Learning to weld

If you have a good teacher, he/she/it can identify your strong areas and work on them. Also goes for the weak areas. A lot of time, my teachers just said, "Watch this", and I learned more faster by watching them doing it right than trying to find out how to do it by trial and error. They have students just weld, because that is what people need to do...... just do it over and over. But when they get someone who already knows a little, they can work to fill in the spaces.

MHO, YMMV.

Steve

Not sure how things are done in the states but, up here in Canada at the college the beginner welding course called a "C" level welding and is 6 to 9 months in duration depending on the students willingness and ability to learn. This course is designed to give you a good knowledge of welding in OFC/W, SMAW,GMAW,Flux Core and Carbon Arc Gouging in order to enter the workplace with welding as a career. About 35% of the course is in the classroom learning the Theory of welding and the different welding machines and processes. If you are able to invest the time this may be something that interest you.

For the hobbyist welder there is a 1 to 2 week evening classes at many High School metalworking shops that can teach you how to bodge metal together without it falling apart. Make you better than a "Hack Welder" and it will also teach you to do it safely.

Like I said, not sure how it is done in the states but I assume that things are quite similar and I hope this will give you something to consider.

I took a O/A class, a basic arc (stick) , and a basic MIG class. All were 32 hours courses, 4 hrs a night once a week. I went into the classes with no experience. I got to work on the basics of running beads....thousands of beads and used up pounds of stick and filler wire. The instructor could tell I was wanting to learn and that helped a lot. (not everybody in my classes were...some just wanted to put in the required hours to get their completion cert for the work files) Having an experienced weldor guiding you thru things such as heat and travel speed really makes a difference. Another plus is that in our shop we got to play...errr I mean work with all this really neat equipment that I would never get a chance to use otherwise. The cost of each 32 hours course was only $63. (local businesses subsidize the classes, I think) and we were able to use up all the consumables we wanted. My advice? Take the course, you won't regret it.

Marc

Been to college in UK -typical community college evening course. Point for follow-on though - you really can't easily work out by trial-and-error how to do the different welding processes and the variants of geometries. As Steve says, being shown *the* way is everything. Course is thoroughly to be recommended. Have heard someone say "they weld on these little plates on a table, time and again, trying to get it perfect. I wanted to (vision of many different techniques quickly)". To that I would say - for sure a lot of the college "example joints" are simplistic (clean, perfect metal, level on a table), but the five or so geometries shown (butt, lap, fillet vertical fillet, outside-corner, typically) catch the essence of most welding circumstances and *you know what a good weld looks like, runs like, sounds like*, etc, etc. you can then adapt to the "real world" circumstances you meet. So go for it - enrol at a community college.

Richard Smith

I am taking a one semester course at my local community college (basic welding / metal sculpture). 6 hours once a week. It cost me $300 for the course. We are learning o/a, mig, stick and plasma cutting. I have never welded before, but in the first two class sessions my o/a welds are looking quite nice. I would say that taking a class is worth it. The instructors know how to demonstrate and explain specific techniques and I've found it to be very helpful. It's nice to have experienced welders around to answer questions.

-T

At a reasonable course, you get access to real industrial machines that work, and a barrowload of scrap to practice on. Turn the dials up and get the process running right, then as you get better at controlling it, turn them down and learn to do it on a smaller scale. It's a lot easier than wrestling with some crappy amateur machine like an SIP, never knowing if it's your fault or the machine's.

You don't need to be _shown_ this stuff - a book is quite adequate, so long as you take notice of what you're actually doing and you're critical of your own work. Things like nick-break tests _are_ important.