Welding Stuff

One of the students at the college brought one of these in for us to play with - battery powered stick/TIG welding power source.

Here's a couple of beads run by the students with a 7018 electrode. According to the website, you can weld with up to six or seven 1/8" electrodes before needing a recharge. You can weld with it while it's hooked up to the charger. In fact, several of the students were playing around with it for quite a while while it was on the charger and it never ran out of stored energy. I tried it with both 6010 and 7018 electrodes and it ran nice and smooth. Usually you equate small welding machines with lousy welding characteristics. Not with this one. This new technology can be a wonderful thing. The student who brought the welder in has offered me a tour of the Fronius lab. I'm going to have to take him up on that one of these days soon.

We had a practical for the mid-term this past week. Open butt Vee groove with 6010 electrodes. Since they've already had a couple of classes before they take this one, this should be relatively easy for them with the exception of the root pass. After I tell them about a thousand times how important it is to prep the plates exactly the same each and every time in order to eliminate all the variables, they start to show improvement, if they listen to me that is. 

The photo above is the root pass I ran as a demo for one of the students. He prepped the plates and tacked them together. They weren't exactly to my liking but not a bad looking root pass. One of the nice things about this class is I do quite a bit of welding running demonstrations. Always good to keep your hand in. Who knows, I might want to get a job working with the tools again someday.