hey garage fabbers I've been avoiding this video for a long time but the requests are getting more frequent Rick says I love the way your wells look have you ever made a video on your welding techniques if not could you I've been avoiding it because I'm not a certified welder I'm self-taught with a few years of practice so me teaching welding would kind of be a blind leading the blind scenario that said this video isn't going to teach you how to weld if you don't know how to set up your machine you still won't at the end of this video there's no safety lessons no science no weld tests just a lot of my personal opinions and my methods of sticking two pieces of Steel together with a MIG gun so grab some popcorn this comment section is gonna be lit oh that reminds me if you're a seasoned fabricator with knowledge of structural welding and you disagree with something that I show in this video take it to the comments my feelings aren't easily hurt so don't hold back just try and benefit the reader for example you shouldn't be allowed near a welder I'm surprised your weld survived the first test drive and you look like you smell like cheese well now that doesn't help anyone does it a better comment might be I don't think you're getting enough penetration try turning up the voltage and spend more time at the root of the joint and you look like you smell like cheese wow you might have actually helped someone doesn't it feel good that's my long-winded way of saying without further Ado let's go melt two edges of some steel plate so that a molten pool forms betwixt them and then cools to create a sturdy Bond I mean let's weld something all welding in this video will be performed on my esob fabricator 252i I would like to say that all welders are the same they are not if you're just starting with welding I highly recommend getting the absolute best welder you can an experienced welder can do decent welds with just about any welder out there but when you're just beginning you've got to know that the welder you're using is capable of perfect welds my favorite welder believe it or not is not this one it's the Miller 211 and no I'm not sponsored if I was I would have one maybe Miller will hear this and they'll send me a free one because it's time for me to upgrade but with a high quality welder like the Miller or the esob you're not getting the welds that you want you know it's something that you yourself needs to fix and not a shortcoming of the welder itself the fabricator 252i is a 240 volt machine if you're going to be doing thicker plate like we're doing today quarter inch I highly recommend getting a 240 machine I think that a 110 Volt Welder is capable of doing a lot of work on cars even frames Believe It or Not frames are not that thick 1 8 a lot of the times from the factory a 110 machine can do that just fine it's not until you get to the 3 16 and one quarter inch thick plate like we're doing a day that you really want to get more power today I am using 75 argon 25 CO2 welding mix I think it's the most popular mix for steel MIG welding and currently the welder is set at 21 volts at 350 inches per second wire speed once again not all welders are the same I recently used an esob welder that was not a fabricator when we're working on case I would set it to the exact same settings as my ESOP and I was struggling I could not get the welds to look the way I wanted them to look at all and so I did most of the welding here in the garage you can check that video out if you want right here we're about to lay down some beautiful beads but before we do we've got to get your welder set up properly welding in its most basic sense is filling up a gap or a Channel with molten metal but it's a little more complicated than that that molten metal needs to consist of both the filler metal which is in this case the wire coming out of the Mig gun and your base metal which is the project that you're working on it is absolutely possible that you can set up your machine to lay down the most beautiful bead but if you do not melt the base metal your beautiful bead is just resting on top and your weld will fail penetration is the name of the game with welding let's start this off with a bang with my first uneducated opinion I don't think that there is such thing as too hot there is too hot for your wire speed and too hot for your base metal that you're using but if your welder is set up so hot that it could blow through but your Technique prevents it you're getting good quality penetration this next part is going to be all up to you you've got to find the settings that work best for your welder on the material that you're trying to weld settings can be so frustrating have patience slow down breathe you're not gonna figure it out right away this hobby is so worth it keep practicing keep messing with it you will figure out those settings we're going to start with a butt weld but before we even fire up the welder we're gonna bevel the edges that we plan to weld a bevel serves two purposes today the most important good penetration if we were to butt two unbeveled pieces of quarter inch steel both faces would be completely covered and full penetration would not be possible not with my welder anyways the bevels open up both faces guaranteeing your welds penetrate the entire thickness of your material the bevel also provides two visible lines that we can use to line up our beads uniformly stacking dimes of a consistent width with consistent spacing is what really makes a weld look beautiful do you remember those assignments in school that tested your ability to follow instructions well this video is one of the those tests watch it all the way through before trying to weld something that matters we're going to learn the way I learned step by step and the first steps will not provide a good quality weld you will not get enough penetration and your welds will probably fail but we will add steps as we go and by the end of the video hopefully you'll be making beautiful high quality welds we're going to start this off with one big old tack weld we're going to put the mig wire all the way down to the very base of the valley right in the middle and we're not going to move no forward or back or little circles right now we're just going to pull the trigger we're going to hold the trigger in one spot until this Valley fills up to the very top with Weld and then we let go now we have one nice big spot weld our next step is to move to the back edge of that spot Weld and put our wire all the way down to the bottom of the valley again hold it still hold the trigger until it fills up through the top now what you see has happened is that second weld overlapped the first weld slightly Let's Do It Again by dropping the wire back down to the base of the Valley now we're kind of starting to see a stack of Dimes forming remember this is not a good weld yet okay now we're gonna speed things up a little bit we're still going to make individual spot welds we're just going to not stop and talk after each one so starting at the back edge of the last weld that you made we're going to squeeze the trigger fill it up stop then relocate to the edge of that last weld you just made squeeze fill stop relocate squeeze fill stop relocate squeeze fill stop stop relocate do that for a while and get used to that Rhythm and practice quickly moving from your current weld to the new position what you're doing now is Stitch welding this is acceptable and often necessary on thin sheet metal but on thick metal like this you're not getting enough heat to get good quality penetration on this next step we're going to do exactly what we've been doing except now once we pull the trigger we're not going to let go we're going to fill up the valley and move to the edge of that puddle let it fill up again and move to the edge of that puddle by doing that we've significantly upped the heat in the base metal just by not allowing the short time for the weld to cool in between each beat practice this one for a while now to get your spacing and timing perfect now it's time to get fancy on our last weld as the valley filled we allowed the molten steel puddle to melt our base metal this is okay but you run the risk of the puddle not being hot enough to fully Bond the much cooler base metal we can avoid this by melting the base metal with The Arc before the puddle covers it we do that by moving our torch in a pattern on this butt weld the pattern we're going to make is a series of triangles I'm going to attempt to demonstrate with a marker we'll see how this goes starting from the base of the valley we're going to push back slightly to one side push directly across to the other side and then advance to the forward edge of the puddle we just made and start all over push back to one side directly across to the other side and advance to one side to the other side and advance to one side to the other side and Advance always returning to this Center to the very bottom of the valley let's see what this looks like with the actual welder [Music] next we'll move on to my favorite joint this is a full open outside corner joint the weld area of this joint is basically identical to the butt joint we just finished except this one doesn't require the plates to be beveled because it's so similar we'll use the same triangle pattern now in inside corner joint you can use the triangles for this one too but I prefer a swirl pattern because we no longer have the lines to guide me I find this pattern makes it easier to keep each Diamond uniform in size notice that with each pass I trace the front edge of the puddle making sure the arc contacts the base metal [Music] here's a lap weld or one plate lying flat on top of another we now have the top line to guide us but I still prefer the swirl pattern to keep the dimes lined up on the bottom end [Music] [Music] and last but not least vertical down welding this one drives people nuts never weld vertical down why because my opinion one final time if you ensure that you're melting the base metal with The Arc before the molten metal covers it you'll get good penetration and a damn good looking weld but what do I know I'm just a wannabe YouTube welder [Music] until the next one my friends keep practicing repetition makes perfect I promise you will get it and keep moving forward get a little bit wiser baby put it on put it on cause tonight is the night when to become one on