MIG welding or Stick welding?
So you want to try your hand at welding but are unsure which way to go…the 2 types of welding are quite different.
An over view of the weld process………..
Welding is simply joining 2 pieces of metal together by heating them up and introducing a filler metal into the weld joint. Then you move along the joint for the desired length of weld.
Now the big bad enemy of welding is Oxygen. When you heat up the joint and start to add your filler metal, Oxygen tries to get into the joint and muck it up. Any molten metal will start to oxidize if it comes into contact with our friend “Oxygen”. The joint then becomes similar to look at as a sponge with lots of holes running through it. The joint is weak and no good.
The whole idea when welding is to keep oxygen away from the molten pool until it has cooled and turned back into a solid state.
The MIG welding process is named (Metal Inert Gas). This is the process whereby an inert gas is piped over and around the molten weld pool by a special torch. The filler wire in the MIG process is usually housed in the main welding machine some way from the weld joint. There is a special liner tube which runs down the centre of the mig torch and discharges through a nozzle in the end of the torch. The inert gas is fed down a tube inside the torch from a bottle usually with the main welder.
This gas is then fed through the torch and exits around the nozzle right at the welding joint end.The gas then flows over and around the weld and stops the oxygen getting at the molten joint while it solidifies.