How To Teach Yourself MIG Welding (Free Video Guide)

[ChuckE2009]

Goodmorning, everyone!

Just thought I'd stop in and share my newest YouTube series, which is designed to take an individual with little to no MIG welding experience through the basics... Machine setup, flat and horizontal position welding, all the way through vertical and overhead work... I thought it might be of interest to a few folks here, based on how my Stick Weld series went over...


Anyway, here's Part one:

 

[ChuckE2009]

Optional, but HIGHLY recommended homework, this video teaches you how to recognize and fix various welding issues and this knowledge will be HIGHLY beneficial to you in part two of the series, as well as in real world welding you do:

 

[ChuckE2009]

Part Two, on Flat & Horizontal Position Welding:

 

[ChuckE2009]

Part Three, on Vertical welding:

 

[ChuckE2009]

Part Four, overhead and final thoughts:

Well, I hope y'all enjoy the videos... They were a lot of work to put together, but I wanted to make these videos for myself in 2010, when I bought my first MIG Welder. I tried to create the videos I would've like to see then, to get me pointed in the right direction.

Happy welding, everyone

 

[Industrial Toys]

Thanks for all your hard work.

Trying to weld up, and I always have the metal dripping away. If I dial it back to what it looks like in your video, then I have poor penetration. I naturally weave back and forth. I don't know is that is something I learned from stick welding, not that I know how to do that either, but I noticed friends of mine who grew up welding and may have millions of welds under their belts, NEVER weave, or not that I have ever seen them.

 

[ChuckE2009]

Yeah, some folks like running straight stringers... It can certainly be done and while people have preferences one way or the other, theres nothing wrong with either in most cases. Some prints for critical welds or in other circumstances call for one or the other...

 

[Arc weld]

I only watched the last video as I didn't have 1 1/2 hours to watch them all. A couple of things caught my attention. It is a really good idea to wear leathers when overhead welding so you don't burn your arms from sparks and red hot metal falling down. However, I would rather burn my arms than have my toque catch on fire and burn all my hair off from catching sparks like a magnet due it's thick weave. A welding cap or beanie would be much better because they are a smooth tight weave and sparks usually bounce off rather than sticking like Velcro. Nylon ball caps are bad idea too cause they will melt and stick to your skin. A welders cap can also be turned so the brim can keep sparks out of your top ear.

The other thing I noticed is you were talking about the gun angle to start off with a single pass fillet weld and the finished weld was a 2 pass fillet that would require a different gun angle for each pass. Did something happen with the first pass? I worked in a shop building large skids and often a 3 pass fillet weld was specified by the engineer. One guy always seemed to finish a lot faster and we couldn't figure out how he went so fast. So we set up so one of us could watch what he was doing different. He was skipping the first pass and just doing the final 2 passes. Do you know the problem with that even though the fillet can be the same size using a fillet gauge? You don't get enough penetration into the root(corner) of the weld. With MIG in short circuit mode, it's always a good idea to weave, go in circles or twist your wrist side to side to insure proper fusion at the edges of the weld. Critical welds wouldn't call for MIG stringer beads but they could using stick and TIG. More passes gives a finer grain structure. The plates being welded looked like about 1/4" so a 1/4" fillet would suffice. If there was a problem with a single pass weld, it might have been a good opportunity to show how to correct it rather than putting in a 2 pass weld. Just food for thought next time.