not really sure, our teacher says 5 yrs for a fully trained areospace quality welder.

 

grrr, i welded some brackets onto my intercooler today. it looks like total ***. i need some pointers for sure.

 

here was my first couple nights pad of beads:

 

That set of beads furthest back looks good. Enjoy the class, I'll probably be taking onoe in the fall at my local community college to keep practiced.

 

lol, at least you found something positive to say about one of those beads

I did alot of stop and start with this one, before I was shown how to restart correctly anyway, thats what all those high spots(nubs) are.

We were working with filler material tonight, got about 11 solid beads down, and 4 that looked like hammered ****

 

I just got my GTAW certificate from my local college. TIG or gtaw as it is now called is awesome. I have taken it @ Lincoln electric and @ my local college. Now I just need to find a welding project. Adding the filler is where it gets a little trickier Grippy . Keep your heat right, smooth with that cup now, don't dip the tungsten, add the filler when the puddle opens. Thats it. Your doin fine!!!

 

thanks, if I finish another pad of beads tonight I'll see about taking another pic with the filler material. I'm going to try "walking the cup" for the first time tonight

 

"walking the cup" Thats an art all to its own. good luck! Practice is the only cure !!!

 

I seemed to pick up "walking the cup" fairly well tonight; my biggest problem was moving to slowly and, ultimately introducing too much heat into the material. Besides that, my restarts are MUCH better than last week; can hardly tell where they were at.

 

Good deal. The hardest part for me is moving the filler material with my left hand.