Does Anybody Stick Weld Anymore?

[Sloper0204]

Man, I wish I would have caught this thread in the beginning. So much ******** in here.

A few thoughts from the perspective of a Certified Welding Inspector that deals with weld quality on a daily basis:

• The only GMAW process that shouldn't have RT performed on it is a short-circuiting method due to metal deposition process.
• SMAW is, and always will be, a relevant process to learn simply due to the industrial applications.
• GTAW is our preferred method of putting a root into any process piping, with FCAW hot/cap passes.
• Anyone that thinks RT is easy to get welds past should meet my friend called Phased Array.....

They emphasize stick welding because that is where the REAL money is at. Pipeline, ship building,and equipment repair.

RMD is where the money is currently, we had a hell of a time finding qualified RMD welders for the last construction project. Or if you are a jam-up GTAW welder, you can command a premium. Especially if you can scratch start without tons of tungsten inclusions.

Some custom fab work will use MIG but not anything that requires x ray inspection quality welds. Inspection standard welds is what schools teach and right now no MIG process is rated to produce inspection quality welds. Once again, they are teaching what will make the student money not just generally teaching them to weld.

[/quote]This has already been discussed, but see above anyway.

Quite often they are using a Lincoln SST or a Miller RMD for the root pass on the gathering lines for some of the Sagd plants in northern Alberta. Then they are then using Fcaw (flux core with shielding gas) for the fill and cap. All 100% RT.
I did 2 job tests today for a fab shop. One was Smaw- 6010 root 7018 fill & cap- 6g. The other was Gmaw root, Smaw fill and cap (7018).

We have started using more RMD lately, it has some pretty epic metal deposition rates. Depending on what code they are using for acceptance standards, I doubt they are utilizing UT on RMD. Short-circuiting methods are generally examined by either UT Shearwave or UT Phased Array. GMAW root with SMAW fill? Rarely see that, generally its GTAW root with SMAW fill. If running GMAW, its usually 100% GMAW (hardwire or flux core).

The only people that I know of that routinely use stick are pipe welders and I'm way too old to be working in a refinery. In Germany they have pulse MIG and pulse Stick and a lot of advanced welding technology in their schools. Here in American we're teaching students skills that they needed in 1940 to weld tanks together. Another reason we're falling behind.

You obviously haven't been around tank construction much in recent yeas. I would suggest instead of maintaining a condescending attitude towards welding methods taught you learn what industries use what , where, and how. I do agree that more advanced methods need to be taught more, but even if you went to school to run pulsed/computer controlled/push a button and make a weld method, you'll still have to know how to run the "1940 weld tanks together" methods.

 

[lis2323]

I would have to say stick is my most PLEASURABLE welding process. I totally zone out burning rods.

 

[mike93lx]

The school needs to reevaluate having the OP doing any reevaluation and bring in an actual expert in this extrememly important field of education.

+1

Having to ask this on an internet forum is a little scary

 

[GaryM909]

Man, I wish I would have caught this thread in the beginning. So much ******** in here.

A few thoughts from the perspective of a Certified Welding Inspector that deals with weld quality on a daily basis:

• The only GMAW process that shouldn't have RT performed on it is a short-circuiting method due to metal deposition process.
• SMAW is, and always will be, a relevant process to learn simply due to the industrial applications.
• GTAW is our preferred method of putting a root into any process piping, with FCAW hot/cap passes.
• Anyone that thinks RT is easy to get welds past should meet my friend called Phased Array.....

RMD is where the money is currently, we had a hell of a time finding qualified RMD welders for the last construction project. Or if you are a jam-up GTAW welder, you can command a premium. Especially if you can scratch start without tons of tungsten inclusions.

This has already been discussed, but see above anyway.

We have started using more RMD lately, it has some pretty epic metal deposition rates. Depending on what code they are using for acceptance standards, I doubt they are utilizing UT on RMD. Short-circuiting methods are generally examined by either UT Shearwave or UT Phased Array. GMAW root with SMAW fill? Rarely see that, generally its GTAW root with SMAW fill. If running GMAW, its usually 100% GMAW (hardwire or flux core).


You obviously haven't been around tank construction much in recent yeas. I would suggest instead of maintaining a condescending attitude towards welding methods taught you learn what industries use what , where, and how. I do agree that more advanced methods need to be taught more, but even if you went to school to run pulsed/computer controlled/push a button and make a weld method, you'll still have to know how to run the "1940 weld tanks together" methods.[/QUOTE]

 

[JJ_From_NC]

It depends on what industry you're in, when I was a sawmill millwright and everything was rusty dusty and needed maximum tensile strength for those conditions all we did was stick weld with 7018s and you lived by the torch, a man could get by a lot better not knowing how to weld as long as he could work a burning rig

Now that I'm in food production we do a heck of a lot less welding but the only welding technique we use is tig

Sent from my SM-G930R4 using Tapatalk

 

[GaryM909]

I just finished a couple weeks work in a fab shop. 316 Stainless gmaw roots- smaw fill & cap. 100 % xray. All the attachments were done with gtaw but flux coated wire. They didn't want to purge. All the carbon was gmaw root, smaw fill & cap, attachments were done with smaw root-6010. The fab shops around here usually run mig or tig for roots, wire or stick fill & cap. Out in the field smaw is the standard and expect rt, ut or phased array. Stainless and alloys use gtaw for the roots and what ever the procedure is for the fill & cap.

 

[86turbodsl]

I learned to weld on an AC/DC tombstone like the ones shown (I barely ever used the AC half) - what do you get out of the better tools? full-wave DC?

my welding abilities haven't outgrown a tombstone, that's a fact.

The Miller dialarc I had after it had a much nicer arc and easier to get better weld penetration. The 330abp after that is in another class. Power beyond belief.

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[theoldwizard1]

If this is a "one and done" class, you are right, skip stick and gas. If this is the beginning of a series, learning those skill will be useful.

 

[TonyCH]

As a car/general stuff -hobbyist:

- if one needs to be able to weld outside, even if its not perfect windless weather, then stick is a good thing to have. Also if the metal cannot be cleaned completely stick is your thing.

- If all/most welding is done inside (and your insurance covers it) on clean material then MIG/MAG is great.

So, IMO to learn both is better.

 

[Ben1967]

I still use my stick welder from time to time, when i don't won't to get to fancy!

 

[welder4956]

I've been asked to evaluate the welding program at a local community college and in my opinion this program is geared toward 1955. There is a heavy emphasis on stick welding and on Ox-Acetylene welding and to me these are both artifacts of the industrial revolution. MIG and TIG are covered but much more briefly and in far less depth than I think they should be. Most of the class consist of welding 1/4" coupons with stick (and they use that crappy 6013 electrode instead of 7014 or 7018 both of which I think are superior) and then it's on to Ox-Acetylene to weld 1/8" thick coupons which I think is stupid since I'd only use Ox-Acetylene for sheet metal as it takes too damn long to gas weld 1/8" coupons. If they want to teach me how to gas weld up a muffler I'm OK with that. For 1/8" plate I've got an HTP Propulse 200. Ox-Acetylene cutting was a 10 minute demo with no student hands on. To me that's the primary purpose of gas today.

The only people that I know of that routinely use stick are pipe welders and I'm way too old to be working in a refinery. In Germany they have pulse MIG and pulse Stick and a lot of advanced welding technology in their schools. Here in American we're teaching students skills that they needed in 1940 to weld tanks together. Another reason we're falling behind.

Not trying to be insulting or rude, but if your don't already know the answer to this question you should seriously consider declining to participate in the review. They need someone that is very familiar with industry welding practices and preferences in that part of the country.

 

[bigdav160]

If we were trying to be professional welders I can see the heavy emphasis on stick. But few people that I'm aware of use stick to put on a quarter panel or weld 0.084 wall box tubing to build a workbench or make a barbecue or smoker. I think the audience should determine, to some degree, what the priorities should be.

I quit reading the other replies after this one so my point might have been addressed.

Unfortunately for you, if Arizona is like Texas, the "audience" doesn't determine the skills or outcomes taught at public community colleges. The State does! Along with business leaders and local industry focus groups.

The primary mandate to the schools is to teach skills that put people to work. The State does not fund courses for hobbyist.

25 years ago we used to teach hobbyist classes through leisure learning or continuing education programs but since there is no reimbursement funding for these classes they got very expensive and no longer offered.

 

[lis2323]

I quit reading the other replies after this one so my point might have been addressed.



Unfortunately for you, if Arizona is like Texas, the "audience" doesn't determine the skills or outcomes taught at public community colleges. The State does! Along with business leaders and local industry focus groups.



The primary mandate to the schools is to teach skills that put people to work. The State does not fund courses for hobbyist.



25 years ago we used to teach hobbyist classes through leisure learning or continuing education programs but since there is no reimbursement funding for these classes they got very expensive and no longer offered.

Locally, our community college offers welding introduction courses: SMAW,MIG, and GTAW.

Price is $850 for EACH PROCESS and I've heard that while the instructors are good, the classes are too large for adequate "one-on-one" time.

Too expensive for a hobbyist. IMO

 

[mike93lx]

Locally, our community college offers welding introduction courses: SMAW,MIG, and GTAW.

Price is $850 for EACH PROCESS and I've heard that while the instructors are good, the classes are too large for adequate "one-on-one" time.

Too expensive for a hobbyist. IMO

Are there any vocational schools around that offer a night class? That's where i took a welding class that covered gas, stick and mig with a lot of 1:1 for $425

 

[lis2323]

Are there any vocational schools around that offer a night class? That's where i took a welding class that covered gas, stick and mig with a lot of 1:1 for $425

Mike: That WAS the vocational school night class. $850 PER process.

 

[John T]

The school needs to reevaluate having the OP doing any reevaluation and bring in an actual expert in this extremely important field of education.

Totally agree !

I was trying to come up with a way of saying that without coming off as a ****.
LOL

 

[gearhead1]

Yep, I do. Started on a Miller Thunderbolt when I was 15. Still have it. I have a Miller 180 mig with spool gun and from experience I’d say both have their place.

When I was in college I worked for a guy who had a body shop and learned to stick weld on thin car patch panels. That takes some practice. Fortunately I had already welded, so the basics were there. He was too cheap to buy a MIG welder. He’d have been way better off to get a MIG, which is really the right tool for that.

Depends on what I’m doing but welding a driver crash protection bar in a demolition derby car or welding up a tractor implement, stick is the tool for the job. Welding something thin and clean, MIG is the tool for the job. For the money, you can’t beat a stick welder and can get them super cheap used. Not a bad place to start......

 

[Firebrick43]

I will say one thing about my personal experience.

I belive everyone should learn oxy/fuel welding first. Father was a good welder(gtaw stainless transformer frames in the winter for a shop when he wasn't farming) and taught me to weld 7018 smaw at 10~. Buy 15 I was getting comments from pros on how nice my welds looked. Thing was I did not have a clue what I was doing! I had just mastered the speed/distance/weave.

I wasn't till I learned oxy/fuel welding and brazing I really learned what heat control and what the puddle is doing.

Also for the hobbiest gas welding thin metals with a small aircraft torch such as a smith airline (have 2) or metco midget is not only cheaper to get into but quiet and the welds on body panels are soft unlike mig and can be planished out instead of being ground.

The welders I know that have learned on mig and only know mig are some of the worst I know. They have little concept of what the puddle is doing and even pretty beads will have no penetration and even seen terrible porosity on a nice looking mig weld prepared for a pull test.

 

[geartow]

we have a portable stick at the shop that we take out to wrecks and disabled trucks to do temporary to get it to the shop repairs

 

[dwall174]

As just a general home-shop & hobbyist welder I prefer using my old stick welder. I originally learned the basics of welding on a Miller GMAW at a machine shop I worked at, Basically just for maintenance work or making temporary jigs & fixtures.

For general home-shop use the stick welder offers me more flexibility!
I was also able to pick up an old Marquette stick welder cheep from C/L, After a good cleaning & a new paint job it's been a great welder.

Doug

 

[raddksn]

"Stick welding will die right after manual screwdrivers"
I agree with this statement 100%! love mig and tig but stick is still and always be the backbone of the industry!

 

[Alchymist]

Just ran across this video:

 

[BikerDad]

Duckface, I'm not going to reproduce three single spaced typewritten pages. However I don't think it's a me problem or a their problem I think it's an us problem. As mentioned most of the "students" are guys my age that want to build things around the house with box tubing or angle iron or work on a classic car. The thickest metal we will ever weld in our lives (however much more time we've all got considering that most of us are on Medicare) would be 1/4" which any 220V MIG is easily able to handle with good penetration (My HTP Propulse 200 certainly can). If **** gets real it has a synergic dual shield program that makes welding 3/8" plate easy. Dual shield is the bomb. Also, Phoenix is not known as a big farming community. I live in North Phoenix off of Bell Road. I don't see many farms around here unless you consider golf courses farms. Paradise Valley High School where Glendale Community College conducts it's welding classes is not exactly in a rural area.

If we were trying to be professional welders I can see the heavy emphasis on stick. But few people that I'm aware of use stick to put on a quarter panel or weld 0.084 wall box tubing to build a workbench or make a barbecue or smoker. I think the audience should determine, to some degree, what the priorities should be.

Is this a Continuing Ed course, or credits for a degree cours? If it's the former, then your concerns about a mismatch between the needs/desires of the students and the course are valid. If it's a credits for a degree course, then you're barking up the wrong tree. Accreditation and/or certification requirements drive the curriculum, and that means when a student leaves that CommCol with a parchment, they know the basics that the industry expects. Which starts with THE BASICS.

 

[Jazz1]

My boy is journeyman boilermaker and they only learn stick welding currently upgrading in a nuclear reactor. All the welding inside reactor is remote, only perfect welds.
Here's a boilermaker lancing.

 

[dingleberry]

If I could have learned one skill much earlier on it would have been stick welding. Industrial electrical, concrete(embeds) , structural (even on prefab warehouse type tin buildings), equipment repair (ag/construction) railroads (rail car repair is a constant) I’m an industrial mechanic and I do it daily. It is an indispensable skill and a man with a torch a welder a measuring tape and pipe wrench a man can fix the whole entire world.

 

[86turbodsl]

Stick is what I started on and still enjoy it. Very useful on the farm.

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[Crazyjake8493]

I'll break out the stick welder now and then when the work suits it. That being said, stick is by far my weakest skill set in welding. I'd consider myself an above average TIG welder, passable MIG welder, and poor stick welder. I just could never get the hang of it. I love the control of TIG, and the ease of MIG.

 

[Mgdoug3]

Up until 3 weeks ago, 99% of the welding I did was stick welding. For farm repairs and most projects, a stick welder gets the job done. It has saved me time and money and is an invaluable skill to have. I consider myself a very competent stick welder.

I recently added a tig torch to my Thermal Arc suitcase welder and bought a dedicated tig welder shortly after. I still need more practice before I master that skill though.

 

[nelstomlinson]

I agree with dr clyde, there is so much learned from gas and stick welding that can be applied to the other processes and you will be a better hand for it

I would teach in this order;
1 Cutting torch, including scarfing.
2 Gas welding
3 6010 downhill
4 6010 uphill
5 7018 uphill
6 tig steel, then SS, then aluminum
7 mig hard wire
8 mig dual shied/ flux core

I'm going to ride this stick welding dinosaur to the end.

Royce

Royce, the welding class I took did 1 through 5 in roughly that order. You need gas welding experience to learn to watch and control your puddle.

 

[spoon671]

Stick welding is done every single day in my industry (robotics machine building). It is done so often it can be annoying as you have to often clear the area so the work can be done safely, obtain hot work permits to do the work, and block off the area from light spill, causing inconveniences to operations all around.

Every. Single. Day.

 

[Jazz1]

My son is boilermaker, it’s all stick welding. Only mig welding he’s ever done is in my garage

 

[sberry]

Mig is the workhorse of small shops. I could do almost everything I really need to do with it. Its different for different trades and professional welders. No good way to fake it, good stick skills really stand out.

 

[DS-Bane]

I use stick welding for repairs as it is perfect for me..

 

[Parrothead]

It's a night course where most of the students are as old as I am (65). Don't think many of these guys will be welding pipelines anytime soon.

In that case, I’d certainly gear it towards MIG and TIG. I just bought a Titanium 140 and won’t ever bother with stick.

I used to work in a manufacturing plant that made industrial blowers and nobody used stick there either. We had multiple guys who did nothing but weld 8 hours a day. I was not one of the welders, I worked in shipping.

In my world, even with my father in law owning a leased out farm, there’s no need for anything but a MIG

 

[Aaron_W]

I know this is an older thread, but my community college agrees with the OP. Intro class is stick / oxy-fuel, followed by classes for MIG and TIG.

The instructor feels stick and oxy-fuel are still very good for teaching the basics, but agrees that they are declining in popularity, particularly for those who are not looking for employment as a welder. They get a pretty good mix of people taking the welding classes for personal use and younger people looking for a career.

 

[dffay]

The USS America, amphibious assault ship, was largely stick welded. And that’s to Navy specs. 2006-2009 era. It has some steel from the World Trade towers in it also.

 

[welder4956]

Every welding process has pros and cons. For stick welding, some of the pros are:
- portable, an engine driven machine can be used out in a field far from a shop
- simple, a welding machine, work lead, electrode lead with holder, and an electrode. No shielding gas, no wire feeder
- faster than tig
- more tolerant of windy conditions than tig or mig
- more tolerant of mill scale and dirt than tig or mig

Cons:
- less productive than mig or flux core
- not well suited for thin metals
- more skill needed than mig or flux core

I think stick welding is here to stay. It is still being used every day in welding piping and boiler tubes, machinery repair, structural steel, etc. Mig or flux core are usually a better choice for shop welding, but not all welding is done in a shop. If I want to use mig on a job away from the shop, I have to move a gas cylinder and wire feeder plus the welding machine. If I want to weld up on a scaffold with mig, I have to extend the gas hose and wire feeder control cable as well as the work and electrode leads and haul the feeder up on the scaffold. So, if it is a quick job, stick may be a better choice. If it is a long job over several days, it may be worth the effort to drag the wire feeder and gas cylinders out. I think stick will still be around for awhile because there are times when it is a better choice for the job.

 

[welder4956]

My son is boilermaker, it’s all stick welding. Only mig welding he’s ever done is in my garage

For a boilermaker,it really depends what they are welding on. We have boilermakers that the majority of their work is tig welding boiler tubes all day, every day. We also have boilermakers that do tank erection that do only stick or flux core welding all day, every day. We also have boilermakers that do no welding at all and their job is assembling and disassembling the reactor vessel in a nuclear plant.

 

[Downwindtracker 2]

Welding is puddle control. That's the skill. Gas, stick, MIG or TIG, it doesn't really matter how you get the metal hot.

 

[ekimneirbo]

Everyones needs are different, so what you learn should be concentrated on what you want to be able to do. A little basic training on stick and O/A is a good thing even though you don't plan to spend time using it. There are hobbies where O/A is very useful. People who build homebuilt/experimental airplanes often use it to construct fuselages. Mig generally isn't used by amatuers when building airplanes, but it is possible. Stick welding is still useful to farmers. That said, the majority of amatuer welders are going to want to Mig weld most things.
Anyone interested in O/A might want to see this video:
http://www.airbum.com/articles/ArticleZenWelding.html

As Downwindtracker said, "It's all about the puddle".BUT, I disagree that "how you get it hot"
doesn't matter......each type of welding has its own best purpose.