Welding Essay

Types of welding and welding processes

Welding has been around since the 1800’s with basic processes, like the use of the oxy-acetylene torch. Then the process of arc welding came into play in the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s, when electrical welding became widely popular. Now there are many different kinds of arc welding with materials such as different electrodes, fluxes, and gases. There is some basic equipment that is needed while welding. First and foremost, a welding mask is needed to protect the eyes from the extremely bright light created by the arc. UV light can also come from arcs, so eye protection is needed for this as well. Another necessary piece of safety equipment is gloves. A thick protective specially designed welding glove is used for

Since the aluminum wire that gets fed through the cord is too soft to be pushed through like the steel wire, either a push-pull gun or a spool gun is required. A spool gun has the spool of wire attached right to the gun so the wire doesn’t travel through the cord. A push-pull gun helps out the wire by pulling the wire being pushed from the welder itself so it doesn’t bundle up in the cord. The advantage the push-pull gun has over the spool gun is size. There is the ability to get in a lot tighter spaces with a push-pull gun than with a spool gun because the push-pull gun is about the same size as a regular MIG gun. TIG welding is the next type of welding. TIG stands for Tungsten Inert Gas. TIG is formally known as GTAW (Gas Tungsten Arc Welding) (“Learn how to TIG weld!”). There are three main parts to a TIG welder: the torch, the foot pedal, and the filler rod. The torch houses the Tungsten and the inert gas shield. The foot pedal controls the amperage for better control of the weld, as well as the best amount of penetration into the base metal. Finally, the filler rod is what you dip into the weld to increase the weld puddle