Welding Tips and Tricks

Here is a couple of picture for the latest project that we did in the welding program I'm enrolled in. Its a Tee joint with one side Horizontal in the 2F position and the other side in the 3F position. The bottom side of the joint is my Horizontal 2F and the top side is the 3F Vertical up. We did 6010 roots with 7018 filler passes just to get used to building up a weld joint. Just finished the 1st semester with great results. More updates to come!

Good solid metal there. But the way the beads are crowning up and not quite blending into each other suggests not hot enough and or to fast of a travel. Good effort for starting out though.

looks really good to me. where are you in school at? my son starts a 9 month class at hobart in less than 2 weeks. i am sooooo jealous of his opportunity. - mark

A tad more amperage, and slower travel speed, should help the beads smooth out and wet-in to each other better.

The bottom weld in the second pic looks really good.

wow that's a lot of filler....good job.

It would be fun to cut that sucker and etch it with a proper chemical that would show all the runs. Phosphoric acid does it I think.

weldin mike 27 wrote:It would be fun to cut that sucker and etch it with a proper chemical that would show all the runs. Phosphoric acid does it I think.

You can cut and etch with acid from a car battery....I use red fuming nitric acid(much quicker)
The better you can polish the section, the better you will be able to see and count the passes once the acid does it's job.

Not exactly home level product then. I got my NDT guy at work to do a 50x50 square bar butt weld I welded back in the day. Came up a treat.

After years of being hard to find or banned here you can find conc nitric suitable for etching in quantities from 1/2 liter upwards on Ebay - ( the good folks at Ebay found a loophole in the description - you need to buy / search for " gold testing kit " ! ) not even that bad a price for how much you use just etching pieces.

noddybrian wrote:After years of being hard to find or banned here you can find conc nitric suitable for etching in quantities from 1/2 liter upwards on Ebay - ( the good folks at Ebay found a loophole in the description - you need to buy / search for " gold testing kit " ! ) not even that bad a price for how much you use just etching pieces.

yup, you don't need much...a few drops to cover the area of inspection and it works in a matter of about a minute and then you'll see each pass and the HAZ start to develop...run to the water fountain and rinse quickly or have a bottle of water to sufficiently rinse the sample...quickly air dry with compressed air and spray with a clear lacquer to preserve the etching...if you don't coat the bare etching, it will rust beyond recognition in a matter of minutes.
I have a small bottle that holds maybe an ounce...it has lasted me for several years worth of etching. I used it for training new welders and showing them that even if someone doesn't see them place every pass, they can still tell what went on within that weld. LOL