Haven't posted on here for a while but here's some progress photos. First welds I did at my new job yesterday

My dad has recently been laid off. In the last few years he has put quite an impressive shop together in his garage. He has a plasma cam, a few different multiprocess welders, and a ton of stuff at his disposal. He wants to get into fabricating something out of his garage for a living. He's been pla...

Tillman 875 are great. Flexible, don't get stiff, durable and heat doesn't mess with em. They are like 35 a pair but they are great gloves

Also if youre welding in the 1g position and getting excessive reinforcement, keep what you're doing, just don't put much emphasis on actually shoving the wire in there and see if that helps. when your welding a pipe from the bottom to the top there's a halfway point where you go from shoving it in ...

Thoriated tungsten 1/8 3/32 filler - 1/8 gap 1/8 filler - 5/32 gap either way 100-120 amps. On a 6G I like to stick my wire on the inside of the pipe and melt it that way on the bottom, then keyhole dab the sides and top. Anyway, try both lay wire and dabbing. I walk my root in. If you walk your roo...

I don't jam my arc too tight. Not too far either though. And I'm not really focusing on what I do with my electrode so much, just tying into one side and letting it fill then skipping to the other while watching my puddle. Get it going then keep your eye on your puddle and try to make it consistent ...

Shipyards! get on a pipe crew in a shipyard and get some experience there. Your skills will get way better in a shipyard because most of the in position welds are running along the decks, walls, or ceilings. You'll learn to mirror weld too. Anything after that is way easier and they generally will b...

A lot of the welders I work with say flex head is awful for walking the cup. I've never used a flex head torch but I do have a flex loc which is great. Gives me any angle I want on a restricted or awkward weld and I can lock it into place so I can walk the cup without worrying about it moving on me....

You don't need a ridiculous tight arc. don't long arc it tho. If it's stacking in the middle you arr spending too much time in the middle. Side till it wets out, other side till it wets out. Back and forth. Weld the sides and the center will weld itself.

For a 1/8 rod start at 100 amps and mess around with it. Turn it up in interVals of 5 till 135. make sure you are keeping the same rod angle. Try a shade 10 also and see if you like that better. I like stick welding between a 10 and a 12. A shade down or even a shade higher can help you see your Pud...

Hit the spatter with a wire wheel. Whatever doesn't come off use the flat end of a chipping hammer. If thay doesn't work then get another hammer or piece of scrap and use the chipping hammer as a chisel to get it off. Spatter happens with stick but as long as you clean it when you're done you'll be ...

In school I learned how to weld only carbon steel. I've been welding in the field for about a year now and pretty much only weld stick and dual shield on pipe because I've never learned to weld other alloys. I decided to stay after today in the shop for a few hours and brush up on some tig. Can I pr...

Excellent work. Keep it up. What amperage and size rod are you using?

That looks really good, congrats on passing. If you run into another situation like that where you have slight undercut and you can get away with it if you file that stuff out and wire wheel the crap out of it you will get rid of the undercut without being able to tell you filed on it.

AKweldshop wrote:

forrestderp wrote:Soft is lower volts higher amps cusp us higher volts lower amps, i prefer really soft settings on cap to reduce chances of undercut.

Watch this video.
Its kinda different than your explanation...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvZGxFs0bJQ

Yeah I believe he got it backwards.

I'm a pipe welder and I've come to like using crisp much more than soft. It just works better for me. I used to use soft with negative arc force for 7018 but I just use crisp with 0 arc force. I can get everything to look much cleaner on crisp, it's like the puddle is just way easier to control for ...

I was talking to an old timer at work (I'm a pipe welder in a shipyard) and he told me that pretty much every refinery uses tig root and hot pass and 7018 the rest of the way out instead of using a 6010 root. We live in Washington state and he said that the refineries in Washington are pretty much t...

A guy at work said the lincoln Excalibur rods suck snd when he was doing refinery work his favorite rod was blue... well I can't remember the name but it had blue in the name. All I've used is 7018 from Lincoln, except I literally ran one hobart 7018 when new to welding. Curious to see what everyone...

If you have "wet" 7018 and Stick them to a piece of steel and let them heat up for like 5-10 seconds , will that take the moisture out and make them ready to use again? (Once they cool down)

Thanks Dylan....Im gettn comfortable for sure.....Atleast Im not in the dark anyore...im seein whats happenin with the welds...If they dont come out the way I want..I change it next time...Man...Howd you get those caps to look like they did....Those were SSSWEEEET.....I figure if I can get mine to ...

Nice welds mike. The final pass on a 6G you will almost always get undercut if you don't let it cool down a bit before you run it. That was one of my biggest problems for a long time. The undercut I was getting on my top pass was from not filling it up enough though. I took a friends advice and just...

Just run your 7018 fill pass (or passes) pausing with a bit of angle pointed up to the top and then bring it down for a second to bring it to the bottom. This will help with gravity trying to work against you. You can see this technique done in a lot of 6g stick tutorial videos. As for tips from per...

I like to drag because I can make it more consistent. A buddy of mine prefers to use the whip and he does a real good job of it. I'd just experiment with both and see what you prefer

I was welding a flange onto a pipe today and on my cap I had what sounds like the same thing happened. Everything was going smooth then all of a sudden my arc got out of control. One of the guys I work with said maybe a bad ground. Didn't have any problems the rest of the day though

Those machines run really good. I don't get to do much tig at work but they run great with tig and if you get a suitcase it runs wire really good too once you get everything dialed in right. For roll welds or flat welds if you turn the arc force down all the way to -10 and crank it up hot everything...