VIDEO: 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. And the other parameter is the distance

So you don't want to get too close. You don't want to get too far away

And 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. If you're all over the place, well your weld bead is going to be all over the place too

So 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. 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 now affecting penetration. I'm going straight up and down here, 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

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