77VIDEO How to Improve an Inconsistent Weld

In this video, I want to explain a problematic weld that I call the inconsistent weld

That's not a product of a poorly adjusted welder. Not usually. It's more an issue of hand-eye coordination and not getting things right

So there are a few parameters you need to keep in mind. One is gun angle. I like to go at about a 45 degree angle like this

Now there are also two ways you can move the welding gun. You can kind of drag it along like this or you can push it along

I prefer the dragging along method and it's probably easiest for you as a beginner to

go with that route too because the visibility is a little bit better

You can see the puddle better. You can see where you've been better

I find it just works a little easier. Now 45 degree angle, that's one parameter

The other parameter is the distance. You don't want to get too close

You'll see you don't want to get too far away. You also need to move the gun in a consistent and straight line

So when I say straight line, that doesn't preclude the fact that I'm moving the gun

back and forth to make a wider bead. But the overall pattern is a straight line

You know if you're all over the place, well your weld bead's going to be all over the place too. Really it's a function of learning to be a consistent welder as a function of

practice and the right kind of practice. To help you practice correctly though, let's go and take

a look. I'm going to fire things up and I'm going to make some mistakes on purpose so you can see

what I'm talking about. So here I am striking the arc and I'm doing a kind of normal weld for the

first little while. But now I'm pulling back and you can see the problem setting in. We don't really

have any penetration to speak of. Now I'm going closer, closer, closer and whoops, we got a problem here

So that mistake there, getting too close, not only made for a bad weld but it actually caused a

problem that I'm kind of glad it happened so I can show it to you. The wire got fused to the tip

So that basically shut us down. It's not as bad as it looks or I hope it's not as

bad as it looks because usually you can kind of break that off

There we go, we should be fine now. That tip's still in reasonable condition

So I'm going to continue with the bad welding demonstration. I'm just going to show you

I didn't quite get to showing you an incorrect angle and what that looks like so

we'll do that now. So I've struck the arc and now I'm going to draw back the angle, shallow angle

and you can see that this is, you know, affecting penetration. I'm going straight up and down here

I'm getting better penetration but now the weld bead is narrow and just overall quite inconsistent

as you can see. Come and take a look here at the inconsistent weld. This is the one you just saw

being laid down and you can see where the angle changed, the distance changed and it's just a kind

of an ugly looking weld. Penetration is not bad actually. I mean you'd want it better for a weld

that counts but really this is the problem of not being good enough yet with hand-eye coordination

and the solution is just practice of the right kind