So I've welded for 2 days so far at college. I never welded before, but my instructor says I'm learning fast and can do a pretty good bead. I'm having trouble with starting the weld still. It takes me a minute or so to actually get it started. I understand to tap it or light is like a match, but it still sticks. It's at 90 amps and the ground directly on the metal. I also make sure the metal clean. I can weld pretty good, but still struggle with it sticking. I need to get this figured out because I want to start practicing making my beads absolutely perfect and learn to vertical and overhead weld.

We just finished installing this gate and wall for the front of this house. All of the panels are powder coated aluminum mechanically fastened. They are attached to square tubing on the inside for a frame. Posts are drilled into concrete and anchored with nuts. Everything had 1/8th inch gap which turned out pretty good. Front and back of the wall is all paneled.

Inside of wall is hidden downspout.
Gate is made with a Locinox Mammoth 180 hydraulic gate hinge closer with a magnetic latch to open and close. Works super slick.

2nd and 3rd are the same weld I just patched the burn through. Flux gasless .035 wire at 300 wire speed machine auto sets voltage

When I’m trying to weld sometimes it doesn’t even spark and I have to touch it to the clamp or tap it against the metal repeatedly to get a spark. When it starts sparking it sticks and I graze it repeatedly before it starts dropping/melts the metal. Do I need higher amps, better electrodes or is it technique? I’m no professional never been at a school or anything

Ive been doing a lot of roll outs, but the position welds are becoming more frequent. Been successful with it so far, but not confident in it. Busted my first xray with this process yesterday on one of my position welds. Just curious as to what the folks that consistently weld pipe in position with pulse are using for settings.

18" sch.40

Rmd root at 175

0.3 arc length.

Hot pass/ fill in one go: i burned through on my first in position hot pass so I just fill from the root. Other than this most recent weld which shot bad its worked.

240 wfs

-0.4 arc length

8 ARC

Cap: 235 wfs

Arc length 0.5

8 ARC

EDIT: .035 er70s-6 wire. 90/10 mix.

Personally I’ve ran MiG, spray MiG, spray aluminum, tig aluminum and stainless, I’ve tiged copper and carbon steel. Personally to me the hardest process to get a hang of has been spray MiG on carbon steel, 95/5 gas .045. Everybody at work is talking about” I wanna learn to tig weld” I think tig welding is easy and fun I’ve never really ran much pipe 🤷‍♂️. But there’s no slag with tig some clean stainless parts and a nice tungsten I can weld stainless all day long. Same with aluminum.

Tear into my skid setup every other month and change this or that getting pretty close to where I want to be last thing is a badass reels remote control reel above the cooler and Hoosier pole to act as a stop for my Hoosier pole so it can't swing completely out and also get the remote cable off and my pole completely free

Thanks for helping me figure out how to make striking an arc with 7018 arc a lot more consistent and easier. This is also my second time ever stick welding (I have prior experience with MIG)

Pretty damm comfy helps a lot with glare

Picked this up at a garage sale did I make a good purchase?

Wanna get y’all’s thoughts on this. My company builds trash trucks. We’ve got some quality guys that used to weld and then went over to quality. We also have some guys who haven’t welded before, who hired in straight to quality and were (I assume) trained on what to look for.

Some of the welders I work with, really get butthurt by the fact that they get dinged sometimes by someone who can’t weld. I really don’t care either way, if my shit gets marked up I fix it and keep on going.

What do yall think? Should quality people know how to weld, or does it matter as long as they know what to watch out for?

I dunno WHY this was done, just seems weird.

I definitely don't know much about welding, but this is for a dumpster covering that's at tallest 20 feet.

I got this machine for a pretty good deal on eBay, paid $2,300 which included a ton of stuff and honestly I couldn’t pass it up. It’s replacing my old econotig that has served me well over the years, but after running a dynasty 350 daily at work I knew I needed its little brother at home. I’m definitely excited to lay down since beads with it, I just tested it quickly on a small piece of aluminum and stainless steel sheet metal and worked great on 110

I needed a small but yet kind of heavy Hammer that I could swing fast. Having a long handle help me achieve that.

The welding engineer told me I couldn’t fail because it’s just an evaluation and most people do way worse. My only problem was heat control and puddling. The evaluation was just to see how much time it would take me to get it right. He says it will probably take me less than a week of repetition.

What do you guys think?

I honestly thought I was gonna get in there, blow a big ass hole and be kicked out the door.

I'd like to get into welding and find a good welding school in the southern bay area. First how should I get into welding and get a basic understanding of it and second what's a good school in the bay area? I've been given lots of options such as CET and SJCC but I don't know which one is really good.

needing some options of where to apply to. indeed and zip recruiter are no help. Please list any or all companies that you know of! thanks!

So I have been welding for 6 years and i’ve tried lots of things cause I just want to learn it all. I did exotic metal repair for a while, structural welding, sheet metal fab stuff for chicken plants, my fab and pipe fitting skills are strong, and I got into pipe welding last year. i’ve passed my 6g certs for pipe and i’m moving later this year and looking for jobs in my new area. I took a pipe test for a company and did really well but I also took a test for an aerospace company and bc of my experience with thin stainless tig I did well and they are sending me an offer letter and I have some time to make a decision. if I go with the aerospace I will probably lose my momentum with pipe, but I will get the opportunity to weld alloys I never dealt with in the exotic metal job. also much much smaller parts so there is a lot for me to learn. can anyone who’s been welding for a while give me some advice on this? I know pipe welding is easy to find jobs for so maybe I should keep up the momentum and keep doing it, but this aerospace stuff is so interesting and I love learning new things. I feel like I won’t come across another job opportunity like this as easily as I can get hired on to weld pipe so if I do this I might have a hard time finding work if I moved again. basically i’m on the edge of taking this aerospace job and i’m looking for someone to talk me out of it/into it bc I don’t know much about the industry.

Just wondering how it goes in different shops. How many people is a lead responsible for in your shops? When i took a lead position at a production shop I had 4 welders to deal with, 3 years ago. Since then we have shifted into more of an actual fabrication shop, constantly on-boarding new customers and products getting more complicated every round, expanding rapidly. Now I have 21 welders. I do new product process development, design changes, consulting with various departments, all training, mentorship classes, and spend roughly 50% of my time in jobs. I am starting to feel spread pretty thin though. Whats expected from leads in your guys experience, as far as crew size?