Thread: Small steps

Paulo, Great to read your achivements, its no mean feat to pass TIG with out any back ground in metal, what TAFE are you going to? Col.

Hi Col, doing the Ticket at Chisolm TAFE in Dandy. Maybe should say as ive bagged the school before in my more angry moments. Yeah TIG ticket was hard, really pushed me but it was a good feeling passing it.

As promised here is the graphic for the run placement for the Axis vertical,Horizontal butt.

Note the 2nd pass pass is the big fat filler run.
The trick is to almost fill the vee (say 1 mm below surface )

This pass is a big slow looped run which is slow at the top to compensate for gravity pulling the molten metal down - whipped back up as soon as you reach the bottom ,so you don't cause overfill at the bottom section.

The 3rd and and 5th passes are run a bit faster than the 4th to keep it it "skinny" on the edges.
If you can,t get the loop just right sing out and I'll draw it later as I am busy putting on a roof this morning
Cheers
Grahame

Hi everyone,

its been a long time since ive written anything and ive had up and downs, but from this week im a Pipe welder. The man ive been learning Tig and stick from got into a contract in a busy workshop, and setup a team of two fitters and me and him.
I had to do 2 X 6G welds on carbon pipe (4" and 6"). and 1 on stainless steel.
like always nervous as hell but found some strengh and passed both and the stainless too.
My life has changed 180 degrees, i quit my boring job and get almost double what i was earning there. I love what I do and its like im at school but getting paid.
People there are great, they all know i can weld abit but they know im just starting in the game (or started a couple of years ago )
Im really amazed at how all the practice and practice and practice really does pay off, you can see it when you weld and it really satisfying knowing that you earned something through hard yakka.

At the moment im learning STT welding, with carbon steel and then learning stainless with STT shed 160 (thickest ive ever seen). This process is really easy, its like Mig but uses like a pulse, we use these special torches that are based on TIG , they have gas lens and cups and adjustable heads, nothing like the massive MIG torches.

This is going to be awesome, I have soo much to learn , its just weld weld weld.

The workshop is huge and they have everything you want, Im very lucky to be there but i think ive worked really hard so I might deserve a break.

Ill keep you posted with any welding news.
Does anyone have any expereince with STT and can give me some pointers doing pipe.

Cheers,


Paulo

Onya mate!!
By the sound of things you are where you want to be.
Good on ya! Mate you have earnt it.
This STT system sounds a bit like the (then ) new system .WIA was trying to bring in during the mid 80s.It was aimed at the heavy walled high pressure pipe used in the plant where I worked.Each joint was radiographed.
The GMAW based unit involved pulsing so rapid per second, similar to pulse tig, there was dwell, peak & background parameters to set, along with some other variables, The vee preps were to be filled in fewer passes. The power source unit was basically a computer, checking and adjusting voltage.
I only saw the demo at our work shop the one time and with all the electrickery talk was rather difficult to take on board. It had a plug in card in the wire feed much like today’s camera or phone cards which had a lot of pre set data.
There was a programmed card for each different job.
At that wall thickness you probably have to be using large diam wire in the order of 1.2 or maybe even 1.6mm diameter.
The sound of the arc was weird like an electronic sound.
Its sounds like this is the latest model.

Sorry ,I can't offer any advice on this as I only saw it briefly the once.

You are right about the wall thickness its a bit of a shock the first time welding something around 40+mm thick,but it will soon become the norm.

Cheers
Grahame

I used to have a different kind of job before I decided to go for welding. I took a couple of welding classes just for a hobby. Ever since then, I was hooked. I love my job more now than I ever did with my previous job. It is fulfilling when I finish a project. It gives me a satisfaction that I only get when I weld metals together.

I was an industrial electrician looking after offshore and land based oilwell drilling rigs, then got into excavation. That led to setting up a little engineering shop, building a cnc plasma cutter table, learning welding, etc. I was going to make attachments for my little excavator and bobcat, but the industry has really died now, and I reckon I'm looking for a job real soon but that might be like a rest in any case.

After the complexity of learning/building the cnc plasma table, the accuracy and focuss of lathework, milling, screw cutting, etc, I seem to feel most at peice with the "simplicity" (yeah it's not that simple is it) of welding and find myself focussing on it quite a bit. It's quite rewarding making something with purpose out of peices of steel. Machining is quite interesting but seems to be a lot of effort for the part you finish up with, and one little screw up can render a part worthless.

In my apprenticeship we did a one week course on welding - arc & gas. I was top in arc/stick welding (but did quite bad in gas welding). Maybe I should have been a welder, and StartedwithaTIG is a bit of an inspiration.

Liam000, how long did it take you to actually start making a wage in your welding career. I'm 46 with 2 young kids so earning sufficient income to survive is unfortuneately something I have to consider.

Keith.