Welding School

If you have made a decision to go to welding school have you researched what type of welder you want to be? If you do not know someone that is a welder by trade or been around the welding industry very much this should be one of the many things to think about.

In most cases when you come out of welding school your typically going to get a job in a shop or work on a construction site. Below I will discuss pros and cons of being a shop or field welder.

Shop Welding

Pros:

* Shop welders usually get the benefit of having a roof over your head year around. Most usually you will have access to a heat source for warmth in the winter and some shops have air conditioning for the summer months.

* Typically most shops have benefits with 401k, insurance, dental etc…

* Longer lasting employment

* Fairly safe environment

* Not extremely physically demanding

Cons:

* Pay can be less than stellar

* Manufacturing environment can be repetitious and non-fulfilling

* Working on concrete all day every day can take a toll on your knees and feet after years

Field Welding

Pros:

* Possibility of making up to $100,000 or more a year

* Less welding time and more down time

* Per deim pay can add up to considerable amount  of money in a year

* Job completion bonus sometimes

* Good paying jobs are easier to find if your willing to travel

* Can work for yourself by adding your own welding rig (truck and machine) to increase pay

Cons:

* Sometimes you have to work in a more dangerous environment

* Some work takes place outdoors and depending on season can be a challenge

* At times work can be physically demanding

* Time off from work can be nice after working months of overtime

Opinion: I have spent many years shop welding and field welding. Once you become proficient in welding processes like tig, stick, mig and fluxcore you can do both. I have always leaned towards field welding. Every time i have stayed in a shop for a long period of time I find the monotony of doing the same thing every day at the same place drains my life force. The money plays a big part also. I always go broke in a shop. I never really build up a cushion financially. The field provides more challenges but i always feel a sense of accomplishment when a job is over and usually have a nice bank account to show for it.

Conclusion: For someone who just gets out of welding school the best bet would be to spend some time in a shop to develop the new skills you have just learned. Try to get hired on a shop that does tig and stick pipe welding. This will sharpen your skills for the field if you decide to venture there. Mig and fluxcore welding will never get your pocket fat.

The successful welding of galvanized steel is so widely accepted that there is very little recently-published mechanical property data comparing uncoated versus galvanized weld properties. The welding industry recognized fifty years ago that welds on galvanized steel and welds on uncoated steel are of comparable strength if the quality of the welds is comparable. Recent publications on welding galvanized steels deal with weld toughness, porosity control, weld appearance, restoring corrosion resistance and other issues that are much more complex than the strength of the weld. When using SMAW (”stick”) welding, galvanized steel can be welded in the same manner as uncoated steel. When using MIG or flux cored welding, one may have to adjust the voltage slightly to control spatter, and one may have to clean the welding gun of spatter and zinc oxide deposits more frequently that when welding uncoated steel. Hobart makes a flux cored wire called “Galvacore” that some users have had good success with when welding galvanized steel. When difficulty is encountered welding galvanized steel that was not encountered during welding uncoated steel, it is usually because the Welding Engineer has not accounted for the volume of gas that is evolved by the vaporization of zinc during welding. The thicker the zinc coating, the more fumes are generated, and those fumes have to be able to escape easily into the atmosphere and not be forced through the liquid weld metal. For example, welding galvanized plates to form a T-joint is a commonly troublesome situation. Since the galvanized edge of one plate is butted against another galvanized surface, the zinc vapors that are formed at the abutting surfaces will not be able to escape to atmosphere easily as the zinc is vaporized. Instead, they will blow into the weld pool, creating porosity or a poor weld surface. This is aggravated when welding conventionally hot-dipped products, since the edges frequently have excessively heavy zinc coatings. One solution is to separate the parts by 1/16 inch using wire spacers or fixtures which will leave a gap for the zinc vapors to escape easily. Other approaches are to use a slight (15°) bevel on one member (Figure 1), to remove the zinc from the faying surfaces by shearing or mechanically cuting the plate where the faying surfaces will meet, and to abrasively remove most of the zinc from one or both of the faying surfaces (Figure 2). Any of these methods will significantly reduce the amount of zinc between the parts, and this will reduce the volume of gas evolved, improving weld quality.

Conclusion: This is all really great technical speak and some good overall general knowledge on welding on galvanized steel. Unfortunetly, I have a lot of hands on knowledge about this subject after the last job i just completed. No welder alive likes to weld on galvanized. The vapors are terrible and it pops irratically which can result in some nice burns if your not very carefull and sometimes even if you are. I have found that if you clean the weld area real good. My definition of “real good” would be grinding the area until a significant amount of sparks are coming from your grinder. The galvanized coating does not emit sparks. When you reach metal with you’re grinder it will start throwing sparks. I usually weld my first pass with 6010 rod to create some good base metal. Then i aplly 7018 over that to get a nice looking weld on galvanized steel.