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stick welding without PPE

taiwanluthiers

Cast Iron
Joined
Dec 6, 2016
Location
Xinjhuan District, New Taipei City
I would never do this by the way...

In Taiwan I have seen so many construction sites where the worker is stick welding, not wearing any kind of PPE, masks, and maybe a rubber glove. They would point the stick at wherever they want to weld and then shield the weld point with their hand and weld.

Is that even a safe way to weld? Sometimes they wear rubber gloves and the weld burns holes through them because of the splatter. Weird thing is, I never seem to see much claims for labor insurance for arc eyes...

I TIG welded with only a goggle one time and I regretted it. My face was sunburned.
 
Definitely not safe and plenty of data to back it up. It’s also a land where labor is cheap and plenty of workers willing to take one’s place when injured and can’t work. One doesn’t win the race to the bottom worrying about things like PPE.


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I'm not even sure why they're so stingy about PPE. A decent auto darkening (which is more than enough for TIG and stick welding) costs like 10 dollars. My Chinese TIG welder came with one, it's actually quite good. I mean shielding the arc with your hand is not only a pain to do (you can't see what you're doing) but is unsafe too.

Then you got those welding mask on a stick that you hold up with your hand... ever try those?
 
plenty of some of the best welders in the world are in China.
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obviously some "welders" are not full time professional welders but temp workers often just off the farm.
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common in China that building window has a balcony with metal roof and thin SS tubing bars. hang clothes up to dry without worrying about theft. seen plenty of .04 thick SS welding done that be hard for anybody to do no matter what country. basically more welding being done in China, easily than in USA, not even close
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even 20 years ago typical Chinese welding store would have vastly more welding machines on display than typical USA store.
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sure temp worker just off the farm might do welding kind of crude.
 

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There's lots of good welding machines in China too. I bought a DC only TIG with pulse control, and it costs like 2000RMB, and shipping was maybe 200RMB to Taiwan. In Taiwan they sell the same welder for 2x the cost.

I can also get a AC/DC welder for a little more... but I never bought the AC/DC machine because it doesn't have plasma cutting function (not absolutely needed but very useful to have, especially for cutting steel bars to size). If I buy another AC/DC machine I'll just dedicate the one I have to plasma/stick.
 
There's lots of good welding machines in China too. I bought a DC only TIG with pulse control, and it costs like 2000RMB, and shipping was maybe 200RMB to Taiwan. In Taiwan they sell the same welder for 2x the cost.

I can also get a AC/DC welder for a little more... but I never bought the AC/DC machine because it doesn't have plasma cutting function (not absolutely needed but very useful to have, especially for cutting steel bars to size). If I buy another AC/DC machine I'll just dedicate the one I have to plasma/stick.

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big mix of people and equipment welding in China. from very crude to very advanced. depends on who is in charge of job site what is acceptable.
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obviously walk up customer off the street getting metal bars made for his windows wants a very good job done. slightest quality look problem and they go down the street and chose a different welder from often dozens of garage door shops that do welding. typical Chinese city of over 1 million people might easily have over 100 shops doing welding spread throughout the city. many are small one man shops and competition among them is common. often garage door left open so potential customers can see what shop does
 
I have done it....Yup.

1/8" dia. 7014 on a.c. (no arc blow problems) and the weld was a fillet in a corner.

Simply lay the rod in there.
 
I have done it....Yup.

1/8" dia. 7014 on a.c. (no arc blow problems) and the weld was a fillet in a corner.

Simply lay the rod in there.
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doesnt matter what country you in. if you went to a welding job interview and did a welding test with no helmet 99% of time you aint going to get the job
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you got any guy from country side used to a toe la gee he might not weld same as a city guy. city often has many temp workers from the country side
 

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plenty of some of the best welders in the world are in China.
.
obviously some "welders" are not full time professional welders but temp workers often just off the farm.
.
common in China that building window has a balcony with metal roof and thin SS tubing bars. hang clothes up to dry without worrying about theft. seen plenty of .04 thick SS welding done that be hard for anybody to do no matter what country. basically more welding being done in China, easily than in USA, not even close
.
even 20 years ago typical Chinese welding store would have vastly more welding machines on display than typical USA store.
.
sure temp worker just off the farm might do welding kind of crude.

I used to weld 20 gage 304 sheet metal the 1" square 316ss blocks...it's not hard once you get the hang of it.
 
A little off topic, but I see a lot of youtube videos and pictures of welds with stainless and they are shiny. Did they clean them up or were they that way?

Even on a good weld I do with stainless filler rods they are often gray if it's a good weld. Not shiny. Also my tungsten keeps balling up after a few minutes of welding and the tungsten often turns blue or black.

In case you are wondering if I ended up connecting the torch backwards (DCEP), I did not. On my machine it's not even possible to DCEP because the torch air line and the power line comes out of one port, threaded with M16 x 1.5 and that carries both the air and the current, and the ground clamp will only work if stuck in the right port (if you stuck the ground clamp in the wrong port it will not weld at all).

Do you think it's a leak in the system causing the tungsten to ball up and the not the best looking weld? I tried fixing any possible point of leak and it improves things, but my torch is one of those Chinese QQ-150 types that are not compatible with WP17/18/26 consumables. So I ended up just using those consumables in the QQ150 resulting in some weird fits...
 
Tungsten balling up would probably be to much power for that size. Turning blue/black would be not enough post flow gas. Post flow needs to flow until the tungsten is cooled just enough to not turn colors. It is possible there is air getting into the gas line which could make the weld an off color as well as not giving full protection to the tungsten in post flow.
Weld should be a pretty looking gold / blue color. Another possibility is a bad bottle of gas- not pure argon.
 
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doesnt matter what country you in. if you went to a welding job interview and did a welding test with no helmet 99% of time you aint going to get the job
.
you got any guy from country side used to a toe la gee he might not weld same as a city guy. city often has many temp workers from the country side

So you can't doo what I can ?

Better check that spreadsheet.
 
A little off topic, but I see a lot of youtube videos and pictures of welds with stainless and they are shiny. Did they clean them up or were they that way?

Even on a good weld I do with stainless filler rods they are often gray if it's a good weld. Not shiny. Also my tungsten keeps balling up after a few minutes of welding and the tungsten often turns blue or black.

In case you are wondering if I ended up connecting the torch backwards (DCEP), I did not. On my machine it's not even possible to DCEP because the torch air line and the power line comes out of one port, threaded with M16 x 1.5 and that carries both the air and the current, and the ground clamp will only work if stuck in the right port (if you stuck the ground clamp in the wrong port it will not weld at all).

Do you think it's a leak in the system causing the tungsten to ball up and the not the best looking weld? I tried fixing any possible point of leak and it improves things, but my torch is one of those Chinese QQ-150 types that are not compatible with WP17/18/26 consumables. So I ended up just using those consumables in the QQ150 resulting in some weird fits...

If it's turning gray you probably have the electrode out too far or not enough gas flow. The only time I've seen a tungsten ball on dcen is when you dip the electrode or hit the electrode with the filler...or both lol.
 
Something is up with your gas. You have a leak somewhere or you have a bad tank of gas.
A leak is Way more likely than bad gas.
Soap bubble all of your connections, then check for proper seating of your torch components.
The ceramic cup *Has* to seat right against what ever teflon (white bit) spacer your torch has. If it doesn't you will end up with all sorts of problems...
IF your hoses are fairly new, then its likely something in the torch head. It's far less common for machines to leak internally. m
Too high of a gas flow, too much stickout, too much amperage, no post flow, and a whole host of other reasons could be at play.
 
I don't think it's amperage... I mean the tungsten is 3/32 which is good up to 200 amps (I think).

I sealed the junction between the cup and the torch with electrical tape, it's a temporary fix until I get the proper torch (QQ150 uses consumables that are completely different than everything else so the fit may be suspect) and it seems to improve things...
 
I don't think it's amperage... I mean the tungsten is 3/32 which is good up to 200 amps (I think).

I sealed the junction between the cup and the torch with electrical tape, it's a temporary fix until I get the proper torch (QQ150 uses consumables that are completely different than everything else so the fit may be suspect) and it seems to improve things...

What grade of tungsten you use?

And gray weld sounds like you have bad gas, bad connections or you are just n00b with TIG. Super-duper easy to get gray welds if you just started welding stainless.
Getting totally bright weld bead without any polishing is possible but you need a bag of tricks and good technique for that. Shades of yellow to blue would be more common and easier to archieve.
 








 
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