If you need to improve your TIG welding skills, take a look at the newest of the Ron Covell’s videos, Advanced TIG Welding with Ron Covell.

Jim Watson (my boss) over at Arc-Zone tells me that he learned a trick or two from Ron Covell, and Jim himself is a master fabricator!

And for women welders, it’s even more important to stay on top of your game.  The advice I’ve gotten most often from women on how to fit in or get along on a job site or in a weld shop is to make sure you’re always improving your skill set. (actually that’s true in any career!)  And make sure you know what you’re doing.

Go ahead and take a look at the list of Tips for Women in the Welding Industry, and be sure to let me know what YOU think…

What advice would you give a woman starting out?

How do you work on improving your welding and metal fabrication skills?

There is a new welding process, recently developed in Europe, that is said to not only improve welds but also lower the skill required to make them.  It uses a “manual and automated GTAW wire feed control combined with a hot-wire power source” that improves the wire feed, weld pool, and weld deposition and decreases gas consumption.

Enhancing the GTAW process

By Ed Craig, Contributing Writer
September 15, 2009

Gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW or TIG), a popular process for high-quality manual welding, has its limitations and requires highly skilled operators. A process used in Europe addresses those limitations, enhances productivity and weld quality, and reduces the skill level required to GTAW.

For at least six decades, traditional gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW or TIG) has been considered the process of choice for attaining high-quality welds in any metal application. However, this process has certain drawbacks, such as the weld energy limitation influenced by the weld pool dynamics and typically slow manual wire feed rates. Manual GTAW requires highly skilled operators who possess the dexterity necessary to feed the wire. Manual GTAW techniques vary, and the weld-wire-to-arc and weld puddle placement are inconsistent.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

I hate to admit it but I don’t know how to weld. Sure, I know a lot about welding, the various processes, the equipment you need–  especially the high performance TIG welding accessories at Arc-Zone.com.  I even know a bit about plasma arc welding and cutting. But ’til now it’s all been book learnin’ and talking to a lot of knowledgeable people.

Finally I got a short one-on-one lesson in TIG Welding from Arc-Zone’s own Joe Welder (aka my boss, Jim Watson).  Wow. What an eye opener that was! 

 And fun.

First off, let me assure you, that contrary to popular belief, Welding is NOT for dummies.  You have to keep a lot of things in mind. And if you want to be any good, you’ll have to understand about electricity, metallurgy, a little geometry, joint fit up, and then there’s the hand-eye coordination that takes practice. And more practice.

Safety First.

Even though with TIG welding you don’t see sparks flying, you still need eye protection. We did not have one of the super slick fancy electronic welding helmets in stock so I had to go old skool and flip my lid up and down.  

At least the helmet looked good– the orange flames matched my long-sleeved  cotton t-shirt perfectly.

And check out these gloves. They’re the Firefly TIG Gloves made for women who weld, which means the sizing is smaller.  I was suprised at how well I could maneuver the TIG Torch and the filler rod.

Here’s Jim showing me the proper way to hold the TIG torch.  It’s heavier than it looks,  and this was a WP-20 water cooled TIG torch.  Though the torch body  itself only weighs 3 oz. you’ve got to take into consideration the weight of the cables and hoses which makes it a little awkward and it feels heavier than it really is.  Because this is delicate work, you’re using all those tiny muscles in your hand, wrist and forearm.  Of course I’m a bit of a wimp, I’ll admit it.

I let Jim set up the machine.  This is a basic Miller Machine upgraded with a Cool Kit so we can use the water cooled TIG Torch.  

First he opened up the Argon bottle-  slowly so as not to “shock” the flow meter.  

Next he plugged in the water cooler. It was a little noisy, but not too bad.  Kinda comforting to hear the hum and gurgle since the welding machine itself was so quiet.

Then he checked that the work cable was grounded to the work bench…  

Jim got me a coupon to practice on, 308L Stainless Steel, and some 1/16″ diameter  308L Stainless steel rod.  We cleaned the material with EZ Wipes to make sure there was nothing to contaminate the weld and mess it up (I figured I could do that all by myself without any help from dirt).  

Jim turned the machine to Electrode negative 150 amps, and I was ready to roll!

NEXT POST:  See the results…..

Have you put Learn To Weld on the top of your New Year’s Resolutions List? (I have, but that’s another story). If you are in the Boston area,  check out the Museum of Fine Arts welding class:

Learn multiple forms of welding including Stick, MIG, and TIG, and explore cutting techniques such as flame and plasma to create unique works of art in steel. Various finishing methods are also utilized.

The eight-week session and limited class size should get you up to speed in no time!

I was invited to guest blog over on the Miller Viewpoints blog…  while I appreciated the opportunity, and am truly honored that they asked, I have to say it was a little different blogging through a corporate machine.  First off, they wanted 250 words.  Two hundred-fifty words?  Are you kidding me?  that just gets me started! “The 250 words is just a rough guide,” they assured me.

So, I turned in my 876 word piece, Weld Like A Girl: Tips for Women in the Welding Industry. And waited.

Five days later, word came back. “Because it’s longer than we typically use for a single post, we’re going to make it into a series…” said my Miller contact.

Sounded fine with me.  I was proud of what I wrote, and three posts is better than one!

And so I waited some more as the edits, the approvals, and the blog post itself wended its way up the corporate chain of command. Word finally came back a week and a half later, “….they would only approve uploading the first topic, covering ‘Knowledge is Queen’”

[sigh]
(more…)

Cleveland – The James F. Lincoln Arc Welding Foundation’s newest book, Arc Welded Projects, Volume IV, features step-by-step directions for fun projects targeted at the home hobbyist and do-it-yourself welder. Projects range from a gas-fired cooker trailer, to a stainless steel pickup sander, to a Dutch miser wood stove – and all were created by welding students as entries for the foundation’s annual awards programs.

Arc Welded Projects, Volume IV is divided into five categories, including:

– Agriculture – featuring projects such as hydraulic trench digger, chisel plow and hay bale    squeezer

– Trailers – featuring projects such as 24-foot gooseneck trailer, single axle van trailer and off-road monster grill-bbq

(more…)

According to the American Welding Society, there is a potential shortage of 200,000 skilled welders by 2010:

From the Welding Shortage Fact Sheet: The United States is in the midst of a welder shortage that is expected to intensify as baby boomers age and the need for skilled labor grows. Studies show that there are more than 500,000 welders employed in the U.S. And the need for these skilled workers is only getting stronger as virtually all construction and manufacturing companies require some form of welding, from the production of assemblies to maintenance and repair. But finding a highly skilled and experienced welder is no easy task. Skilled welders are in short supply and the situation is only getting worse. According to AWS and other industry research (1), the average age of a welder is in the mid-fifties, with many approaching 60 years old. It is estimated that more than half of the industry’s highly trained workforce is nearing retirement, creating a potential shortage of more than 200,000 skilled welders by 2010.–continue reading about the welder shortage–>

I’ve written about it before on this blog. It is part of what inspired me to begin the New Rosies series, which will hopefully inspire some young women to go into welding as a career. But how do you get into welding as a career? How do you get the really high paying welding jobs?

I recommend starting with professional training. There are a lot of low cost programs out there that will at the very least get you started. Check out my earlier post on How to find a Welding School.

Welding is far more complex than many people realize. A good welder needs to know about metalurgy, geometry, electricity AND have good eye/hand coordination to actually lay down some beads.

Look for a school that offers an open enrollment program so you can practice, practice, practice. One of the benefits of an open enrollment program like the Simi Valley Career Institute (we featured welding instructor Tony Marsden over on JoeWelder.com earlier this month) is that students can learn at their own pace and the classroom serves as a workshop. Beginners can learn, or they can improve their skills– learning to weld titanium or Inconel, or getting a pressure vessel pipe certification– which means additional money!

How did you learn to weld? How did you get your first welding job? What advice would you give anyone interested in joining the industry? First five to leave a comment (who aren’t related to me or Arc-Zone.com) will get a free t-shirt!

Another great tip from Weldcraft®

Avoid porosity by maintaining tight TIG torch fittings and cable connections, using higher gas flow rates, shielding the weld area from wind and cleaning your base metal.

Joe Welder™ usually recommends a gas lens too:

One of the best improvements you can make to the performance of your torch is to replace the standard collet body with a gas lens collet body. A gas lens version is an enhanced collet body constructed of a series of concentric, layered screens of varying mesh engineered to improve shield gas coverage. The screens generate a laminar gas flow, optimizing the weld zone coverage and eliminating turbulence, which can draw in contaminants from the surrounding air. It’s especially beneficial with stainless steel and materials such as aluminum and titanium, which are particularly sensitive to oxygen contamination.

A gas lens also allows the tungsten electrode to extend beyond the end of the TIG/GTAW nozzle by as much as 1 in. for improved visibility, reducing tungsten inclusions and weld defects.

More tips available at www.JoeWelder.com

Another great tip from Weldcraft®

For excellent arc starts on low-amperage AC or DC applications, use 2% ceriated tungsten (color code: orange) especially on carbon and stainless steels.

For consistent performance on all metals, and for all machines, Arc-Zone.com recommends our new ArcTime™ Hybrid All Purpose Tungsten:

Professional yacht tower fabricators, manufacturers of aerospace parts, and mountain bike builders have all selected ArcTime™ because of its excellent ignition properties, low burn off rate and longevity. As an added bonus, this hybrid tungsten electrode works well with all power sources and all metals from mild steel to titanium.

“You’ll notice a difference just by striking the first arc– no finer electrode exists anywhere,” says Jim Watson, aka Joe Welder, president of Arc-Zone.com, Inc.

Arc-Zone.com has partnered with Master Fabricator Ron Covell to bring you some terrific DVDs on How To Weld. Ron himself worked with us to select the premium DVDs he felt would best serve our customers:

• Basic Techniques for Working with Steel
• Chopping and Sectioning
• Hammerforming Techniques
• MIG Welding Made Easy
• TIG Welding Basics and
• Working with Tubing

These DVDs should get you well on your way to Weld Like A PRO™!