Welding Tips and Tricks

Howdy! This is my first visit to Welding Tips and Tricks. My buddy pulled some strings for me at his work and I'm getting a job with him MIG welding roll-off dumpsters and vac tanks. I got hired in as a non-welder. I went there once because his supervisor knew I've never welded before, he had my buddy teach me for a half hour and then seen what I could do on my own. We only welded T joints, horizontal and vertical. Apparently I have beginners luck. He said my horizontals were better than 50% of the guys there, and my verticals were the exact same as my buddys. Then without notice he wanted me to show him a lap joint weld and I bombed it... Lol. They're still giving me a chance though. I start in a week so I've been researching the f&#% out of everything mig welding related. My buddy hasn't given me much advice on anything. Are there any tips I should know before I start this job so I don't go in there and make myself look like a complete idiot? Like how often do I clean my tip out? Also I feel like everything I look up on how to mig weld won't work for this company. They have all the welders set on high heat and speed in order to increase production speed, so any technique i look up won't apply. With high heat and speed, how would I properly do an overhead weld without dripping molten metal all over me? Any other advice would be much appreciated, cuz I'm freaking out!!! Thanks.

Congrats on the job, and welcome to the forum!

I'm going to copy this to the MIG forum, where you'll get more answers.

Steve S

Do you have any pics of your welds??

Here's a link to a bunch of Jody's(our founder) Mig welding video's.
Look through them, Lots of good tips
http://welding-tv.com/category/mig-welding/

Overhead with Mig is'nt that difficult - usually just tweak the wire speed up very slightly from the setting used flat position - I would think any technique you pick up from watching Jody ( or Lanse or others ) should work - unless they have the machine set high enough to be in " spray transfer " - but it seems unlikely as this is generally not controllable or used outside of flat downhand position - good luck with the gig & welcome to the forum.

Welcome to the forum Tyler0656.

noddybrian wrote:Overhead with Mig is'nt that difficult - usually just tweak the wire speed up very slightly from the setting used flat position - I would think any technique you pick up from watching Jody ( or Lanse or others ) should work - unless they have the machine set high enough to be in " spray transfer " - but it seems unlikely as this is generally not controllable or used outside of flat downhand position - good luck with the gig & welcome to the forum.

Yep.

I up the wire speed (10% max), and push the weld about 15*. Dragging will give you dog-ticks in overhead; Pushing will prevent this.

Steve S

Thanks for the advice everyone! I'll be sure to post some pics of my first welds as soon as I start next week, so you guys can critique them and possibly give me some advice.