MIG welding—The basics and then some

Marty Rice, over at TheFabricator.com has written some nice things. Here's a sample...

"You ran much MIG?” the foreman asked. “Yeah (I lied), quite a bit.” Heck, I didn’t even know what MIG was! I had been welding a couple of semesters at a vocational college and had gotten pretty good with stick welding. So Phil Newell, the head instructor who used to scream in my ear, “Relax your hand. Watch the puddle.” sent me to apply for an entry-level welding job.

The job was flat welding thin-gauge steel. The foreman took me to a testing area and showed me the MIG machine. He then gave me four pieces of thin-gauge tubing and told me how he wanted them welded. He said he’d be back in about 20 minutes to check on me. After he walked out, I contemplated what I should do. Should I tell him I didn’t know diddlysquat? Should I run out, jump in my truck, and tear outta there?

A Humbling Experience

I picked up the MIG gun and didn’t realize I was pressing the trigger. I was looking at the machine, trying to figure out the settings, when something touched my leg. About 10 feet of wire had run out of the gun! I madly tried to break it off by bending it back and forth. After about a hundred bends, I looked down at the table and saw a pair of wire cutters. “So that’s what they do, they cut it off,” I thought."

See the rest at over at The Fabricator...