Arc weld
Veteran Member
Welding supplies used to have very knowledgeable people, not all of them but at least someone they could go to. Demo rooms were common too. I consider myself to be reasonably knowledgeable with respect to welding and I've also been the customer. The last place I worked had 3 people come in wanting advice on welding up there own ultralight aircraft and had no welding experience at all. :shocked:
The one thing that really annoys me with any salesperson is someone who pretends to know what they're talking about (or what you're talking about). I will give the most honest answer I can. I might occasionally be misinformed but it's not intentional. If I can't answer a customers question because I don't know the correct answer, I will either tell them that or try to find the correct answer or someone that knows the correct answer. Had a customer wanting flux-core wire for T-1 steel. They were 3/4 finished a project and asked for the same 70,000 tensile wire like they had purchased from another welding supply. I didn't say the other supplier was blatantly wrong but I did say they should be using 110,000 tensile wire. I sent them the correct wire along with the spec. sheet and parameters figuring they might be better informed. They were a specialty machine shop building a hydraulic tensile testing machine. I don't know what it was for but it's kind of scary to think what would happen if it broke. As far as someone building their own airplane, the first thing I'd recommend is to get someone with considerable welding experience.
As a salesperson, sometimes you get customers coming in that have no clue what they're talking about too. You try and gently steer them in the right direction but if they don't want to listen, there's nothing you can do to convince them. Tungsten's for an inverter is a good example. At work we printed off an article on tungsten's to show customers. Interestingly enough the sales manager wants me to read up on the latest technology but had no clue an inverter didn't need continuous high frequency on AC. :ashamed: He tried to back track after I said an inverter is a higher frequency to begin with. I guess you get it all forms.:laughing:
The one thing that really annoys me with any salesperson is someone who pretends to know what they're talking about (or what you're talking about). I will give the most honest answer I can. I might occasionally be misinformed but it's not intentional. If I can't answer a customers question because I don't know the correct answer, I will either tell them that or try to find the correct answer or someone that knows the correct answer. Had a customer wanting flux-core wire for T-1 steel. They were 3/4 finished a project and asked for the same 70,000 tensile wire like they had purchased from another welding supply. I didn't say the other supplier was blatantly wrong but I did say they should be using 110,000 tensile wire. I sent them the correct wire along with the spec. sheet and parameters figuring they might be better informed. They were a specialty machine shop building a hydraulic tensile testing machine. I don't know what it was for but it's kind of scary to think what would happen if it broke. As far as someone building their own airplane, the first thing I'd recommend is to get someone with considerable welding experience.
As a salesperson, sometimes you get customers coming in that have no clue what they're talking about too. You try and gently steer them in the right direction but if they don't want to listen, there's nothing you can do to convince them. Tungsten's for an inverter is a good example. At work we printed off an article on tungsten's to show customers. Interestingly enough the sales manager wants me to read up on the latest technology but had no clue an inverter didn't need continuous high frequency on AC. :ashamed: He tried to back track after I said an inverter is a higher frequency to begin with. I guess you get it all forms.:laughing: