The arsenal of welding weapons that can be deployed for battle for metal mending chores has grown exponentially over the years to include an alphabet-soup list of welders.

If you’re over age 50, you likely learned to weld with an SMAW (shielded metal arc welding, or stick) welder.

The 1990s brought us the ease of MIG (metal inert gas) or FCAW (flux-cored arc welding) wire welding, which retired a great many stick buzz boxes. More recently TIG (tungsten inert gas) technology has found its way into farm shops as an ideal way to meld sheet metal, aluminum, and stainless steel.

Now, the increasing introduction of multipurpose welders means all four processes can be utilized in one package.

Following is a welding short course certain to sharpen your skills for producing solid results regardless of the welding process you employ.

Jody Collier has made a career of welding and educating welders. His websites, weldingtipsandtricks.com and welding-tv.com, are full of practical tips and tricks of the trade regarding all forms of welding.

Here are 10 of Collier’s tips guaranteed to improve your MIG and flux-core welding skills.

The go-to gas for MIG welding is carbon dioxide (CO2). While CO2 is economical and great for creating deep penetrating welds in thicker steel, this shielding gas may be too hot when welding thin metal. That’s why Jody Collier suggests switching to a mixture of 75% argon and 25% CO2.

“Oh, you can go with straight argon when welding aluminum or for MIG welding on steel but only on really thin stuff,” he says. “Everything else welds horrible with pure argon.”

Collier points out there are many gas mixtures on the market such as helium-argon-CO2, but they can sometimes be hard to find and expensive.

For most farm shop needs, on-hand gas supplies should include CO2 and an argon-CO2 mixture.

You will want to add two gas mixtures of 100% argon or an argon-helium blend for welding aluminum and a mixture of 90% argon, 7.5% helium, and 2.5% CO2 if you are mending stainless steel on the farm.

MIG welding penetration varies by the shielding gas. Carbon dioxide (shown at right, above) provides for a deep penetrating weld compared with an argon-CO2 mixture (left, above).

Before you strike an arc on an aluminum repair, be sure to thoroughly clean the weld site to avoid failed welds.

Cleaning the welding site is crucial because aluminum oxides melt at 3,700°F., while the base metal melts at 1,200°F. Thus, any oxides (oxidized or white-looking corrosion) or oils on the repair surface will inhibit penetration of the filler metal.

Cleaning requires two operations: removing all oil and grease and then removing any aluminum oxides.

Eliminating oil and grease comes first. Then — and only then — should you remove the oxidized contamination. Don’t reverse this order, warns Joel Ort of Miller Electric.

Here are additional aluminum cleaning pointers.

Give stick welding another chance.

The tried-and-true buzz box welder got relegated to shop corners to collect dust with the popularity of wire welders in the 1990s.

But today’s stick welder has a place on the farm and especially in the field.

Unlike those old buzz boxes that were only alternating current (AC) affairs, the modern stick welder is both AC and direct current (DC), changing its welding polarity 120 times a second.

The advantages this rapid polarity shift provides are huge, including easier starts, less sticking, less spatter, more attractive welds, and easier vertical and overhead welding.

Combine that with the fact that stick welding produces deeper welds, excels in outdoor operations (where wind blows away MIG shielding gas), works gangbusters on thick material, and burns through rust, dirt, and paint. The welders also are portable and simple to operate, so you can see why a new stick or multiprocessor welder is worth the investment.

Joel Ort of Miller Electric offers the following stick welding pointers. Detailed information can be found at: millerwelds.com/resources/welding-guides/stick-welding-guide/stick-welding-tips.

Hydrogen is the leading threat in welding, contributing to delayed welding, a heat-affected zone cracking that happens hours or days after the weld is completed, or both.

Yet, the hydrogen threat is usually simple to eliminate by thoroughly cleaning the metal. Remove all oil, rust, paint, and any moisture as they are sources of hydrogen.

That said, hydrogen remains a threat when welding high-strength steels (increasingly used in modern tillage equipment), thick sections of metal, and weld areas that are heavily restrained. When mending these materials, be sure to use a low-hydrogen electrode and preheat the weld area.

Sponge-like holes or tiny bubbles that appear on the surface of a weld are a sure sign that your weld suffers from porosity, points out Jody Collier, who considers the condition the No. 1 problem with welding.

Weld porosity can take many forms, including surface pores, wormholes, crater pipes, and cavities that are seen (on the surface) and unseen (deep in a weld).

Beyond its ugly appearance, porosity predicts a poor, weak weld.

Possible causes of porosity include:

Collier also advises: “Keep the puddle molten for a longer time to allow gases to boil out of the weld before it freezes.”

Although the most common welding wire diameters are .035 and .045 inch, a smaller diameter wire can make it easier to create a good weld. Try a .025-inch wire diameter particularly when welding thin material of 1⁄8-inch or less, suggests Karl Hoes of Lincoln Electric.

Most welders tend to make a weld that is too big, leading to potential burn-through problems, he explains. A smaller-diameter wire produces more stable welds at a lower current, which has less tendency to burn through.

If you keep your weld current lower, you will have a greater chance of success on thinner materials.

Be careful using this approach on thicker materials (3⁄16 inch and thicker) because a .025-inch wire may cause lack of fusion.

Once only dreamed about by farmers wanting a better way to weld thin metal, aluminum, and stainless steel, TIG welders are becoming more common in farm shops because of the rising popularity of the multiprocessor welder.

Based on personal experience, learning to TIG weld won’t be as easy as taking on MIG welding, however.

TIG requires three-way coordination using both hands (one holding the heat source in a hot-as-the-sun tungsten electrode and the other hand feeding fill rod into the arc) and a foot (operating a pedal or torch-mounted amperage control for starting, adjusting, and stopping the flow of current).

My first attempts at TIG welds resembled bird poop on steel.

To avoid results similar to mine, beginners and those wanting to hone their skills can benefit from these TIG tips in the words of Ron Covell, a consultant with Miller Electric, from his “Welding Tips: The Secret to Success When TIG Welding.”

Find the complete version at millerwelds.com.

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