Wanna learn how to weld

>>1101937
MIG is easy as shit if you can afford the rig. I wouldn't touch Oxy-Acetylene without a master welder showing me what to do. Oxy is a lot more difficult and a lot more fun. I've never done TIG welding.

Don't fucking cheap out on your eye protection if you go MIG though.

depends what size materials you want to work with some of the high end budget brands like Hobart make some pretty cheap small MIGs. the Hobart Handler 130 $399 and you could likely find it on sale somewhere. then you'll need gas which you can get fairly cheap if you go the rental route but if you want to own the tank it will pretty much cost as much as the welder

taking a course is worth it IF they have fairly small classes and you actually get to spend time working with the teacher. most around me are basically useless and you pay $800 just to get the basic information the welder manufactures already give you for free on their sites

>>1101937
You should learn stick before MIG if possible, it's significantly harder and MIG will be eady as fuck to pick up afterwards

TIG is a different beast and a lot Hardee than stick or MIG in my opinion, but it's fun as fuck and not that hard to learn with good instruction and plenty of practice

As for taking classes at the community college, it's definitely worthwhile if you'll get some one on one time with the instructor, if not then it's probably not worth the money. I'm taking classes at a community college now and they're fucking great, but I've heard lots of times welding classes suck ass

Never buy from harbor freight

>>1102080
This.

Also breed niglets and make them weld for you instead.

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>>1102080
Thirding this. From another point, stick is extremely versatile, and has the lowest logistical requirements. Stick can weld most common metals even if they're dirty, painted, rusted, stuck in a field outside, underwater, etc. And all you need to run it is electricity. Vehicle batteries can do in an emergency, and dedicated stick machines are by far the cheapest welders, especially on a price-for-performance basis. Because of this, even if you go on to get snazzy TIG and MIG machines, you'd still have reason to keep a stick welder around.

As for instruction, it's important to have at least some in-person learning to make sure that you're doing things right. This doesn't have to be at a school, but schools can have nice programs with a lot more resources than a neighbor you might ask.

Stick is good for welding outside, repairs, and midsize structural welds. It requires post-weld cleaning, and isn't as fast as MIG. MIG is fast and (for many applications) easy, with the ability to handle a wide range of metal thickness. It can handle a little dirt, and might need some light cleanup. It's the best for typical high-volume shop production, and some MIG machines can run in spray mode, which is its own animal. TIG offers by far the best control, and it requires the best hand-eye coordination, both due to handling heat and filler separately. It needs clean metal, but leaves clean, pretty welds. It's also rather slow, so it's best for fiddly detailed things, or things that need perfect welds. Oxy-acetylene is like TIG with less control and much more heat input. It has niche applications today like welding in places without electrical service, and legacy use on autobody and aircraft.

If I'm welding carbon steel, I'll probably reach for MIG first, unless there are complications that would require stick. For stainless, I'll usually go with TIG (see pic related). For aluminum fabrication I prefer spray MIG.

Op here, thanks for all the replies. I'll be hitting up the local community college and getting a bit of time in. Their classes are 10 students to 1 instructor at max, so getting some direct training shouldn't be an issue.

Again, appreciate it all!

>>1103484
There's more. Visit Weldingweb forums and read.

Make sure your near vision is good or your prescription is updated. I show optometrists my hand a foot and a half from my face to indicate range. One exam can net multiple prescriptions.

Different people prefer different color tints and different darkness levels. Magnifying "cheater" lenses clip into your helmet. I stocked them for student because it saved time and wasted consumables but IDK if any other school does.

You can often get more welding time by helping the instructor by cleaning up etc. I always asked and eventually got job running toolroom because I'd done toolrooms before. Be the calm, chill eager to learn student.

Instructors are often busy so assert yourself when you have a question, but many things are answered by practice because welding is building muscle memory.

It's huge fun, useful for life and once formally trained you can practice at home since it's a perishable skill.

Never hurry, and set your machine using scrap before welding your workpiece. We taped over the pointers on our Idealarc stick machines so students had to learn to set by machine behavior. (We trained structural and pipe welders who might be far from their power source on the end of long welding lead runs, but it works for all welding.)

Safety and PPE matter. I love foam ear plugs, which also clean out your ears in use. You can wash them by leaving them in a pocket when you do laundry.

Respect angle grinders. Avoid talking with other students more than necessary. You need to be welding, and welding, and welding.

Be efficient at prepping your practice and test coupons. Take your time. Quality matters. You can do it.

http://weldingweb.com/

https://www.millerwelds.com/

Another tip that matters is if you get an indifferent instructor you can still get professional feedback by posting clear pics of your welds and what you have trouble with. Welders are a helpful bunch.

I REALLY like flap wheels but they add up to being expensive for many community colleges. I brought my own. Every welder has favorite things.

If you are offered a "kit" by the school with mask, hood, gloves etc. evaluate it before you buy. I'd post a list in a welding forum and here and ask for comments. Your school may want you to begin with a fixed shade hood or allow autodarks. Both have advantages. You can get autodark inserts for traditional helmets too.

Have plenty of spare clear protective lenses for your helmet. I buy online. Getting to know your local welding supply(s) is a good idea but I rely on mine for gas and buy most other items online.

VISIBLY MARK YOUR TOOLS AND HELMET and watch those motherfuckers like a hawk. Many welders and companies make an effort to crudely mark their stuff and zap things like grinders with pink or other spray paint to make them less attractive to thieves. Some tack weld dots on their metal tool handles etc. Everything in welding gets a grinding dust and spark bath anyway.

You may want to have more clamps than are provided. A small Bessey style clamp is damn handy, and every hobbyist should fondle a Bessey or clone.
A large decent quality Crescent wrench capable of 1 1/8" will let you change gas cylinders. A small, say six-inch long, is good for other jobs. Have both.
"Welper" style MIG pliers are a must for MIG. A large mill bastard cut file with handle and a chipping hammer are other musts.

Buckets are popular on job sites and of course in schools. A strong plastic bucket (the ~7gallon floor wax style is excellent but five gallon pails work well too) is an efficient way to carry stuff. Many the center out of the lid and snap it on for strength + comfy seat.

>>1101942
>>1101942
*dont cheap out on your eye protection no matter what welding type you're doing

welders eye is painfull as fuck
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photokeratitis

'Photokeratitis is akin to a sunburn of the cornea and conjunctiva, and is not usually noticed until several hours after exposure. Symptoms include increased tears and a feeling of pain, likened to having sand in the eyes.'

speaking from experience, you wont notice it at first but then you wake up in the middle of the night feeling like someone is pouring acid into your eyes

>>1106493
I have scarred corneas (not from welding, due to an infection from a scratch from milling. Ironically, it's the eye doc I saw about the scratch that gave me the damned infection, but I can't prove it). Corneal damage heals, but it doesn't heal flat. Eg, now when I'm driving at night, every stoplight is actually four superimposed stoplights. It fucks with focus forever.

Don't mess with your eyesight.

>>1101937
It all depends on what you want to do man... ive been a ship welder/fitter for along time and home i have a nice hobart tig welder and a cheap ass HF flux core welder and my flux core welder gets alot more use. never had a problem with it.

>TIG, MIG, Oxy-acetylene,) would it be worth my time going to the local community college

I'm actually thinking on doing the same thing, learning to weld. My problem is I want to learn MIG and TIG only because I want to use it when working on cars. When I looked at my local community college course descriptions it was "MIG and TIG Welding (oxy acetylene and arc prerequisite)" I have no desire whatsoever to learn arc or oxy so I asked if I could get a waiver and they said no. kinda bummed out about it so now I'm watching youtube video's.

>>1106629
>>1106629
just learn it man, not everythin on a car is going to have that glorious looking tig weld with dimes on it! learn to use a torch and all of it you can!

>>1106606
You can fix that with laser or maybe even better an ICL.

>>1106606
How does the eye doctor cause and infection?

>>1101937
>would it be worth my time going to the local community college and taking a course


That's how I learned, the course I took was 90% hands on. They supplied tools, weldersof every variety, metal to practice on. I got to learn basics of oxy, stick and mig with a pretty good welder who could look at the beads and tell you what your doing wrong right away. Worth the little a cc class cost if your serious.

>>1106606
You can fix this damage with fine silicon carbide paper followed by a light application of the buffing wheel. You may want to have a handle of hard liquor before starting.

>>1101937
dont be a dumbass arc weld with batteries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV5oLPLUzrM

How exactly does welding work? It's essentially sticking metal together yes? Like welding two doors together. Or sheet metal or what have you. What is it that sticks the metal together, the 'adhesive' if you will? Is it anything like a soldering iron. I know this sounds dumb but I can never wrap my head around it because I'm dumb but working with my hands in a shipyard or train yard sounds like sex. What a life

>>1106881
Metals melt. Once melted, separate puddles of liquid metal can join into one puddle. When allowed to cool the single puddle forma a single solid piece of metal. There is no adhesive, but welding usually involves adding more metal to form the desired size and shape of joint. This melts with and intermingles between the melted pieces being joined. Soldering involves melting a low-melting-point metal so that it wets and sticks to pieces being joined. Those pieces are not melted or incorporated into the joint in soldering, and the mechanical properties of the joint are different.

>>1106881
The objects you want to weld together are connected to the ground of the welding transformer with a cable and a clamp. The other cable goes to your electrode. That's a thin wire (usually .6 to .8 mm) usually made of iron or steel. If it looks coppery that's usually because of the anti-oxidating coating, although brass or copper is sometimes also used for electrodes.
As the electrode touches the clamped surface, the circuit is closed, the connection point sparks and the super hot tip of the electrode melts off. This added material mixes with the also heated and molten surface you're welding, making it into a single piece.
As contact with the air is bad for welding, a gas like CO2 is often added while doing the weld. If you're using welding sticks, the stick is an electrode covered in a thick coating of a material that turns into gas when it's heated. To be clear: The gas is not an energy source, but a controlling agent.
A bad weld can resemble something like a solder. In those cases, the electrode melted but the object's surface didn't, so the materials didn't mix and the bond is very weak.

>>1106803
Laser surgery might be a better option. I think they can fix that type of thing.

Why is that Canadian not wearing a mask?
>select images with sushi

>>1107016
are you blind? he clearly has one on

I'm currently taking classes with a local "technical solutions" company. It cost about 6500, but it's full package for TIG and MIG at all angles, along with OSHA cert.
Just getting time under the mask is by far the best way to actually learn, but it really does help to have someone around who can tell you what you're doing wrong (For me personally, that's keeping my angle and keeping my distance).

>>1106881
There's a process called brazing that is kinda like soldering, in that it doesn't actually penetrate the base metal, just adds an extra layer on top that touches both pieces. It's useful for very small jobs that are too thin and delicate to penetrate with a proper weld.

>>1107040
Whoops, typo. It's about 5500, not 6.

>>1107006

nope, that's one of the questions that they ask: have you ever welded?

>Learned to weld Oxy, TIG, and Stick
>Picked them all up fairly easily except for pipe and TIG 3G
>Cant even lay a simple bead with MIG
This is suffering

OK I'm interested in welding as well

What's a good welder with long duty cycle that is less than $1000?

I am looking for handling aluminum up to 1/2 maximum and rarely that size and sheet metal. Mostly less than 1/4 aluminum sheet but I'd need the ability to zip up half inch just in case

I've been researching enough to learn that white lines on aluminum are uncleaned welds and that's about it

>>1107804
>implying you can weld aluminum

>>1107788
Is your machine set up right? MIG is easy shit, but it's very fiddly. Double check that your gas and wire feed are correct.

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>>1107804
>white lines on aluminum
That's oxidation and that's why aluminum is so tricky to weld. Look up refractory oxide. The heat required to "clean" this oxidation is almost double the melting point of aluminum. Also aluminum sucks up contaminants so if you weld on a rusty steel table you will have rust in your weld.
My advise is to get a multi process AC/DC inverter welder so that you can use a spool gun or TIG depending on the job. You'll also need shielding gas. 100% argon is what you use to MIG weld aluminum and you can use it to TIG steel, stainless and aluminum. You'll also be able to stick weld pretty much anything, including aluminum.
For under $1k your probably going to be looking at a chinese made inverter. Eastwood, Everlast, Klutch, pick your poison it's all probably the same guts in a different box.

>>1107866

I hope I can because I'd like to one day

>>1108210

Can you use CO2 instead? Might be cheaper than argon.

Yea you gotta wire brush aluminum before welding sometimes.

Can you recommend a welder from Amazon that fits my specs?

>>1107866
You most certainly can, and all you need is a MIG machine to do it.

>>1108217

yes you can def use c02 and you dont need ac to do aluminum either. you actually dont really need shielding gas at all

>>1106825
Thanks!

>>1106706
by not cleaning his damn tools adequately.

>>1106700
Yeah-- but also developing cataracts (due to steroid drops as part of treating the infection) and they don't want to do more than they have to, cause I'm going to need lens replacements too in a few years.

>>1106881
You're just melting the two pieces of something together. Get a stick of butter, and cut it in half. Now heat up the knife, put the halves back together and melt the seam. Congratulations, you welded something.

>>1108217
Co2 is active gas, u cant use them to welding Al

>>1108396
Not quite, you're also adding material to the joint.

Enquire about courses.

>>1108473
autogenous weld on 1" butter

>>1106629
You need to learn OA to expand what you can do on cars. The intelligent choice is get training on ALL methods because it increases your knowledge of and feel for metal. OA is great puddle control training and you need some OA time to learn how to manipulate metal with heat. You can't heat with the other processes except so crudely as to be useless (arc torch).

Have some god-tier tinmantech

https://www.tinmantech.com/

Stop thinking you know what you will use. Noobs shouldn't have an attitude. You don't know shit. GO LEARN and stop being a sick cunt.
You'll thank me later.

Also read about MIG brazing which is used quite a bit for automobile sheet metal repair. You'd have to supply your own wire to do it at school and use their argon (MIG brazing doesn't use "MIG" mixes).

Is there any sort of qualification or certification for welding?
Maybe a test you can do if you're already proficient?

Asking because I can MIG and ARC weld, but don't have any qualifications.

I don't want to spend two years doing some beginners course.

>>1108540
AWS certifications. Just talk a test and if you pass you get the certification.

>>1108540
>Maybe a test you can do if you're already proficient?

How many destructive tests have you taken that you can say you are proficient? You can do AWS bend tests at home if you can fab a tester. Example test setup:

http://billschoolcraft.com/wiliweld-llc/jig/

Most welding shops and contractors in the US have the applicant weld and prepare bend test coupons, because destructive testing doesn't lie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sm8R6iMV-g

>>1107044
Lie. Jesus, are you new?

>>1108356
Why doesn't he throw his shit in an autoclave? Isn't that how you're supposed to clean surgical tools?

>>1102082
This. Unless you want to weld tinfoil together dont even do it.

>>1108246
And a cylinder of argon. No CO2 for aluminum.

>you dont need ac to do aluminum either. you actually don"t really need shielding gas at all

Stop trolling. You need AC or high amp DC with helium but that usage is rare.

"The most common shielding gas for MIG welding aluminum is 100 % argon. Flow rates of 20 to 30 CFH (cubic feet per hour) are acceptable. C25 or argon Co2 mixes are not acceptable."

https://www.millerwelds.com/resources/article-library/gmaw-mig-aluminum-welding-hints#sthash.tLRcJnJ0.dpuf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_MiGrL9350

If you don't KNOW, don't post. Don't fucking speculate and confuse noobs. That's an asshole move or a troll. Just fuck off and die you stupid ignorant cunt. How dare you post without knowledge? Go jack off on /b/ or something.

/diy/ should only have welding threads to direct noobs to SERIOUS sources of info because compared to Weldingweb and the Miller forums everything else is shit or close to it. Exception for EUfags is the useful http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/ which has a Euro slant on gear.

>>1109033
Must be pretty good machines to be able to weld tinfoil.

>>1109025
Went to an emergency room. Someone fucked up. *shrug*

>>1102080
this guy knows whats up

>>1109149
>Stop trolling. You need AC or high amp DC with helium but that usage is rare.
My aluminum spoolgun runs DC and tops out at 150 amps. Helium or AC are if you want to TIG aluminum. Filler electrode processes do aluminum on DC+. Stick and flux core don't need external shielding gas. Oxyacetylene doesn't either. So you do not in fact need an AC machine or shielding gas to weld aluminum.

I'm buying an esab rebel 215ic for my small fab/ blacksmithing shop. My Brothers father in law has one and its a good lil machine

Angle grinder and paint makes me the welder I ain't

>>1107788
there's no way that should be the case unless you forgot to use shielding gas or your wire feed is all fucked up or something, check your shit

>>1109033
welding tinfoil would be a pretty neat trick.

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>>1112927

not tinfoil but...

>>1113108

Holy shit impressive hand control


Hey how much would a welder that can handle 1/2 aluminum and 1/4 steel?

>>1113117
>Hey how much would a welder that can handle 1/2 aluminum and 1/4 steel?
Yes

>>1106629
I took classes, I got a certificate, I weld a lot. Here is the dumbed answer.
Anything you need to do on a car can be accomplished with MiG. TiG is for aluminium, Oxy for professionals. Stick is a learning tool, but cheap and super handy. MiG is basically set current, open gas, push to play. 12l/s and between 80-125 amps for most metal depending on thickness. Learn to spot a shot ground connection.

>>1113117
Depends, are you talking single pass or multi-pass? Do you want 1/2" Al or just 1/4" steel, pick one.

That makes a very large difference.

Also, 1/2" Al vs 1/4" steel is not a very comparable range. If it can run 1/2" Al then it can definitely run 1/4" steel. You're not exactly providing narrow margins.

You also didn't specify Stainless, mild, or whatever other alloy you're talking about.

A good 220v SMAW buzz-box can easily run 1/4" steel.
It could probably (emphasis on probably) run 1/2" Al, but will probably need something like 250A and/or multi pass.

A good MIG setup with >/= 200A could run both, but the Al would need multiple passes. Something you generally don't want to do with Al.

Or you could run DC TIG with helium at around 200A, but you have to be really good -as in, something most professionals will have trouble with- good.

Based on the information you supplied, price could vary from $300 to $4000 US.

Please learn to weld before asking like a n00b about which welder to buy. Learning to weld, and getting experience with welding will tell you all you need to know as far as what the welder needs.
It's not as simple as "oh this machine can run 400A so it can weld 1" thick xyz".

>>1113117
>1/2 aluminum and 1/4 steel
For the same thickness, aluminum takes greater heat input than steel (any kind, stainless and other high-alloy especially) because it conducts heat many times faster. A machine that can provide enough current for 1/4" aluminum in a single pass might handle 3/8" or thicker steel in one pass. 1/2" aluminum in a single pass is a rather high bar, and welders capable of that are typically industrial models made and priced for people who use them to make money. A consumer grade machine can multi-pass it, but that's not the same as handling it well.

But at any rate, if you want a meaningful answer, you'll have to be more specific about what you want to do.

>>1109149
>No CO2 for aluminum.

Correct as mentioned above more than once CO2 is an active gas, hence not suitable for aluminum.

>Stop trolling. You need AC or high amp DC with helium but that usage is rare.

MIG welding aluminum is primarily DC and pulsed DC. Only advanced process machines use AC MIG.
The amount of current required is directly proportional to the wire diameter of the filler metal in use, so surprisingly low current can be used to achieve a weld by selecting the correct wire.