(as a pre note: this is coppied from another forum where i purposely took pics with unrelated gadgets and stuff in it to take the mick out of another member, so ignore them )

Thursday, for me was spent shopping, i had earnt a fair bit of money over the last 4 months working and with no outgoings i had near enough £1000. so i done what any 18 year old teenager would. i bought a dirty big welder with clamps and mask, and a dirty big angle grinder with spare grinding disks and cutting disk, result!

so, heres a few pics of my new toys





so i bought a lot of stuff and spent a lot of money. so what you ask am i going to do with all of this? well im keeping it a secret in case its a massive flop, so your gunna have to wait.

i then decided to set up my welder that evening and ran into a few problems with feeding it, so i asked in that and cerb and fraggs helped me fix it :good:



today, i thought i should have a little play around with it. so i drove down to a B&Q warehouse and picked up the only bits of steel they had, 2 metres of 1cmx1cm box section with a 1mm wall thickness. seriously?

thats all they had, which threw my idea out the window of building a nice stand for when i order in proper amounts of metal to keep it off the damp ground. damn.

so on the drive back i was thinking of something to make, something that i could try out all my equipment, not too hard, not too simple. a square !!

no, i decided however to make 2 frams where i can fix some plastic sheet or heat proof fabric of some sort to act as a spark shield for when i weld other stuff. so i cut out my metal into 20cm (inside length) sections so make a square where i can then fix some form of material in the middle. here are the pics of what i done.









this is my first ever set of welds with this machine, and second ever time welding, i played around with the settings after blowing threw about 5 million times and eventually do to a stage where i was making strong-ish welds.

i grinded down the edges of them to see how they actually welded and how it was doing and it looks pretty good to me, it may not look pretty but try as hard as i could i could not brake it apart, tomorrow im gunna try standing on the finished square to see if it can take my weight.

so thats my last 2 days, i would have liked to have done more but i took so long setting up and figuring out how to cut it i didn't actually have a lot of time... and now my back hurts.

also bare in mind that it was welded outside in my garden without a proper workbench and using gasless welding wire which splatters a lot and is naturally un-neat. so current MIG welders, what do you think?

chris

I can honestly say, without fear of contradiction, I've never seen anything like it.




Cheers,
Paul G

for pratice it is better to learn to weld two plates of over lapping steel togeather first, about 2mm thick till you get an idea of how to handle the welder. Once you have got that good, do a butt joint weld with the plate till you are not making holes and the welds are good. Then you should be ok at doing the tube.

I use gasless wire too and yes it isn't as clean a weld as gas but if it is splattering alot then turn the wirespeed down a bit till it is just loudly fizzing. Do make sure you chamfer the ends of the tube properly so the weld starts at the deepest part of the joint and fills out rather than the weld just sitting on the surface.

more pratice needed but keep going

that weld in the corner has too high a wirespeed and not enough heat which is why it is not smooth, the weld has built up on it's self

Welding does take some time to master



[Edited on 25/2/11 by Mr Whippy]

I would say, get some mig mix gas, some 0.6mm wire, some scrap and some practice.....

aim for this kind of result which you can do with you welding set, with practice

ok its not the cleanest weld but it was my first, in a windy garden with a welder i have never used before...

its only 1mm thick metal and a very small area to actually weld, im not blowing through anymore, and it looks worse than it is because i accidentally pressed the trigger whilst bringing it back across, making those balls on top of the weld.

it is very strong though, i cant seem to brake them apart no matter how hard i try, and all i really care about is the strength of the weld, not how pretty it looks...

anyway thanks for the feedback, will weld the rest tomorrow if the weathers nice, and i have a friend going to pick up some scrap metal from his work for some more practice, this is all i have at the moment and really wanted to star today, i know its not the best thing to start with...

the "in the garden and windy" seems to be your problem. The argon shrouding the weld is getting blown away which is why you haven't got a weld like Whippy's.

hi there, as said, all i done was got scarp steel, cleaned it downed and welded and welded, until it got better. still not the best but, good enough.

"Thursday, for me was spent shopping, i had earnt a fair bit of money over the last 4 months working and with no outgoings i had near enough £1000. so i done what any 18 year old teenager would. i bought a dirty big welder with clamps and mask, and a dirty big angle grinder with spare grinding disks and cutting disk, result! "

that sounds like something i would do.lol

cheers

stu

You have bought some nice kit

As a former welding tutor, I wouldn't dream of taking the mick out of your first efforts ( seen worse first time attemps )

My best advice, grab youself some thickish sheet metal scraps & spend a good while learning to run a contant weld bead along it.

You don't even need to try to join pieces together for starters, it'll only lead to dissapointment

Once you get the hang of your welders settings & are able to rum a nice tidy bead on a pice of sheet metal your in business & are ready to start joining stuff together

At least you are willing to give it a fair crack & I wish you well with you endeavours.

That's more than can be said about either of my 2 lads .... More kit here than you could ever need & not the slightest interest.

[Edited on 25/2/11 by bonzoronnie]

quote:

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Originally posted by bonzoronnie
You have bought some nice kit

That's more than can be said about either of my 2 lads .... More kit here than you could ever need & not the slightest interest.

[Edited on 25/2/11 by bonzoronnie]

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i can safely say that's not a good enough standard to build a car yet! but don't be disheartened because it wont take you long to learn. As ronnie says forget trying to join things together and just try and do some nice straight runs on flat pieces of metal. if you haven't already signed up to the forum on www.mig-welding.co.uk I would strongly suggest it. they have some excellent getting started guides and loads of professional welders to help you out.

good attempt keep it up! learning with gasless wire will always be difficult as the process is much more violent. if you can get some gas and normal wire, as it will make learning 10 times easier. as you say appearance is not everything but without meaning to be horrible or harsh your not quite there yet.

do loads of straight flat lines with different settings then post a picture up

by the look of that weld, i would say that it is a gas-less welder that you are using? using a shield gas will make the weld process easier, and neater. i dont think ive ever seen a nice weld from a gas-less unit

quote:

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Originally posted by Davey D
by the look of that weld, i would say that it is a gas-less welder that you are using? using a shield gas will make the weld process easier, and neater. i dont think ive ever seen a nice weld from a gas-less unit

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