What is Welding?

Wikipedia defines Welding as “a fabrication process that joins materials, usually metals.” This is done by melting the part of the materials to be joined and adding some additional molten joining material. When the molten material cools, it forms a strong bond or joint.

Welding is the most widely practiced way of joining metals together due to the efficiency and economy of the process. It has been estimated that approximately 50% of the Gross National Product of the USA arises from activities that are in some for or another related, perhaps remotely, to Welder . As an example, farming may appear to have nothing to do with welding, but the equipment the framer uses to grow and harvest his crops will have used welding in their manufacturing process.

Until the advent of the 20th century, welding was confined to blacksmith shops where two pieces of metal were heated to very high temperatures in a forge and then hammered together until the joining occurred. This is what is called forge welding.

There was a point at which welding became much more easy and cost effective and that point was when we introduced electricity into the industrial world. Today there are 4 types of welding techniques that are commonly used.

· The most basic for is Arc Learn Welding where the parts to be joined together are brought into contact with strong electrical current and heated. The molten parts are then joined together to form a weld. If you are looking for the least sophisticated and cheapest form of welding technology, this is it.
· Gas Welding is generally used for repair work especially in the case hollow items like tubes and pipes. Hot gas is forced onto the surfaces to be welded. This procedure requires the parts to be subjected to less heat and is suitable for material that may be damaged by exposure to high temperature. For this reason it is used in the jewellery industry which has to work with soft metal with low melting points.
· Resistance Welding requires that an additional sheet of material is used to cover the pieces that are to be welded together. This provides great strength to a weld, but the process requires expensive equipment and also the use of additional material to encase the weld which makes it expensive and not suitable for all applications.
· Laser Welding is the most modern technology available. High intensity lasers can be tightly focused and produce controllable heat on the surfaces to be welded very quickly. Whats nice about this is that if you have material that can be damaged by prolonged exposure to the heat, this will work well. If you want small and accurate welds then you are going to want to use Laser welding as this is what its known for. However, because of the high capital cost involved in purchasing this equipment, the cost of welding is also high.

Although the perception of welding is that of a simple process of heating and joining, it is a high technology industry with huge amounts being spent of research and development to find stronger, more accurate and cheaper methods. The welding process plays a big role in metallurgy with a constant effort underway to find newer and more weld friendly alloys.

Welder World is a brand new community website for weldering to connect with one another and gather free information on welding. Stop by our new welding community, WelderWorld, and sign up for free to become a member and get your free Basic Welding Ebook. You will find Welding Forums, Welding Blogs, Welding Community Members and more just for signing up for free to join and then you can get your free Welding EBook on Welding Basics. Come be A part of our Welding Community.

Welding Terminology

If you are interesting in Welding there are many different terms that you will want to familiarize yourself with in order to read magazines or books on the topic. Here is a list of common terms that are important to know in Welding : 

ACETYLENE — this is a gas that you will be working with to do Welder . It is a very flammable gas so you have to be careful with it. This gas is made up of carbon and hydrogen and it is used in the oxyacetylene type of welding process.

AIR-ACETYLENE — this is a flare that you can produce using low temperature. It is created when you burn acetylene with air and not oxygen.

AIR-CARBON ARC CUTTING (CAC-A) — this is a way of arc cutting where you melt metals through the heat of a carbon arc.

ALLOY — this is a mix that has metallic properties because it has at least one element that is metal, but it can have several other things in the mix as long as one is metal.

ALTERNATING CURRENT — a current that goes backward and forward at regular intervals (see DC Current).

BACK FIRE — this is the popping sound that you hear when you turn on the acetylene torch when you connect it with fire. It is created because the flame turns back into the tip for a moment and then comes back out of the torch as a flame.

Backhand Welding — This is the pointing of the flame at the weld that is already complete.

BACKING STRIP — this is a strip of material that you will use when you need to keep metal that is melted at the bottom of the weld. You may also use this strip to add strength to the thermal load of a joint so you can stop the base of the metal from warping too much.

BASE METAL — this is what you call the metal that you are going to weld or that you are going to cut. If this is an alloy, it will be the metal that you have in the highest amount.

BRAZING — this is actually several welding processes. You will use this when you have a groove, fillet, lap or flange joint that you need to bond. This will require a nonferrous filler metal that has a melting point higher than 800 degrees F (427 degrees C) but less then your base metals.  Then, the filler metal will be distributed throughout the joint using capillary attraction.

DIRECT CURRENT (DC) — a current that only flows in one direction — forward.
- Flows in one direction and does not reverse its direction of flow.

DEFECT — there can be defects in your weld after you create it. The main defects you can find are things like cracks, porosity, places where the metal has been undercut, or where you have a slag inclusion.

EDGE JOINT — this is where you set two plates and put them together at a 90 degree angle with their outer edges.

Welder World is a brand new community website for weldering to connect with one another and gather free information on welding. Come by WelderWorld to get your free Ebook on Welding Basics just for joining the Welding community for free. You will find Welding Forums, Welding Blogs, Welding Community Members and more just for signing up for free to join and then you can get your free Welding EBook on Welding Basics. Come be A part of our Welding Community.

Learn how Welding Started

When you drive your car or look at a light fixture in the street or open your microwave, chances are that there is something in any of those items that has been welded. These products and others have been a part of the process of Learn Welding for more years than you might imagine.

Welding actually started a very long time ago during the Middle Ages. Many artifacts have been found that date back to the Bronze Age. These have been small boxes that were welded together with what is called lap joints; no one is exactly sure what these were used for, but this was important to that time.

The Egyptians also made a variety of tools by welding pieces of iron together. Perhaps this is where Maxwell’s Hammer comes later? Who can say! Then came the rise of the Middle Ages and many people there were able to use blacksmithing for iron. Different modifications were made along the way until the welding that is used to day was developed.

There were several significant inventions in the 1800s that influenced welding included here:

§ The invention of acetylene by an Englishman named Edmund Davy.
§ Gas welding and cutting became known and a way to cement pieces of iron together.
§ Arc lighting was a very popular part of welding after the electric generator became known.
§ Arc and resistance welding become another popular aspect of welding.
§ Nikolai N. Benardos receives a patent for welding in 1885 and 1887 from America and Britain.
§ C.L. Coffin receives an American patent for a arc welding process.

After the 1800s many more patents and inventions were made in order to create more ways of doing welding but one of the greatest needs would come much later during World War I because this process was needed to create arms. Because of the demand Welder firms became a staple of America and Europe because the war needed welding machines and electrodes to go with them.

During the war people really got a chance to look at how welding worked and it became a very popular way of work. It is agreed upon that one of the first American Welding Societies was created in 1919. This nonprofit organization came directly out of through a group of men who called themselves  the Wartime Welding Committee of the Emergency Fleet Corporation (Source: Miller Welds).

The 1950s and 1960s were also a significant time for welding because a Welding process using CO2 was discovered and a variation of this form of welding that used inert gas became very popular in the 1960s because it produced a different type of arc.

There have been a number of improvements in the welding trade over these years and today the process has added two areas, friction and laser welding. These two have created a more specialized field and therefore more opportunities for learning.

One interesting point about laser welding is that those people who use it have found that is a tremendous heat source so it can actually weld both metal and non-metal objects.

Welder World is a brand new community website for weldering to connect with one another and gather free information on welding. Stop by our new welding community, WelderWorld, and sign up for free to become a member and get your free Basic Welding Ebook. You will find Welding Forums, Welding Blogs, Welding Community Members and more just for signing up for free to join and then you can get your free Welding EBook on Welding Basics. Come be A part of our Welding Community.

 

Stick Welding Tips and Basics

If you want to learn Stick Welding it will take practice and a little patience to learn to do it in a way that will produce fine welds. This is an important thing to remember although some people may say they never had to practice much.

Stick Welding is one of the basic methods of welding that many students learn as they are just beginning to learn welding. This is also a method of welding that is high in demand because people need this help whether they are working iron, pie, boilers or building ships.

You will find that you will need the skills of all types of positions including flat and horizontal and ventricle or overhead welding. All of these will take some time to learn and some will be more challenging than others.

Here are some tips to help you Welding :

1. The right electrode for the job — many people aren’t sure of the size of the electrode they should use and this is important to know. The size of the electrode will depend on the situation you are welding within. In this situation you will be fighting against gravity if you are doing the weld vertically so you will want to use an electrode that is AWS classified as 7018 because they are low in their powder content.
2.Every welder needs a weld shelf especially if you don’t want to loose any of your electrodes to gravity when you are doing horizontal or verticle welds. You can do this by creating a serious of little shelves so you can do a section at a time so that you can continue to work above a weld that you have already laid. This will create a situation where one puddle will freeze in time to hold the next weld.
3. Don’t undercut if possible — this can happen because you have to weave the electrode and sometimes your work may be gouged and not have enough fill metal. When this occurs, you will be working against gravity because it will work to pull your fill metal away from the space you are working. You can reduce your puddle size to help you have more control in this situation.
4. Stay away from weird sizes for your metal — most metal will come in specific sizes that are always common. These metals will be easier to find and you can weld them fester. Stick with the ones that are AISI-SAE 1015 to 1025 so that you can be sure that you have what you need.
5. Make sure you know your arc length — a good rule of thumb is to use an arc length that is the same distance from the metal as your electrode’s thickness. As an example, if you have an electrode that is ¼” thick, then have your arc ¼” thick. Also remember that as you use the electrode, you will have to move it closer to the metal.

Following tips such as these will really help your weld be more controlled and much more even.

Welder World is a brand new community website for weldering to connect with one another and gather free information on welding. Come by WelderWorld to get your free Ebook on Welding Basics just for joining the Welding community for free. You will Find lots of benefits to this welding community such as forums, blogs, and other community members plus you can get the free basic ebook on welding just for stopping by. Come be A part of our Welding Community.