How are my beads??

Hey yall...

Last night i went out and ran some beads... Can you guys tell me how i did, and how to make them better??

It was late, and i was tired, so im not too sure which were 7018 and which were 6011. The 7018 is my preference, it seems easier to use and looks better to me... But thats just me..

Go easy on me, my entire welding expierence consists of whatevers missing from my two 5 pound containers, which isnt much.... lol..











Im practicing on a twisted, mangled peice of disk harrow that i found in the scrap bin, so none of these were level. Some were pretty close, and some were unhill or downhill...

Allright guys, what do you think??

Looks better than what I usually do.. LOL.. My welds usually turn out lookin like chicken poop on a pump handle LOL.. but they usually hold what I need em to hold.

All the advice I can offer is practice eventually makes perfect

Brad

Not bad at all,I assume you are welding with and ac welder.It is more difficult to use 7018 rod with ac welder,6011 is a good all purpose rod for dirty or rusty steel.But 7018 is very good rod to use once you get the hang of it.You are of to a good start.Scott

Looks like they will do the job fine.

None of them really look like 6011 to me. 6011 by nature is a rougher looking weld. The way to use them is with a slight back and forth whipping motion and they have less buildup than other rods. You don't go slower to let them build up as high as 7018 for example and they use less amps than other rods. Your beads aren't too bad but you need to practice keeping a constant speed and arc length. A good weld requires 4 basic requirements from the operator; Distance, angle, speed and heat. Distance is arc length, angle is rod angle, speed is travel speed and heat is amps. What you need to practice is going in a straight line and then making a pad of overlapping beads. Take some soap stone and a straight edge and make some lines to follow with your weld bead. Once you can weld in a straight line, overlap your beads by just under half the width and make a build up pad of weld. When it's done right it will have a uniform height all the way across all of your beads and there will be no valleys or missed areas between the overlapping beads. Another thing that is important is to fill in the crater before you break the arc or it can cause cracking (on a welded joint). Before you stop welding, travel backwards just a little onto the weld you just did, so that the crater will fill up the same as the rest of the weld. Dave

Actually Lanse those are not bad at all! The soapstone line trick, and overlapping welds that 135 Fan mentioned are the very next things you should do. Also clean the base metal with a grinder or sanding pad. I understand there is an AC 7018 on the market, I've never used it, I've read where people say it is easier to start, but I couldn't tell ya.
Everybody has their opinion, but I like ESAB's AtomArc 7018. And for what little 6011 I've ever run I like Hobart's 335.
You are off to a very good start, right now I'd say you're at the point where you need a 50-pound box of rod, and a lot of scrap, and burn rod until the cows come home! Don't weld too much on any one plate before cooling it in water, As the plate gains heat it will mess you up. Run 3 or 4 beads, stop and dip the plate in a bucket of water.

Hello Lanse,
You did pretty good! That 7018 will run on A/C, and as you found out, a little hard to get started. The more rods you burn, the better you will get. There are welders? that can't do no better that what you have started with. You should do well with time.
Guido.

You're not doing bad. As Dave suggested, watch your speed and the arc length. Where the beads are narrow you probably got going too fast and where you have voids the arc length probably got too long.
I find it's often easy to get distracted by the arc itself and I don't always watch the puddle enough... so you really need to make an effort to ~focus~ in on the puddle. When you can see that and keep it at a uniform size, then advance it at a uniform speed I think you'll correct most of the little problems you have. Just keep practicing.
I'd also suggest that you make an extra effort to clean the work pieces when you're producing an actual repair weld. That's not somethign you're going to much worry about when you're running practice beads... but for a repair, you want everything clean and bright. I often sandblast dirty deep pitted metal if necessary to get it clean. A lot of those spots you see in the welds are impurities/dirt rising out... so the more of that crap you can be rid of from the start, the better the weld will be.

Rod

Try some 7014 rods.

Dusty

Good job!Did you see the line where the slag was behind the puddle?If you do try and keep it straight and thats about as good a speed as you can go.Also you want to move just a little faster as you are building up a touch too much and you are jumping a little at times.Think about how big the wire is in the rod you are using.If its 1/8 inch you want your weld to be about 3 times as wide or 3/8 of an inch wide.So let it build until its that wide and move on going straight and smooth as you can.You are going close to the right speed,just try and go a little faster and try and keep the weld the same width.If you have to choose between a bead thats too slow and built up too much and one thats to fast with skips in it,too slow is better.In order to make it look better you want to try and make it even with no more build up than necessary.Then with 7018 you can weld your next bead 1/2 way on the last one and 1/2 way on the metal.So if you start right on the edge It might help keep you straight.You can make some welds like that,grind them down and do it again.Your second pass probably will look better because you will be welding on clean,ground down metal instead of rust.Also clean your glass in your helmet good,even take it apart and clean everything with soapy water and dry it off and put it back together and see if that helps you to see what you are doing a little better,then you can draw some lines with soapstone and try to weld between two lines,or on a line or something to see how well you can keep your bead kind of even.

Ive seen people who welded a long time not make welds that looked that good.7018 is good rod to use on lots of things.

Also with 7018 you can weld a pass,then go right back the other way without chipping the slag and jut keep on going like that building up a weld.Thats a multipass weld with 7018.The slag will let you do that with 7018 but you need to do it while its hot.I dont think there are many other rods that you can do that with.

One more thing,with 7018 dont worry what the slag is doing,watch your puddle,and try and keep it about the same width.The slag is going to look like it does with humps in it,but dont worry about that,watch your metal deposite and the line where the slag is laying down and try and keep it straight across the weld.

Overall I think you are doing a real good job,more practice and you will be a good welder.

You can weave your rod a little and make a wider weld with 7018.Maybe try that once and see what it looks like.You dont have to weave it real wide say 1/2 inch.Just try and go at the same speed,slower is better than too fast,but you want your weld to look nice and smooth as they do already,just a touch smaller,since yours are a little fat.

I forgot to say,but when you are welding besides going at the right speed you have to keep the arc about the distance of the width of the rod.So 1/8 inch rod,1/8 inch arc.Most people hold it out too much,so just keep pushing it in close.You will notice a difference in the sound and spatter.Too far out and spatter will be everywhere,your welder will really be buzzing,in close and less spatter and welder will be quieter and weld smoother.Too close will probably stick the rod.Just right and smooth and quieter.

Actually once you get the hang of it,you kind of push the rod into the weld as you travel at the right speed on a flat weld.Not exactly like,but some like a caulking gun.

Lanse what you're doing there is tough for a seasoned weldor. Running beads on a flat plate is just plain hard to make look really good. I suggest you go buy some flatbar, say 1/4 X 1-inch, cut it 5 to 6-inches long. Practice some butt welds, gap two pieces of flatbar about 1/16th of an inch. Then practice some lap welds, then fillets. Once you get a handle on these joints in the flat position, move to horizontal, vertical up, and overhead. When you feel real confident with all this then move into groove welds, and some destructive testing.

Here is a vertical up groove weld with 7018.

The AC 7018 do work better on an AC welder. The Lincoln ones aren't too bad to use but I've only had to use AC 7018 the odd time. Just about any big box store has the lincoln 7018AC rods. A 1/8" 7018 should weld about 6" or 7" long for practicing purposes.
ONLY PRACTICE PIECES should be cooled off with water. You always want the welds on your projects to cool off on their own and sometimes need to slow the cooling even more. There are exceptions to this but it's for more advanced welding on specialty type alloys. Dave

In Lanse's case, he should chip all of his welds off before doing the next one. Otherwise there's no way to see if his welds are improving and the last things he needs to worry about is slag inclusions and the rod fingernailing and porosity etc. Dave

If you were my student I would say put away all that other rod and get some 6010 or 6011. Practice watching the puddle. You won't learn as quick with heavy slag rods. They will come in time but not at the begining. Practice on some real joints, part of learning welding is preparing your metal.
Most if not all of your welding can be done with 6010 or 6011 and 7018 later.
David

Lanse,when I was your age, I had just started to play around with welding, was taught by a vo- ag instructor in high school that didn't know anything about welding but he was the teacher and we thought he did. Later on when I decided that welding was going to be my life profession, I went to Hobart Welding School for my training. When I got there it didn't take me too long to realize that I would have been better off if I had never seen a welding machine because everything that I had been taught was dead Wrong, and old habits are hard to break. What I am trying to get across to you is that if you really want to weld and are serious about it, get the proper training and don't listen to a bunch of different people trying to lead you in different directions, some of them probably don't know a lot more about than you do.
Welding is something you can't learn over the internet. Trust me I've been doing it every day for over 40 years and I'm still learning.

I went to a trade school and learned how to weld from a very experienced welding teacher. When he made the transition from welder to teacher, he was replacing the orignal welding teacher who was retiring. He specifically got his teaching license to go to that school. I was talking to him once and he even said that a lot of teachers teaching welding in high schools just don't have enough experience to be teaching it. Sadly that school was converted to a regular high school because not enough students are interested in the trades. I got out of high school early because I got a welding job. I actually had 2 offers because employers knew about the excellent teachers at the school I went to. When I went for my apprenticeship, I never had to study much because I already knew a lot of the theory. Having the right welding teacher can't be overstated. It makes a huge difference! Dave