Welding Complete, 2nd Edition

Welding is a practical skill that is challenging, rewarding, and also great fun. We encounter welded items throughout our daily lives and activities—they are practically infinite. The appliances in our homes, the railing on our porches or stairs, our automobiles, the bridges and infrastructure we drive on, the structure of the buildings we work in, and even our computers. Welding makes everyday tasks more manageable. Welding can also bring joy to a craftsman making items for use in the shop, home décor, and outdoor living and décor.

In this book, we will thoroughly discuss the basics of welding and fabrication: safety, equipment, material selection, tools, and the various welding and cutting processes. With a firm understanding of the basics, applying safety and common sense, we will then move on and apply your newfound knowledge to specific projects in the book, complete with how-to instructions, tool lists, material lists, blueprints and illustrated pictorial plans, and photos. Developing your new welding and fabrication skills will provide hours of satisfaction as you create items and furnishings for your home, shop, and outdoor living space.

The shop section includes plans and instructions for making practical and useful items specific for your working space that will provide years of useful service. These tools include a rolling welding curtain, welding and cutting table, welding cart with cylinder rack, and an expandable welding table.

The home décor section includes plans and instructions for commonly used items, such as coat hooks, tables, and shelves, as well as decorative items, table candelabrum, and decorative wall fixtures.

The outdoor section includes plans and instructions for projects suitable for all hardworking DIYers, including a yard trailer and truck rack. Also included are plans and instructions for outdoor living space items, such as railings, a garden/yard gate, arbor, and firepit.

It is important as a welder to understand and use the correct terminology when discussing welding and the related processes. This will be useful in ordering equipment, and in selecting the proper filler metal and materials. The weldment (the parts to be joined) is referred to as the base metal. Additional metal, called the filler metal, is then added to the molten base metal to form a molten puddle that will solidify into a new metal—this is now known as the heat affected zone (HAZ). This is the area of focus for the welder. To maintain the proper fusion and strength of the newly formed weld, it is very important for the base metal and filler metal to have the same composition. The processes for joining metal without fusion are soldering, brazing, and braze welding. These processes can be used to join either similar or dissimilar metals.

The strength and quality of any weld is dependent on many factors. To achieve the proper amount of penetration, or weld fusion, it is critical that the heat input is controlled through an understanding of how to set, adjust, and maintain the following variables:

• Base metal selection

• Filler metal selection

• Proper heat input for a selected material thickness

• Work angle

• Travel angle

• Arc length

• Travel speed

• Aim

• Electrode manipulation

• Joint design

Welding is about managing heat input—whether it is from a fuel source such as oxyacetylene welding (OAW), or from electricity in an arc welding system, such as shielded metal arc welding (SMAW), gas metal arc welding (GMAW), flux core arc welding (FCAW), or gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW). Each process has its own advantages and disadvantages. Once a welding process is selected, the goal is to join the selected parts to form a useful tool or item in a permanent manner. Learning to manage the heat input allows the welder to control the molten metal puddle or the HAZ, thus allowing the base metal, original parts, and filler metal to flow and fuse into a new coalesced area, joining the parts into a weldment.