Welding Courses

[d7ve_b 44 1 Cars]

I'm looking at doing a night school course in welding/car body repair. A work friend has just completed a course and said "They run 12 week courses 3 times a year in MIG, TIG, Oxyacetylene or Stick". I'm assuming you have to choose between the four types (I need to confirm when I ring them), but if this is the case, is there a type/technology which is most popular/relevant?

 

If it isn't already obvious I know nothing about welding/body repair at the moment!

[Baz 421]

I'd start with MIG tbh. Mind you, if you learn OxyAcet/Gas welding you'll find MIG'ing easy, i learnt with gas and hence can use a MIG fairly well, but i'd still like to attend a course because i struggle with the setting up, need more direction & practice! My dad's a crap tutor!

 

I wish they actually ran the courses round here, everytime they set one up it never goes ahead as it's usually so under-subscribed afaik.

Edited September 27, 2011 by Baz

[chipstick 382 1 Cars]

I would be interested in doing a course.

 

A mate who welds as a job just keeps telling me to buy a welder, get some sheet metal, shut myself away and experiment to teach myself until I get it right

 

Which sounds doable, but learning the theory on why it is doing things, and what makes a weld a good one etc would be better coming from a course for piece of mind IMO.

[Matt Holley 11]

I'm looking at doing a night school course in welding/car body repair. A work friend has just completed a course and said "They run 12 week courses 3 times a year in MIG, TIG, Oxyacetylene or Stick". I'm assuming you have to choose between the four types

 

I've just started a course and we are doing them all through out the course, the tutor did say he would advise us to focus more on the MIG as TIG is very difficult and you could spend the whole 10 weeks doing it and still not be any good, we will get the chance to do it though.

 

I've done welding at work for years but like many I have never been taught and find it difficult to set the welder up, first impressions on the course are good.

[SurGie 54]

At Leicester college they are doing a one day coarse and said it would help if the person had some welding experience to have that course. Then you have passed you can have a higher grade day course and so one. Im thinking of going at some point. Maybe your area has the same sort of courses?

 

OXY welding when i first tried it at body work college was well easy and yet after doing that i tried MIG and was harder, its all about the settings when it comes to MIG welding. On my car, even though the setting were correct the steel was thinner in some parts due to rust etc, this made it harder due to blowing holes through. Hearing the sound of the welding helps you stop this but as im a deaf git that didn't help

 

When i weld clean fresh steel its a piece of piss once the setting are sorted, but on old rusty cars its quite hard to master., especially on 205's

 

Try the MIG-welding & paint forum, it has loads of tips etc, then get yourself a welder and practice,practice and yes practice some more.

[welshpug 1,657]

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/index.php

 

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

Dave, MIG welding is the most common for car body repair these days, stick welding is generally used on heavy gauge industrial fabrications, gas welding is good if you are good at it, but it is also possible to make a massive warped mess of whatever you are trying to weld. TIG is the bollocks but only really suitable for welding clean new material, trying to use it to repair rusty stuff is a non starter.

 

If you are serious about getting into it, I would recommend you buy a MIG first of all and have a good play with it. Then when you have got the knack of welding and keeping your hand steady whilst looking through the mask etc, THEN go and do your course. I reckon you will get much more out of it if you know one end of a welding torch from the other, rather than starting totally from scratch.

[Baz 421]

coarse course courses?

 

Horses for courses, courses for coarses.

[SurGie 54]

Of coarse

[Cameron 16]

I wouldn't recommend buying a welder before taking a course, as you really need to be shown what's right and what's wrong before you can set the machine up properly yourself; it's not really something you can get by reading up on it, you need to be able to see and hear the difference.

 

Once you know the basic rules of setting up a machine it's actually very easy to get it right, the rest just comes down to having a steady hand and (probably most important of all) knowing where to rest your hands and where to start / stop so you can get a decent length run of weld. The best advice I ever got was to place your hands so that you're comfortable where you want to FINISH welding, not start, then you can contort yourself into the start position - the idea is that while you're moving along it gets more comfortable, not less.

[SurGie 54]

Really, well i managed to figure working out a Portamig welder by reading/posting on the MiG forum, Portamig's own instructions are some what bewildering

 

If i can do it, anyone can

[Cameron 16]

..you really need to be shown what's right and what's wrong before you can set the machine up properly yourself..

 

When I first started I could set up a machine to do what I would consider now to be pretty crude welds, but what I considered at the time to be pretty good! It wasn't until I was shown by somebody with a lot of experience, who could see what I was doing wrong and then give relevant and useful advice (rather than the misunderstood suggestions / hearsay / generalisations / rubbish you would get from researching on the internet) that I started to actually know what I was doing!

 

I'm just basing this advice on the guy being an absolute novice i.e. never picked up a welding torch before. I wouldn't feel comfortable telling someone to spend ~200 quid on a welder only for them to find they absolutely hate it / are hopeless at it, especially if it's just because they had been given dodgy instructions! If you've never done it before, get proper tuition first, then decide whether you want to buy the machine.

Edited September 28, 2011 by Cameron

[SurGie 54]

Sure, all im saying is doing some research before anything will help, the MiG forum has all the info and safety points. They also have welding projects to give a newbie a taste of what can be learned. Then he can decide whether to get one to practice on first or not. Thats the way i would do it.

 

If this member wanted to have a taste of welding first, then he could always ask to have a go on someones MiG welder on the MiG forum or even on here.

 

Oh and years ago i had a 40year experienced welder on my old car before and his was totally s*it compared to the ones on the MiG forum. Good welding can be self taught, bad welding can happen even with teaching.

Edited September 28, 2011 by SurGie

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

I don't necessarily agree with your points Cameron.

 

I still maintain the average person will get far more out of a night school class if they go there able to pull the MIG trigger without moving their arm 2 inches to the left when doing so, can move the torch along whilst keeping it a steady distance from the job, be able to weld and breathe at the same time, and all the other bits that first time welders will do, but you can quite quickly with a little practise/experience/whatever you wish to call it, learn not to do.

 

I am a self taught welder, MIG, TIG & Stick.

[Cameron 16]

I don't necessarily agree with your points Cameron.

 

I still maintain the average person will get far more out of a night school class if they go there able to pull the MIG trigger without moving their arm 2 inches to the left when doing so, can move the torch along whilst keeping it a steady distance from the job, be able to weld and breathe at the same time, and all the other bits that first time welders will do, but you can quite quickly with a little practise/experience/whatever you wish to call it, learn not to do.

 

I am a self taught welder, MIG, TIG & Stick.

 

Ah but without sounding big-headed, like me you're a very practically minded person and (even more so with you being a fair bit older wiser) have a good amount of fabrication experience.

 

By all means have a go at it first if you can get access to a machine, but I still wouldn't recommend buying one with zero experience.

Edited September 28, 2011 by Cameron

[ellis 7]

Thought id pipe up and give my view as i am also a self taught welder of 10 years now. While i do agree that night school would be good for someone wanting to learn, i also think that once you are shown the basics the best way is just to practice and practice as i did. Where i work we have many coded and fully qualified welders , and without sounding big headed some of them, their work is shocking compared to my own. The main points have already been pointed out, a steady hand is very important, especially with tig welding. I learnt both tig and mig alloy welding, after learning alloy , steel, copper ect are all very easy due to how fast the alloy burns away. As someone already said, learning to weld nice clean metal is a total differant game to welding old rusty cars ect. You could quite easy buy a cheap mig welding set, id advise tho if you do so to make sure you get one that uses both gas and no gas as from experiance welding with no gas isnt great. It takes time to get good, but once you get it its like rideing a bike, very easy.It may sound silly but also haveing a passion for it helps, any welder can throw down a weld but haveing great pride in your work and wanting it to look good also goes a long way to makeing you a good welder.

 

Its worth learning just to make posh thinks like this

 

 

[Cameron 16]

I guess my point is - think how quickly you would have developed if you were instructed from the start rather than self-taught.

 

In the year that I was on placement I went from knowing the very basics of TIG to being able to produce very high quality stuff, and most of that development took place in the first couple of months while I was being supervised / instructed. I think if I'd have carried on being self-taught then it would have taken me a lot longer to get as good.

[Rippthrough 98]

^I'm self taught, and it took perhaps a couple of days on MIG before I was happy welding out of position on cages....

 

The very best thing you can do, is if you have a mate with a welder, see if they'll let you have a go and show you the various functions on it, like Tom said, if you have the hang of holding the torch in the right place, positioning your body properly, etc, beforehand, you'll get a lot more bang for your buck out of the course.

[Cameron 16]

Ok, either you've not read my posts properly or I'm not making my point clear enough..

 

I'm saying someone shouldn't BUY a welder without at least seeing if they're any good at it first, NOT that they should go on a course before picking up a torch!!

 

I only bought a TIG because at the time I'd had about 6 months experience of TIG welding 8-9 hours a day, every single day. I certainly wouldn't have bought the machine without even trying to weld first!

 

I'm trying to save the OP from going out and potentially wasting his money, not bragging about how good I am at welding and how quickly I picked it up. If I were the OP - starting from scratch with zero experience - I would either go on an evening course in MIG & TIG or I'd find a mate with some good experience and decent kit to teach me. What I absolutely would not do is go out and spend £200+ on welding gear before I had any idea what I was doing!

Edited September 29, 2011 by Cameron

[Rippthrough 98]

Well, that's you, I quite often spend a money on tools I've never used before and don't know what I'm doing with

[Cameron 16]

Money > sense.

[welshpug 1,657]

bought that tube bender yet phill?

[Rippthrough 98]

bought that tube bender yet phill?

 

This weekend hopefully, big hole in the bank balance that one!

[Cameron 16]

Interesting.. I'll be coming to you when I need an exhaust bent up then.

[Rippthrough 98]

Are you sure I can do it without going on an exhaust-bending course?