Basics of Shielded Metal Arc Welding

Video Transcript

Hello! My name is Mac. I am here on behalf of expertvillage.com. We would like to continue our discussions on the arc welding process of stick welding. This is an electrode holder and this is one of the shielded metal arc welding electrodes. Place the electrode in the electrode holder, turn the handle and clamp the electrode firmly in the electrode holder. When you turn the machine on and select the proper amount of current, this electrode becomes electrically charged. It is basically a live wire now. When you touch it down to a piece of steel that is grounded into the machine like that you create an electric arc that begins to melt the wire. The wire is covered with a flex that prevents oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere from getting at the weld puddle. As you proceed making the weld, the flex seals the weld off from the atmosphere and tempers it as it proceeds. It is very important to learn how to strike an arc properly. It is the basic beginning technique that you will learn. What I suggest to my students is they scratch the electrode like a match, like this. Scratch it like a match and when the arc is established, begin making a bead of weld. But before we can do that I teach my students to make rows of nice neat little box like that. On a steel plate of about a quarter of an inch thicker, we begin by striking an arc, running a circle, a little bit of a dot like that, holding the arc length about sixteenth of an inch or so long, feeding the electrode into the arc as it melts off in a nice smooth motion and after having made two or three circles, break the arc, move on, make another strike, make another dot, little pile of weld, break the arc, move on and make another dot. This exercise is designed to teach a student how to strike an arc every time. Make nice concentric rows of evenly spaced dots. This is the very beginning of learning how to be an arc welder.

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