Clearly this is a good thing, and much improved on the shoes and handbags that normally seem to materialise in the house (those are not for me!)
(Could even be to even up the score with regard to shoe/hanbag proliferation)

However there is a problem

It is an aldi special (that's not the problem!)
Every time we went to aldi over the last few weeks I commented on the fact they sold such a thing and that I might buy it
Really in a blokey type if way - the sort of thing a man should have in the garage

Unfortunatly I have no idea how to weld!
I won't be making anything safety critical (chassis for example) but am i going to find this is something you can't self teach yourself and cause my self hideous injury, and admit it probably should be returned to the shop?
Or do I man up and start welding anything that seems remotely metallic?

D

ARC welding is really only suitable for heavier gauge metal. It's possible to weld thinner stuff, but it requires a lot of skill and a really good welding machine. The only way you will find out how to weld is with a basic grasp of the theory and stacks of practice. Get as much scrap as you can, bits of angle iron etc and lots of welding rods and practice gluing them together.

Obviously ensure you use a suitable welding mask and cover up all exposed skin, you can get bad sun burn surprisingly quickly from welding.

I made my locost with an arc welder, whish i still had it, as it was 10 times more reliable than my mig!

Have a read through http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/arc-tutorial.htm
Plenty of good sound advice in there
Theres also a forum if you feel you need pointers not covered in the tutorials

Get out there and get sticking metal's together using mini lightning...
(arc eye is deffo one to be avoided so no shortcuts on the mask front)

I found the hand held ones a pain - the flip down ones less so - the auto ones however are brilliant and well worth the extra money as you can leave it down whilst dealing with the slag/pingers

Regards
Rob

quote:

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Originally posted by robocog
the auto ones however are brilliant and well worth the extra money as you can leave it down whilst dealing with the slag/pingers

Regards
Rob

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Go and buy a DECENT helmet / mask.
The crappy one that came with the set will be a hindrance.

I have a flip down mask and its better than a hand held shield.
HH shield limits the use down to one hand.

Last week, I was welding up a some brackets on a trailer, and needed a mate to help me due to weight and marking out etc.
He came with a Auto Dimming mask. WOW!!!! What a difference. You can see where you are (tip wise to the workpiece etc) and it makes a lot of difference in how my welds turned out. I will be getting one soon.

Please PLEASE take care of your eyes. You only get one set, so DONT take any chances with crappy or cheapo shields.
Buy something decent and of good quality.
You can grind out and re-weld something, but you cant easily get a new set of eyes.

Also buy an Angle grinder... You will need one

At the end of the day, Keep your welding rods very dry, and your eyes well protected.
Also cover up ALL exposed skin. As you sone want severe sunburn. Ive been there several times, especially around the neck and throat area due to not having my shirt / coat buttoned up.

I use cheap leather garden gauntlets. The seem to work well for me.

Other than that its LOTS of practice.
Check Youtube etc for tips.

AND YOU DIDN'T ASK WHY?

An auto darkening mask is indeed a god sent, you can get one for £50 all day long from places like weldequip.

I splashed out on a posh inverter mig because its light and takes a lot of skill out of the job, however my housemate at uni did a lot of work with a aldi spec arc welder and while I usually just stick the electrode to the workpeice I would love to learn how to arc weld, much more suited to general jobbing work than a mig as there tolerance of dirty steel is much better.



Daniel

You will also need some safety glasses to go with the angle grinder, only £3, but most welding masks wont take a disk-burst should the worst happen.

This sort of thing image linky


Daniel

[Edited on 20/4/2013 by dhutch]

I was lucky as my dad is a coded welder so he was teaching me at 10yo hoping I would follow in his footsteps. It's good to have someone to show you the basics...mainly demonstrating setting the machine voltage to the material and listening for the right / wrong noises, but after that its down to you and plenty of scrap to practice with.

The thing that comes with experience when arc welding is being consistently good at it....i.e one day you'll be doing great and the next day for no apparent reason you'll be rubbish. After 20 years I still have my rubbish days!

Keep your welding rods in a warm place in the house so that they don't pick up moisture.

As everyone has already said, don't skimp on the face mask...this is the most important thing...,and watch out for sun burn...this creeps up on you without you realising until the next day!! And it's bl00dy painful.

imo if you learn and get good at arc welding....then moving onto mig welding is a peice of pi55....but it doesn't work the other wy around!

Oh yeah, and you must also protect your eyes with glasses when knocking the hot slag off the welded! I know this one from bad experience

Easy way to learn how to weld -
See if your local Tech College do an evening basic welding course.
I did this some time ago. You learn the basics of gas, arc, mig and tig all for £60. Ten, two hour sessions. It was great. I just did gas and mig, as that was all I was interested in at the time.
Then go home and practice, practice, practice, on any bits of scrap you can lay your hands on.
I'm now considering going back this year, if they do it again, for some tig lessons.

We learnt arc welding by making some car ramps- still using the 35 years later, if only I'd thought of msaking them a bit longer! Main thing was lots of little short welds which added up to something useful!
Funny things women and their gifts as while I was learning to weld girl friend boiught me a grease gun! Stoll got that as well!

quote:

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Originally posted by RK
AND YOU DIDN'T ASK WHY?

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I'm afraid to say the Aldi welder is no good, especially for learning with.

The duty cycle is really low and struggles on anything over light bodywork gauge.

Only thing its any good for is a large scale (chassis) electrolysis session...

I've got a very old clarke arc welder - nothing fancy just a buzz box like yours - I have built some pretty cool stuff with it, and its so much easier than MIG and TIG.

Grab a set of gaunlets, an auto dimming mask, and then head round to your local metal stockholder and ask for any 2mm scrap they have to practice arc welding on.

Anything much thinner than 2mm and its easy to blow a hole if you get it wrong, but I have done thinner with...OK success.

Get some decent rods, I bought a pack of murex rods and I'm not even half way through them and they still work great if kept dry.

Dont worry about duty cycle - you wont be welding for long periods when you are learning, and when you are welding anything important once you are happy you will be busy checking everything and setting it up spot on to have the machine working for anything more than a minute or two at a time.

Book: Performance Welding by Richard Finch ISBN 0-7603-0393-2

or Welders Handbook by Richard Finch specifically covers Arc welding ISBN 1-55788-264-9

Both available from Amazon

or just get stuck in about it. I started on Stick/Arc/MMA but migrated to MIG as it takes much less skill for the intermittent welder. I even progressed to MIG alloy welding. My TIG welding needs work esp in stainless although I have had my successful moments.

A good arc welder can be every bit as good as a mig but a poor one is very hard to use and you will quickly loose interest.
Get a refund and buy a cheap mig welder. Far more use for a novice.

Thanks for all the feedback!

I was obviously aware of eye protection, and had noted a shield was included, but after all the comments, I'm slighlty more paranoid!

Think it'll go back to the shop, followed by a course, then purchase something I actually have some idea about

D

Man up and start welding Dave.

If you want to bring it north with a bit of scrap, I'll spend a couple of hours with you to get you started.

Rob

Have a go, although you will get frustrated with the welding rod sticking to the job....

Get someone who has done a bit to guide you though....otherwise you will get annoyed!

Bring it over to Whitby and I'll show you how to make sunburn.

It's really not that bad. I have an aldi one and as a novice it does me fine for what I want / need it for. Just get some scrap and start laying some lines!