use.

My next indoor project will be a simple downdraft welding table. I got spoiled using a downdraft paint spray booth and there isn't shit to building one.

So did I waste 2 years of my life learning how to weld and taking temporary jobs welding in hopes to find a stable job with it

>>1101931
Depends on where you are and what the job market looks like. Worst case scenario, it can be a fallback while you find something else to do.

>>1100278
holy shit it would be worse to breathe this than weld fumes alot of old filters are filled with asbestos.

also i worked for 5 years as a industrial welder on pressure vessals.just got layed off feels shitty but ill find something soon

I'm a steam fitter, looking to get into welding as soon as I get into my third year of apprenticeship.

In my opinion, don't just doing welding. In itself it is a just a skill used in putting things together. Learn how systems function then add welding as a skill to bring your value up.

I graduated university with a business management degree. I did not like office work. However working on the sites is enjoyable.

I'm moving toward understanding pricing and winning contracts. But in time I will move toward owning my own business.