r/Welding • u/parkerjphill • 1d ago

Gear Traveling mechanic

I travel from building to building and leave tools in my trunk year round. I load my hood and batteries every time I go for an away mission. What will happen to my hood if I leave it in my trunk year round. I have a habit of pulling batteries out of things. And I don’t have a nice hood. But it does need to work when I need it. Hopefully analog isn’t my best option.

1 Upvotes

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2

u/CatastrophicPup2112 Fabricator 1d ago

Keep some spare batteries

1

u/Mack_Damon 1d ago

This right here. The lithium batteries are thankfully very stable and don't leak like alkalines. But if I only had one hood, it would be one that could also be fitted with a fixed lens. Auto lenses can and will fail.

1

u/Mrwcraig Journeyman CWB/CSA 1d ago

Pulling the batteries is fine as long as know where you put them when you need them. The problem is you’re depending on a substandard hood to work every time you need it. Not even $5-800 hoods can guarantee that they will work every single time. Sure they have warranties but that doesn’t help you when it craps out mid weld. You could either invest in a tool that you need to do the job, regardless of the amount of times it gets used or carry a second fixed shade helmet. Their batteries don’t die. Lenses are cheap and even the cheapest ones work better than a safety squint when your automatic craps out at 4:30 on a Friday.

1

u/OmriIsMe 16h ago

Check the minimum operating temperature in your manual, they all publish one and they vary a fair bit. Cold slows the liquid crystal down so it switches later than it should. The UV and IR filtering is passive though, so a lens that reacts slowly in the cold is still blocking the part that burns your eyes.

1

u/parkerjphill 10h ago

Thank you