Jump to content
  • GUESTS

    If you want access to members only forums on HSO, you will gain access only when you Sign-in or Sign-Up .

    This box will disappear once you are signed in as a member. ?

Any welders out there???


hondarider550

Recommended Posts

Since I'm a welding instructor at a community college I thought that I would put a thread on here asking a couple questions...

Are any of you welders?

What type of process or processes are your favorite?

And what type of equipment do you have or wish to have?

Just thought this might be interesting for us "welding savy" people...

My answer to these questions are...

Are any of you welders? Yes... I am a welding instructor

What type of process or processes are your favorite? Tig welding is my favorite since it is a very precise high quality welding process that takes a skill of eye and hand coordination. I do a demonstration of welding pop cans together when I demonstrate the process... Although MIG and SMAW are also favorites too...

And what type of equipment do you have or wish to have? I own a Lincoln PrecisionTIG 185, Miller Millermatic 250 wire welder, Lincoln AC 225 Stick, Lincoln Invertec 155 stick and tig, Lincoln Portable 250 amp portable, ThermoArc Plasma cutter and an Old Lincoln DC portable that needs to be played with sooner or later....

Of course working at the community college I have alot of access to many different machines as well ranging from Miller to Lincoln to Thermo Dynamics...

If you have any questions on any of these machines just let me know....

I look forward to hearing about your experiences and machines....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Hondarider,

Cool post, I'm a shop teacher in Grand Marais. We have a small school so I'm kind of "jack of all" but welding is one my favorite classes to teach.

We have 4 arcs, 3 wirefeed for steel and spool gun set up for aluminum/stainless. We also have a plasma cutter and 3 oxy/acet set ups. Most of our equipment is Firepower and we have one Miller wirefeed. I'd have to say arc is my favorite teach because it takes some time to master but I use the wirefeed on most of my projects. I'm new at teaching and am always looking for ideas, so far I have the kids do arcwelding w/ 4"x4" weldpads/coupons until they have it covered with acceptable beads, after that they build a snowmobile stand w/ arc and then they graduate to wirefeed. I love the wirefeed for ease of use but think if kids just learned that first they would never have the patience to arc weld. We also make a 3"x3"x3" cube using the oxyacetylene torch without filler rod, the cube has to float in water to pass. Most of these projects as well as safety, theory and sheet metal funnels and toolboxes take up first semester then I let them build what they want as long as they draw up a decent plan. Most of our metal is donations and scrap so we get pretty creative with our resources; bedframes, boiler pipes, old trailers and old propane tanks.

So far this year we've made bbq grills,firebowls, portage wheels, atv racks, winchmounts, bumpers, snomobile dollies, automatic firewood bundlers, skis for atv and dirtbikes, carts, tables and workbenches, trailer repair,soccer nets.

I'd like to get into heattreating, casting and forgework next. Never enough time, money and space but it's fun getting creative, and I think that's what welders do best.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Product development tech. for large outdoor power company. Get to work on TIG, MIG, Plasma. Best part of job is we build our own fixtures with our own design. Just got done building 5 tradeshow stands for our 3000lb lawn aerators!!!! cool

Would love to find a job outside of the metro area so.... wink

Link to comment
Share on other sites

up till 2 years ago i had 17 different certs in welding. new job i dont weld much. my certs were for the most part in stainless steel. the 308s, 316s inconel hasteloy al6xn 317l duplex. most in the tig and mig process. kinda miss the welding part.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like to get in the shop and weld and Fab things up, Ive made some treestands, trailers, and various other things. Ive got some ideas for summer projects, I want to fab up a custom bumper for my truck, and not some redneck gate looking thing slapped on the truck, hopefully it will be something like this. epstruck_0040.jpg

I would like to get better at TIG welding, and I would say that my favorite process is Mig for ease of use. Tools I wish I had are a Plasma cutter and a Pipe bender.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey I have a question this is kinda off the subject but I was wondering how hard it is to aluminum weld. I am planning on making a fish house next fall and would like to make it mostly alumium. I did some aluminum welding back in high school with a wire feed but only did a couple welds so didnt get much practice. Would it even be worth it for a rookie to try and do an all aluminum house or would i be wasting my time? And what would be a good wire feed to get I would like one that i can change over from steel to aluminum?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know the cost will be alot more than using steel but im looking at making a pretty good sized one and would like to keep the weight down as much as I can. I also dont want to deal with painting steel and trying to keep it from rusting. Im not real sure what your talking about the steel/aluminum studs, what exctly is that? Are you just talking about an aluminum alloy or is it something completely different?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Hondarider,

Cool post, I'm a shop teacher in Grand Marais. We have a small school so I'm kind of "jack of all" but welding is one my favorite classes to teach.

We have 4 arcs, 3 wirefeed for steel and spool gun set up for aluminum/stainless. We also have a plasma cutter and 3 oxy/acet set ups. Most of our equipment is Firepower and we have one Miller wirefeed. I'd have to say arc is my favorite teach because it takes some time to master but I use the wirefeed on most of my projects. I'm new at teaching and am always looking for ideas, so far I have the kids do arcwelding w/ 4"x4" weldpads/coupons until they have it covered with acceptable beads, after that they build a snowmobile stand w/ arc and then they graduate to wirefeed. I love the wirefeed for ease of use but think if kids just learned that first they would never have the patience to arc weld. We also make a 3"x3"x3" cube using the oxyacetylene torch without filler rod, the cube has to float in water to pass. Most of these projects as well as safety, theory and sheet metal funnels and toolboxes take up first semester then I let them build what they want as long as they draw up a decent plan. Most of our metal is donations and scrap so we get pretty creative with our resources; bedframes, boiler pipes, old trailers and old propane tanks.

So far this year we've made bbq grills,firebowls, portage wheels, atv racks, winchmounts, bumpers, snomobile dollies, automatic firewood bundlers, skis for atv and dirtbikes, carts, tables and workbenches, trailer repair,soccer nets.

I'd like to get into heattreating, casting and forgework next. Never enough time, money and space but it's fun getting creative, and I think that's what welders do best.

Hi Redhooks,I think that your ideas for projects are fantastic. An instructor needs to have some tricks up his/her sleeve to keep the students motivated... I use the 4x4 buildup pad to teach repetitive weld beads as well as building up worn parts. I tell the students that the buildup process can be used to buildup worn parts and then cut down to size to make the worn parts like new. We do alot of projects in our shop as well. Trailers, repair projects, cattle chute, snow groomer, bridges for the golf course, and etc. are used to keep these guys motivated...

Every year we have competitions to decide who goes on to state competition. In the past 3- 4 years I have had winners at state that qualify to compete in Kansas City for National competition. I had one winner the other year that qualified to compete for the international spot but missed the second round by one or two places...

Newest piece of equipment is our robotic cell that is made just for training centers like ours. It is portable so we can take it to other schools and shows for demonstrations as well.

It would be great to get in contact some time and compare notes... Email me sometime at [email protected] and we can see if we can bounce some ideas off of each other... smile

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks Hondarider will do, I always like talking shop as well as fishing.

Buckhunter we have a firepower wirefeed with an aluminum spool gun,it can weld both and it works ok for aluminum but as mentioned before cost and cleaning would be alot to deal with, lightweight steel tubing/studs would be much easier on the wallet and for welding. I have heard of guys welding a lightweight frame and covering it with canvas/airplane skin/lightweight siding and then spraying the inside walls with spray insulation for strength/structure. I haven't seen it personally but sounds light and warm and might be a sweet idea for a wheelhouse. I did a quick search and found some stuff about aluminum houses and a previous thread on FM about them sweating at the fastening points. I'm interested in hearing about more because I'm thinking about something along those lines. A couple years ago we put a kenworth sleeper cab on a wheelhouse frame and it made for a sweet 2 man sleeper. Keep the questions rollin and keep us posted.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I dont mind spending more for the aluminum, I figure if I can do just the frame for under $2500 then I can probably finish it for under $5000, or am I way off on the price of aluminum? I think $5000 for a nice sleeper house you can pull 70 down the road is alot better than paying $15000 for basically the same house from a big manufacturer. How much cheaper would steel be than aluminum? I think its about half as much but not sure. Another thing i was thinking was how beefed up would I have to make the frame to make sure it doesnt break on me? I was thinking 2" by 4" rectangle tubing for the main part of the frame if I make it 8' by 16' or so. Thanks for the input guys!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm new at welding wheelhouses and only have 2 steel frames under my belt so hopefully Hondarider or someone else w/ more experience can add to this. I'm not exactly sure sure how hefty of material it needs to be for aluminum so I try to err on the side of caution and make eveything bombproof. As far as strength, that questions is probably left best for an engineer or someone who has built an aluminum frame house. Soderblooms was making aluminum wheelhouses but didn't this year, might be worth a call for some info on what they they used and why they didn't make any this year. Ryerson makes a stock list book that lists the availible lengths, dimensions, strutural strengths and weight for just about every kind of metal you can imagine. Prices change often and metal sells by the pound so you'll probably have to sketch out a plan and figure out what lengths you want and possibly how much weight to get an idea of cost. There is probably a local metal dealer that can run the numbers if you have a rough estimate of what you need to build your house. It all starts w/ a plan and I'm not into reinventing the wheel so I'd probably look for an existing design that has proven to work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ive been welding for 30 yrs and love to weld anything that is meatal aluminum steel. have plasma's mig welders arc welder and tig welders. also have done quite a few wheelhouse frames and from now on its full rotating axcels that I will build they travel so much nicer and pull awsome not to say that the independant sided ones dont the last one that I built travels really nice at high speeds and it tracks perfect. the only things I don't like about aluminum is the oxidation and the vibration that you get out of it. vibration kills aluminum and have fixed many aluminum sled trailers and the all seem to be broke, cracked or fixed in the same spots. where anything like axeles or spring perchs are bolted to the aluminum. I'm not saying that there bad just my opinion that they arnt as tough as steel but the weight sure is convinent.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What is a good wire feed to buy? Would I be wasting my money with a cheaper 300-400 dollar one or are there good kinds out there that arent very expensive. I wont be doing a lot of welding so it doesnt need to be anything real fancy but it seems every year I have something that i need welded and have to take in, so Im buying one this year whether or not a build a fish house.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I bought a Lincoln 180 mig last fall. I'm very impressed how well this small package performs. I had a couple cheaper ones before and found out the hard way you definatly get what you pay for with these machines. The thing that sold me on the Lincoln is all the consusumables are Tweco. I have no problem finding these parts when I need them. I found it online new in box for close to half the price on the shelf. It runs smooth and steady with .023, .035 solid wire and .045 flux core. It's small enough that it don't take up tons of space in my garage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am a welder also been welding alum. for 14 years at work building fire trucks but I have been welding off and on for 35 years I love to tig weld I also mig, stick,and gas weld I have two mig welders a millermatic 250 and I added a HTP spool gun on this welder ,a century 110 amp ,two stick welders oxie propane torch and HTP 625 plasma cutter I would love to get a tig for at home but I do get to weld with a lincon tig at work a lot

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I bought a Lincoln 180 mig last fall. I'm very impressed how well this small package performs. I had a couple cheaper ones before and found out the hard way you definatly get what you pay for with these machines. The thing that sold me on the Lincoln is all the consusumables are Tweco. I have no problem finding these parts when I need them. I found it online new in box for close to half the price on the shelf. It runs smooth and steady with .023, .035 solid wire and .045 flux core. It's small enough that it don't take up tons of space in my garage.

I would agree with what you said "you get what you pay for". My Lincoln 135T MIG welder is a prime example. I had a huge job of welding gating for a hog building for one of my customers some years ago. The machine is only rated 30% duty cycle at 90 amps. I would weld about 1/3 of the gate then the machine would quit working. All that would happen is that the cooling fan would run. About 7 - 10 minutes later I finally could weld again... Prime example of paying attention to duty cycle of a welder. For those that don't know duty cycle is the number of minutes that you can weld with a machine without cooling out of a 10 minute period of time. A machine that has a duty cycle of 30% at 90 amps means that you can only weld with the machine for 3 minutes out of every 10 minutes average time. So a machine with 60% duty cycle at 250 amps will have 6 minutes of "arc on" time and only 4 minutes of "arc off" time. If you run that machine at a higher amperage the duty cycle will decrease. If you run that machine at a lower amperage you will have a higher duty cycle. So for that 60% machine at 250 you may have as much as 100% duty cycle at 125 amps. Of course that goes with price as well... Usually the higher priced machines will have a higher duty cycle...

Anyway, this is something that I present to all of my students when introducing them to the basic welding machine. Something for them to remember when the want to purchase a machine of their own. One of my students purchased a small 110v MIG welder and tried welding alot of 1/2" steel with that machine. He could weld just a short time before being too hot. We figured it out and at the amperage that he was running he was only getting about 8% duty cycle... He could only weld 8/10ths of a minute with the remaining 9.2 minutes being cool down time... He returned the machine the next day. You definitely get what you pay for...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Buckhunter21, I would first evaluate what you are going to do with your machine. If you are only welding for a brief moment on light materials then the 300 - 400 dollar machine might be okay. If there is one time that you are going to work on heavier materials or weld for a longer period of time it will be worth the extra money to purchase a larger higher dollar machine. Like I said in my previous post you need to pay attention to duty cycle. If you go with the cheaper machine and need to do some heavier duty welding you WILL be disappointed...

There are some good deals on some machines that even offer a spool gun option which would be extremely nice for that aluminum welding project...

Something that you may consider if you do not want to spend alot of money is going with a stick (SMAW) machine. I know that stick is not a process of choice by alot of people but consider this. If you want to weld stainless steel then all you need to do is buy stainless steel welding rods. If you want to weld mild steel or cast then all you have to do is buy the appropriate electrodes. If you wish to weld different metals with the MIG welder then you will have to purchase different wire as well as different shielding gases and maybe even a different liner for your electrode wire to run through so you do not contaminate the weld material and base metal. With the SMAW machine you can also get a higher amperage machine for not too bad of price so you can weld those heavier metals or larger welding jobs...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

elwood, How do you create a full rotating axle for a drop down fish house? not trying to steal any ideas but have been trying to figure out something like this for a while, i just dont think the other type have enough strength with 2 diff sides, thanks for any help!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As the user name implies, I'm a boilermaker by trade. Started by running/fixing high pressure steam systems onboard ships and went to stationary systems. Boilermakers fix and build anything and everything.

I do a lot of welding at work. Mostly TIG. I'd rather TIG as I feel I have better control, make a LOT stronger weld, and I'm absolutely 100% confident of my weld when it's done. I can say this as I've been doing this for a few years. It's important when working with high pressures and nasty stuff flowing through pipes to be that confident of your work.

I have access to quite a lot of different equipment but I have to honestly say my all time favorite welder is my 1968 Lincoln "Buzz Box" in my garage. I swear, that thing lays the best beads I've ever seen. It's the machine I taught both my boys, my neighbor, and our fire chief how to lay a bead with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Boilermaker... Are you associated with the Boilermakers union out of the cities area? I have a past student/friend that has applied up there and called the other day to let me know that he was on the top of the list for posible hiring.

I often have students interested in the Boilermakers and Pipefitters Unions but I dont receive much information to pass on to them. Is there anyway you can get me information so I can be better equipped to tell the advantages of these unions? Or would you be interested in coming to my classes some day and talk to them/show them some of your tricks to get them somewhat motivated in that direction?

Let me know if any of this would interest you...

Thanks

Link to comment
Share on other sites

elwood, How do you create a full rotating axle for a drop down fish house? not trying to steal any ideas but have been trying to figure out something like this for a while, i just dont think the other type have enough strength with 2 diff sides, thanks for any help!

It is hard to explain in writeing but I can tell you it is a lot of work and you have to cut a part a perfctly good axel and make the arms that the hubs are welded to longer and the axel itself needs to go thru sleeves in the frame. I will try to post some picks if I can find them.

boileryguy the older the red box sometimeds the better they are I love those welders

The miller 250 migs and the 200s are the ticket just make sure that you get one that a spoolgun can plug into. a cheaper welder may get you buy but its worth spending the extra money to get one that will weld more than just mild steel.

Link to comment
Share on other sites



×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.