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Welding with cold or moist 7018 rods
When you first learn to weld, you will be told that your 7018 rods have to be kept in an oven to keep moisture out of the flux. Absolutely true. However, when you get out in the real world, and here my experience is in industrial welding, you will find you don't always get that. There will come a time when you have to weld with rods that are cold and may have flux breaking off. That will make the rod stick to the metal. The current will heat the rod until it melts off. Not good! So here are a few tricks to make your life a little easier. Try to have a piece of metal you can ground to that you can arc off of. I used to keep a strip about 8 to 12 inches long and 3 to 4 inches wide in my bag. If your rods are cold and stick, immediately take the stinger off the rod, leaving the rod stuck. After it cools off, break it off the piece you are welding. That's going to make some of your flux fall off. Hook your ground to your spare piece of metal and very lightly drag it down the strip. With practice, you'll be able to get an arc going and stay off the metal about 1/4 inch and let the molten metal drip off the rod. Pull out of the arc when you've gotten past the broken flux. Let the rod cool a bit and carefully break or scrape the flux cap off the end of the rod. I stress carefully, so you don't knock more flux off and have to start over. Another thing you can do once you've pulled out of the arc is quickly flick the rod to throw the flux cap off. You will end up with clean flux up around the rod end, and the rod will be down inside it just a bit. This is much better than the first way, but it might take a bit of practice. When you strike the next arc, try to do it a little bit sideways so your rod doesn't stick again. This will get the job done when you're in a crunch, but you really never want to use cold or moist 7018 rods. The optimum situation is to have a portable rod oven you can take with you to your work area. Second to that is a rod canister, which every stick welder should own. It won't keep them hot, but it will keep moisture out. In a humid climate, you don't want to put more than 30 minutes worth in your pouch at a time. A quality job where your welds will be x-rayed will have portable ovens you can check out from the tool shed. Consider adding a portable oven to your personal tool list for the jobs that don't provide one. That will save you a lot of headaches down the road! |
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youtube has this pocket welder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgAThGrCV4A
interesting concept. can you weld overhead?
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
I can weld over head, backwards, upside down and hanging from my lanyards in midair....well, ok, maybe not backwards...haha ;)
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This intel was contributed by Raven420
Raven420
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May, 2012
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