Learning to weld ???
 

Any suggestions.....

I am prepared to be very bad, get very frustrated but I would like to try an learn...

Any suggestions on which type of welding to try and learn and what to attack first.

I've got to try and fit some side mount cobra seats and i know i'm going to need some welding doing so i guess now is the time to learn.....it may be a long road.

Thanks for any suggestions.
Chris.

MIG (metal intert gas) I would say is the easiest, as the welder feeds the metal in for you, so you don't have worry messing about with rods.

Doesn't take long to be able to start making good strong welds (i.e not just a lump of metal siting on top of the join). What does take time is making tidy welds that don't look like birds nests....but you can always buy an angle grinder for that ;):D

Go to your local college. They prob have a motor course including welding or a welding only course.

I did mine as an apprentice, loved it. Smallest rod on highest power and watch it evaporate in a shower of sparkes :), splatter down your boots and then jumping about trying to pull them off, catching the arc in your face before getting the mask in position.

Ahhhh takes me back :)

Thanks guys it doesnt sound too bad then ( here's hoping :) )

IS MIG the tidy one that you can produce engine bay components such as expansion tanks etc. with as i may build up to this one day. :norty:

:lol:

MIG is really only for steel, you can change gas and wire and weld ally but it's a bit of a bodge. For fabricating pretty shiny ally components for under the bonnet you want TIG but they cost 10x the price to buy.

I did a 10 week evening class course at the local college. I told them I wanted to learn to MIG weld and they put me on 4 weeks of gas welding then 4 weeks of stick welding. I got really fed up, when are we doing MIG, when are we doing MIG.... On the 9th week he said here's a MIG welder, get on with it, and I just did, piece of p***. He was quite right, after getting proficient at controlling the arc with the stick welding and moving with the gas MIG was just a formality, almost too easy.

The 10th week was a TIG taster which was a nightmare, kept grounding the electrode and having to shut everything down, regrind and then start everything up again. Too hard for me...

a girlfriend of mine did a course in college , they went through all the types of welding , so she can weld and i can watch :)

Piece of cake matey. Will take a couple of visits to college to have an idea of what your doing and be able to put a reasonable weld down. Then the rest of your life becoming the sort of craftsman this world with robots welders has long since forgot.

I remember looking in the back of a 360 modena at the gorgeous engine until I noticed the spattered monstrocity they called welding...... There's hope for you yet :D

Well i'm not planning on welding any Ferrari's but i guess you never say never :)

I'll have to check out the college then and get playing around :)

practice/set up of a mig welder is the key really.... after that easy..... after 2 years at college.... ;) i can do them all rather well.....

I learnt in my garage with my dad as a coach. Practised on two bits of nice CLEAN steel. Got it wrong a few times but its easy. There are a lot of variables, ie amount of gas, and so on. All i ever did was practised on sh**e metal then on new metal, learnt what i could and couldnt do. Main criteria when weilding cars is to get a good earth, without that you may as well blue tack it together! An angle grinder when you get it wrong is a great escape;)
Remember to persist and dont get stressed! If at first you dont succeed try and try again......and above all have fun:D

Its all down to how steady your hand is .Its easy anyway i do it for a living ie Mig tig stick .I don't do any coded stuff .Do more mig in the workshop .Stick outside ie no gas to be blown away with the wind and tig for stainless and alu a pain needs to be really clean.I went to college a bit boring just welding plates with v in them and doing root welds it would be better i you were making somthing .The best was welding the v in to pipes a bit harder but more interesting

I have welded everything from paper thin to 80mm thick steel with mig and stick,i have been welding since the age of 14...
Anyone can weld a couple of bits of clean steel on a bench, wait till your laid under your car in the rain trying to plate up metal as thin as paper and sparks are going down your arms!! thats when you will see how good you are. Its all about practice mate, forget collage train yourself. Try welding thick bits to thin etc, mig is dead easy once you get the hang of it, migs like to weld nice clean steel and stick welders are not fussy you can weld in rain and snow...if you can cope with the shocks!!

If you buy a mig keep messing with the settings, more power usally means more speed on your wire feed. You will soon pick it up. Do a search on Google for mig welding books as well.


PS always use a your mask or you will end up with a burnt face and your skin will peel off..as i found out welding my mini 1275 exhaust up in the dark with no mask !! oh and your eyes will feel like they have sand in them when you go to bed!!

Thank you for sharing your wisdom T5OLF, i'll get scouring the web and hopefully be on my way soon, here's to no burnt face and some tidy welds :) Minty.

No probs mate anyting you need to know just pm me.
Mig is the way to go forget anything else.

If you practise, you can get MMA (stick), or TIG to work on thin plate very well. Much cheaper than MIG ('cause you don't need a bottle/ feeder). Avoid anything with a torch unless you are gifted (I just end up with holes in everything and the T1000 on the floor)....

TIG has a bottle too. Tungsten inert gas, the inert gas bit is the give away....

Yes but you get far to much heat with stick and unless you are good its looks ****e. You can use 2mm rods on thin steel but again it gets very hot. Mig gives off very little heat. A second hand tig is around 500 quid and IMO best used for alloy and stainless. Forget stick its for farmers!! mig is not for the gifted anyone can pick it up.

Heh, really? :-)
I often type without engaging my brain.... I was refering to MMA.

I taught myself gas welding initially when I was building my first racing chassis by using Nickel Bronze which will give a very strong fillet on mild steel at a lower temperature than steel welding. The fillet is as strong or even better than steel welding. It does not take long to learn steel welding when you have got used to that. Good idea to borrow a book on welding from the library too.

Les

Les

As said..

MIG..relatively easy, if you can squeeze toothpaste out of a tube, you can MIG, also the easiest on positional, but has generally less penetration than stick, this is why it is suited to thinner metals such as car bodywork. Also good for dot&dab welding, ie, on/off/on/off....to prevent the weld pool blowing through the metal.

Another tip is to invest in a speedglass, you dont need worry about losing the postion of the torch when flipping the visor down

I was a welder for 8 years, apprentice trained. I used only MMA (Manual Metal Arc) for the first 4.5 years and all my weld test were with this. In my opinion producing a weld with full penetration is very easy. Getting a neat looking weld on the other hand requires a bit more care and skill - Bird **** looking welds not acceptable! When i started using MIG id had no previous experience or training, but its very easy to pick up. Once a MIG set is set up its plain sailing. When using thin material though you have to be very careful!

There is still alot of places do stick the likes of offshore do stick but its all coded stuff .You can weld rusty metal with mig well i have and have done cars in the past

last year i bought a cheap stick welder and i cut this exhaust pipe and tried to rejoin it :lol:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/10...10-05_0851.jpg

pretty crap LOL

anyway, i stuck at it and have got the hang of it now with a bit of advice, last thing i welded was a roller on the carwash track, this sits behind the cars front wheel and pulls the car through the wash.

never had any problems with it since and we have had big 4x4`s useing it which do give the conveyor and rollers a bit of jip

Not sure why everyone is dissing Stick welding...
It's very useful if you are in an open environment like a building site or a farmers field.
MIG is however the easiest form of welding to get a grip with and the best option for fabrication on cars (within a workshop).
As the saying goes "you can teach a monkey to MIG weld". :D

TIG is for when you're more proficient and want things to look sexy and as said is used for Stainless and Aluminum mainly. TIG is also very slow.

Gas welding... keep that for brazing when stuff gets really thin like fuel rail pipes etc..

What I was doing before working for Powerstation..... ;) ;) ;)
http://www.ashlyn.plus.com/work/bigweld.jpg
http://www.ashlyn.plus.com/work/longweld.jpg


Andy

I used to do similar work Fuzz, bit of under cut on your run off though ;)

crappy old machine without slope down current feature, makes it hard to finish off the pool nicely with 350 amps and a 3mm gap to fill. :D


Andy

we used to have a team of tig welders at one of the places i used work at, one old boy could weld virtually as fast as you could write,

my efforts ... ha more like target practice than welding,

to watch a professional do it is amazing, i take my hat off to them


mart

Owning a tig, mig, spot welder and having used gas.

I can say a pretty looking weld with a mig is easy, getting the penetration right and a strong weld that doesnt fall apart with a belt with a hammer and chisel is a different matter...

Undercutting is least of my worries on my welder :)

Ramp controls would be nice on the mig, really need to change to .8mm wire

As for my tig welding, Almost good on steel :D.. Ally plate? fook consistent on thin.. you get the heat in and the welds fly along, but keeping a consistent bead (width) is nigh on impossible....

Minty Buy the best mig you can afford Circa 130 - 150A, do not get a GASLESS welder, they arent bad, but they arent good... they spatter like fook.

As for starting out by making seat brackets.. dont even bother.. your going to need 5mm Plate and for a beginner I wouldnt recommend that as a test weld :)

David

To make a useful DIY welder I'd say slighty above Davids 130-150Amp, in my experience I'd say something around the 200amp would be ideal.
I think my DIY one is a SIP 180amp one (best DIY welder on the market in it's day, as voted by car mechanics magazine or something..)

Andy