Welding Tips and Tricks

I am in my last year at Silicon Valley Career Technical Education.
It is annoying to me how I need more than a week to become unrusty.
This is what I got in my first week after all the legal and safety test is done.
First weld back. The rest of the photos are at 110amps 1/8th 7018 on a v groove made from two of these blocks with a backing bar of 1/2" and v blocks are 2" thick. After having finished filling out the v block I did these three weld beads and annoyed with how things are coming back from summer break. I am grateful for your custructive criticism. You can also find my welds on Instagram at ryhno19.

Higher amps will flatten out your bead.

Poland308 wrote:Higher amps will flatten out your bead.

That also did "jump to my eyes" looking at the shape of the beads.

Seem to me 7028 run better with amps in the high range, but with a 'slow advance' as with triangle up, 80A did do well with 7018 2.5mm (and I had not to go too slow). thin steel, 6 mm , however

So may be it depends of the plate thickness too. Not systematically high amps, just avoiding a too fast cooling?

Well gentleman at school we only have 1/8" diameter arc rods classification number 6010, 6011, 6013 and 7018. Now these rods are all 1/8" diameter.

Rhyno21 wrote:Well gentleman at school we only have 1/8" diameter arc rods classification number 6010, 6011, 6013 and 7018. Now these rods are all 1/8" diameter.

You may want to ask advice but when making beads side to side the useful exercice is to cover the precedent bead by half.

You are reassuring me, I wear glasses and it is difficult to me to go straight vertically or sideways (more sideways in the end)

I have used chalk lines (they get covered by smoke soon in 3G) and guides (a piece of aluminum or copper not too far) to help and have a visual reference.
But the basics is to make the first weld along a side, now it is easier to have a straight line and that one serves all along the "padding" (when training 2 or 3 beads are not enough to have the gesture memorized I think)
Even and because of that vertical reference one slowly get aware of where and when he tend to go right/left.
Hope that helps