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In this video I want to introduce you to the second most important piece of welding equipment and that's an auto darkening helmet
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Second only in importance to the actual welder itself. The reason why I recommend these is because it's going to speed your progress as a welder
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and it's going to help you to just catch on to it not just faster but better too and more accurate
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The reason is because this helmet automatically darkens within milliseconds of the arc being struck when you start welding
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Now that means that you can actually see out of this helmet before the arc is struck
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I think it's 15 or 20 years ago when these helmets came out but before then when you had a welding mask on the lens was very very dark
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It had to be that dark in order for it to be effective when the arc is struck because that arc is extremely bright
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and it's very damaging to your eyes unless your eyes are protected
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So in the bad old days when I started welding you'd have a helmet but once that went down you wouldn't be able to see anything until the arc was struck
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Now you might strike that arc close to where you're supposed to start it but maybe not
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It's really kind of a pain. It required a whole additional skill that you learned in order to grope around blind essentially before you started welding
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So this sort of helmet solves that problem because when you look through the lens you can see everything that you normally would except it's got a bit of a green tinge
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But as I said within milliseconds of the arc being struck the lens immediately goes dark and it starts protecting you
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So you basically have the best of both worlds. You can see and your eyes are also protected
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Now if you look inside they're all pretty much the same here. There's some controls
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This control here is the time delay. So how fast it's going to get dark
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This dial is for the sensitivity. So what intensity of bright light is sufficient to trigger the darkening
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And then over here is the shade which is variable in this case on two scales. The low range and the high range
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I have mine set to the high range. The 9 to 13 range and I have the actual dial turned to 10
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So I find that works well. It protects my eyes but it also lets me see the molten weld pool while I'm welding
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And that's very important because you've got to be able to see that weld pool to see if it's penetrating the metal properly in order to get a good weld
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These things have come down in price a lot since when they came out. You can get a good one for under $100
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More expensive ones might be $200 or $300 but you know the cheaper ones work quite well
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In the course I make specific recommendations about what kind of auto darkening helmet you might want to get
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But regardless of the one you choose this is not a trivial matter
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And I'm not talking about eye protection. Of course that goes without saying. But getting something that allows you to have both hands ready. You can see your surroundings. You know exactly where to start welding
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Huge advantage and I don't think you'll want to go back to anything else once you've tried one of these
