Welding for Beginners

All the gear we needed for welding

Tonight I continued my nine week workshop practice course at AUT. We completed the lathe machine work last week so it was time for another rotation, and this time we were introduced to welding. Our teaching assistant’s name was Makirai Henry and he gave us a prep talk before we started. He emphasised the importance of wearing our eye protection helmets to prevent us from getting “arc eyes”, a painful eye condition caused by exposure to bright light. We were sent to our booths to set up our welding machines and make sure all the settings were set correctly. When we gathered around in a group again, Makirai told us that we would be beginning with arc welding and demonstrated how to make a simple weld. At first it looked pretty scary because of all the sparks flying around everywhere, but he reassured us that it was simple to ignite the stick once we got used to it. We took turns striking the metal to start the weld and I was pretty nervous when it was my turn. I wasn’t so much worried about the sparks by that time, but just the fact that I was effectively blindfolded when I had my helmet on since the lens was so dark. That meant that I couldn’t even see where I was striking the arc and I didn’t want to miss the metal obviously!

This was the welding machine we used to do arc welding

Our first task with our welding machines was just to make simple lines of welds keeping them even and straight. My first couple of welds were quite terrible to be honest; they probably wouldn’t hold anything together! But after a while I started getting the hang of it, and by the time I was up to my 6th weld, things were looking a whole lot better. I was even complimented by Makirai, the welding man. At the end of the session, we were told to dump our pieces of metal in the rubbish but I decided to hang on to mine, since it was my first welding experience. It doesn’t really have any use though, perhaps maybe just a paper-weight.

I’ve only got another two weeks left of my workshop practice at AUT and then it will be all over. Despite initially feeling a little apprehensive about spending 3 hours every week in a workshop, I think I’m actually going to miss it when it’s all over. Next week we’ll be finishing off arc welding before moving on to mig welding. I wonder what that will be like.