Is it possible to learn to be a welder from home with more inexpensive

>>1155742
It's not difficult, but it is subtle. GMAW is considerably easier to learn than SMAW or GTAW. In every process, you're essentially moving a dime-sized dot of molten metal around. Keeping it at a uniform size, and moving it at a consistent rate are the parts that you need to learn. This comes with practice. Learning goes faster if you're getting feedback from an experienced instructor.

Learn and know all safety procedures. You're playing with electricity, molten metal, actinic light, toxic fumes, and asphyxiant gases. All at the same time. You get exactly 1 fuckup.

I'm certainly not a professional welder but I've dabbled here and there as just general maintenance stuff. As a schooled welding professional it will open up more types of welding opportunities. It seems like the dream welding job for most people is pipe welding, usually underwater.
That's what you'd go to school for. You can absolutely learn standard welding via the internet and shit but it won't just come to you. You have to be able to tell the difference between a good weld and just a good-looking weld. You can lay down a perfect bead but if it isn't strong then it's worthless.
Then there's shit you would learn in school, like which type of welder you want to use (oxy-acetylene, mig, tig, etc.) and the type of rod when applicable. You also need to be able to identify your metals, if you were working with aluminium specifically and you didn't realize it then you would be in trouble
If you want to weld professionally it would be hard if not impossible for you to beat out a schooled welder but you could do some personal welding here and there.

Welding IS hard.

You need to fine control of the rod or it will fail. Some reasons are too slow or too fast, wrong angle, wrong direction, wrong rod, wrong amp/voltage on welder, arc length too high or can be too short.

See how much things you have to keep consistent through out the entire weld?

I am not a pro welder but i have done welding at home.

>>1155742

You can. There's almost nothing as far as know-how or technical skill goes. You can learn everything you need to be a master in a day, if you're smart and dedicated.

The problem is that welding, in general, is extremely sensitive to process parameters. Simply developing the mechanical skill needed to hold everything in just the right position for just the right time takes a long time, regardless of how well you understand what you're doing.

>>1155742
welding isnt hard. get a good piece of brand name trade quality equipment (try over $1000) and you can weld anything easily.

oh did you mean boiler making or real welding like continuous single weld ship hulls? yeah that will take a lot of practice. it's why there's an apprenticeship that takes 4 years to complete in order to be competent. when you're talking about throwing away a couple grand on a fucked weld because the design wont tolerate "rewelding" or just dab a bit of braze where you blew through it. when you need to have the welds X-ray'd because you dont want those divers to find out their equipment just burst 100m underwater because you're a shitty welder.

oh right but you pobably just want to like bog up some holes in your car floor or maybe make some kind of dumb scrap sculpture. yeah that will take a day to learn.

>>1155786
what's with the condescending attitude, ya lil fuck? Of course a self taught welder isn't talking about doing underwater welding or welding ship hulls.

>>1155786
Sounds like you're speaking from experience, eh dickhead

>>1155742
Kek. Get you a cheap craclbox, some welding gloves, and a $50 helmat ant report back. Basketball doesnt seem hard either until u try it.

>>1155786
Aww somebody paid too much for school and still isn't happy with life, how pathetic

>>1155747
>GMAW is considerably easier to learn than SMAW or GTAW
no it isnt the most failed weld test is gmaw flat start with smaw

>>1155778
>You can. There's almost nothing as far as know-how or technical skill goes. You can learn everything you need to be a master in a day, if you're smart and dedicated.
thats why welding codes have been developed by, CWB, AWS, ASME, ASTM, and ISO because its easy and theres nothing to learn retard never heard of metallurgy i guess

>>1155795
>>1155801
>>1155905
its from your stupid fucks remaking this thread every 3 days and not a single person in here knows wtf they are talking about or do any kind of welding professionally

>>1155747
>fumes
This. Things with zinc + poor ventilation = bad time

That means especially brass, but in general make sure you know what the fuck you're welding and if it's dangerous to weld beforehand

>>1155742
yes it's possible and is how i've learned. sure i can't make pretty welds that everyone likes to cum over but i can make a weld that'll hold which is what's actually important.

basic welding isn't really hard but takes a lot of practice. tons of online resources to help you get started but in the end it all comes down to how much time you can commit to fucking around and building up your skill

if you want to get started buy yourself a MIG from a reputable brand(Hobart, Miller, Lincoln) and NOT some cheap shit from Harbor Freight. even if it's a used unit you'll be far better off.

Pretty much everything that's been said, as a shitty home taught welder i will add for me atleast it's just something you have to learn to feel, feeling how fast the different metals are melting and how the angle changes things, like has been said it's pushing a molten ball around usually, will take some time to learn to make nice looking welds, and the different welders respond differently which is why everyone has preferences, of course different welder types are better for different applications as well, buy a welders hammer to, idk if it has a special name, it's kind of a pointy hammer suspended in a springy handle, you're probably gonna make a lot of shitty welds that look ok, and hitting them with the hammer will show you pretty well if they're ok or not

>>1156243
Nah man, the welders hammer is for knocking slag off a weld. If you're doing an "unimportant" (i.e. backyard dicking around) weld, hit it with a 3 or 4 lb hammer, see it if moves. Weld doesn't break? Weld is good.

>>1156243
those hammers are for chipping off slag from flux. if you want to test a weld you hit it with a sledge. usually you just test welds when you're fucking around so you learn how to make a good weld when it actually counts

>>1156259
Which is what he should do cause he's a beginner and is gonna make shit welds, I stand by my point might not be what it's designed for but works well for it

>>1156263
>might not be what it's designed for but works well for it

not really, if your weld is so fucking bad that a chipping hammer can break it then you REALLY fucked up and should just never weld again. now on the other hand if you hit a weld with a chipping hammer and it holds that tells you exactly jack fucking shit about the weld since the hammer doesn't have enough force. you should be using 3lb mini sledge or if you really want to test it a 6lb full sized sledge

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been a professional combo pipe welder for 15 years. been on navy nuclear steam lines to oil and gas pipelines.and now im the qa/qc inspector for the company. welding is easy i have taught laborers that had 0 experience how to pass an ASME section IX structural test in 1 day. but being a good welder and knowing what the actual fuck is going on takes many many years. if you want to just dick around in a garage then you should be fine with youtube vids. if you want a career in welding i suggest being a welders helper in the construction/maintenance field.

>>1156300
adding to that. if you want a job welding and you are self taught in a garage when you show up to the job to take a weld test you will look like a retard because you just wont know the profession. look around for construction,plant maintenance jobs as a helper or laborer and you will start to learn the trade, then during breaks/lunch grab some scrap and burn some rods, when your helping a welder and he is dickin off take the stinger and burn some rods on scrap. they might be agrivated a bit and wont want to teach you because they went to school and you didnt but if you show real interest and he isnt a complete dick bag he will help you out

I only learned gas (oxy-acetylene) in school so I can't speak much on arc but gas is easy as fuck to learn.

Get a rig and a shit load of metal scraps and keep practicing eventually you'll have it down to a science

>>1155915
>thats why welding codes have been developed by, CWB, AWS, ASME, ASTM, and ISO because its easy and theres nothing to learn retard never heard of metallurgy i guess

And I have to memorize every single letter of every welding code, every last minutia of every kind of rod, flux, wire, gax mixture, every alloy, and how my machine settings and parameters interact with all of this?

No, I don't. And, honestly, I'd be astounded if there was even a SINGLE PERSON on the entire planet who did. You don't have to know it all off the top of your head, you just need to be able to find it. I mean, fuck, on a big job, half the time you're simply handed what you need and are told explicitly what to do.

I didn't mean to imply that the metallurgical side of it wasn't complex, simply that it didn't have much bearing on how well you could run a bead.

>>1155742
Possible yes, but at some point, you should check with an experienced welder to make sure you're actually carrying things into practice, especially if you plan to do anything structural. Wheels have been invented, etc. and there are a bunch of little tricks to getting specific situations to work well. Welding takes precise hand-eye coordination. How many sub-millimiter-pricise movements can you make per second? With practice, enough to weld decently.

>>1155916
The professional welders here (ahem) may be busy working during the work week, and therefore may have little time to check /diy/ daily.

>>1156584
>I didn't mean to imply that the metallurgical side of it wasn't complex, simply that it didn't have much bearing on how well you could run a bead.
If you're only welding mild steel, sure, but it matters with some metals. Metallurgy and technical stuff is how you prevent hot cracking in aluminum, high alloy steels, and cast iron, prevent stress corrosion and galvanic corrosion, and set up different welding parameters for passivation-layer-forming or otherwise reactive metals. For example, 300 stainless is pretty common. Do you know what you should do differently to MIG it?