Learn how to arc weld with this FREE guide. Arc welding is often attempted by many home handymen in the workshop or home garage. It can be a bit daunting at first for many people, especially if they have never tried doing this before. This guide will h
Arc welding can hurt you and you must always wear the right personal protective equipment. You are going to need to wear a long sleeved shirt preferably with at collar that you can put up around your neck. Wear long pants made from thick materials, overalls or jeans are good. Get some thick leather welding gloves that will protect your fingers, hands, arms and forearms.
When you are welding there is often spatter and hot sparks flying around all over the place. I have learned the hard way by not wearing fully enclosed footwear. I have burnt myself many times from just using sandals and flip-flops. Please use fully enclosed leather work boots to protect the tops of your feet from the hot welding spatter. Welding and grinding go hand in hand so you are also going to need some protective eyewear and some earplugs. Get a full face shield mask because just using safety glasses won't protect the rest of your face.
You can't weld without using a welding helmet, so you're going to need to make sure you have one that you can use. I like using those automatic darkening welding helmets as I find they make it really easy for me to see where I'm welding. I would definitely recommend any beginner to get one of these helmets.
You must and I can't stress this enough, clean up the material you are going to weld. It needs to be shiny clean to get the best possible chance of doing a successful weld. Quite often people will weld on top of rust, mud, oil and paint. This is a big no no, as it will cause weld contamination and porosity, but ultimately it will make welding for you so much harder.
Now for the welding electrode to use. I would suggest that you use a 6013 rod as these are very easy to use. They can be bought anywhere and they are able to be used in all positions. These may also be labelled as a GP rod which means general purpose. On the back of the packet there will be instructions telling you how many amps you need to use for this particular sized welding electrode.
So now you can turn the machine on and set it up, adjusting the amperage to that which is stated on the back of the welding electrode packet and you'll be right to go. Ideally if you have a few spare G clamps lying around you can clamp down your piece of metal onto your workbench so that it doesn't move around when you try to start the arc. Also attach the ground clamp from the welder to the metal.
I recommend you use the scratch technique to get the arc started. This is just like striking a match except you are using a dirty great big long welding electrode. The idea is to drag or scratch the plate until the arc starts. Keep doing this over and over again until you can start it all the time. Once you master this you should be able to start the arc and hold it burning in the one spot.
Stringer bead. The next step is to make a stringer bead, which is simply just a continuous weld bead in a straight line. Follow on from striking the arc in the one spot by leaning the electrode over about 15-16 degrees towards the way you want to make the bead. Then slowly move along, keeping the rod about 1/8 of an inch above the base metal (3mm). Do this until you have burnt up a stack of rods. You need to be confident with this.
This has been an arc welding basics lesson on how to arc weld.
Arc welding can hurt you and you must always wear the right personal protective equipment. You are going to need to wear a long sleeved shirt preferably with at collar that you can put up around your neck. Wear long pants made from thick materials, overalls or jeans are good. Get some thick leather welding gloves that will protect your fingers, hands, arms and forearms.
When you are welding there is often spatter and hot sparks flying around all over the place. I have learned the hard way by not wearing fully enclosed footwear. I have burnt myself many times from just using sandals and flip-flops. Please use fully enclosed leather work boots to protect the tops of your feet from the hot welding spatter. Welding and grinding go hand in hand so you are also going to need some protective eyewear and some earplugs. Get a full face shield mask because just using safety glasses won't protect the rest of your face.
You can't weld without using a welding helmet, so you're going to need to make sure you have one that you can use. I like using those automatic darkening welding helmets as I find they make it really easy for me to see where I'm welding. I would definitely recommend any beginner to get one of these helmets.
You must and I can't stress this enough, clean up the material you are going to weld. It needs to be shiny clean to get the best possible chance of doing a successful weld. Quite often people will weld on top of rust, mud, oil and paint. This is a big no no, as it will cause weld contamination and porosity, but ultimately it will make welding for you so much harder.
Now for the welding electrode to use. I would suggest that you use a 6013 rod as these are very easy to use. They can be bought anywhere and they are able to be used in all positions. These may also be labelled as a GP rod which means general purpose. On the back of the packet there will be instructions telling you how many amps you need to use for this particular sized welding electrode.
So now you can turn the machine on and set it up, adjusting the amperage to that which is stated on the back of the welding electrode packet and you'll be right to go. Ideally if you have a few spare G clamps lying around you can clamp down your piece of metal onto your workbench so that it doesn't move around when you try to start the arc. Also attach the ground clamp from the welder to the metal.
I recommend you use the scratch technique to get the arc started. This is just like striking a match except you are using a dirty great big long welding electrode. The idea is to drag or scratch the plate until the arc starts. Keep doing this over and over again until you can start it all the time. Once you master this you should be able to start the arc and hold it burning in the one spot.
Stringer bead. The next step is to make a stringer bead, which is simply just a continuous weld bead in a straight line. Follow on from striking the arc in the one spot by leaning the electrode over about 15-16 degrees towards the way you want to make the bead. Then slowly move along, keeping the rod about 1/8 of an inch above the base metal (3mm). Do this until you have burnt up a stack of rods. You need to be confident with this.
This has been an arc welding basics lesson on how to arc weld.
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