Bench Top Welding Basics

All right, here's a neat little trick that will allow you to see. We have the helmet cam, camera's right down in the helmet and you can see the bead perfectly. And this is what we wanna talk about right now. We're gonna do the three main types of welds, a lap weld we're doing right here, we'll do the plug weld and the butt weld. What I want you to look at it, is see how I have my hand underneath the torch? It's very stable. You can see the torch is always the same distance away from the work allowing about 3/16 of wire to be burnt right here. And alls I'm doing now is on striking arc and pushing the bead. There it is a very nice, consistent weld. Let's talk about pushing the bead and welding in one direction right here. Now you can see what just a little push right there on the wire, pushing it. Now what I want you to do is just take your time and listen to the audio of this. And that'll give you a good idea of exactly what you're looking for in that bead right there. Now we're gonna do the plug weld. And this will be the weld that you're gonna replace butt weld with. The first thing I want you to notice is watch me start outside of the circle. Starts a little cold, then I bring it in and you can just see it licking the edges of it and finish up in the middle. Always starting outside, allowing the wire to come up to temperature then drop it right down in, bring it around, and close it right in the middle. This is a super structural weld. What this will do when you warm it up outside and bring it down in, is it will allow the base metal to come up to temperature and flow under the top metal. That's what it takes to get a good structural weld right there. Now we're gonna come down to the butt weld. I've already tacked the ends together and the two plates are just touching each other. The difference here is I have the torch a little further away from the work and very lightly pushing that bead. And normally what you do to get a good butt weld on the car, with any of these welds actually, is it will be three to four beads and then I cool down with compressed air. So watch it would be, one, two, three, now break out the air and cool it down, then start again. That way you keep the metal from warping up too much on you. The other thing to notice is, I only weld in one direction. And you can see the heat zone coming out of this. And that really controlled it, right about this part right here, before we cooled it down. and it didn't come all the way out on the metal. But this an exercise again for what? I want you to watch the wire. I want you to watch the bead and I want you to listen to it. This is all about the control. You're controlling the welder, it's not controlling you. Keep practicing, you're gonna get it.