I’ve just submitted two welding classes. They should show up in 72 hours.
They are:
Welding Safety and Show me you can weld so I can certify you, on May 19th from 10AM until noon. This has 10 spots. Feel free to show up just for the safety, and leave, but you MAY NOT skip the safety portion if you want to weld at the makerspace. If you are more than 5 mins late, you’ve missed enough of the safety portion I won’t be able to certify you.
Welding Safety and TIG welding on May 19th from 1PM until 4PM. Same as above, you miss the first 5 mins, and you can’t get the certification. This will include a safety discussion and makerspace rules, and then kick off with welding for a couple of hours. Make sure you follow the clothing guidelines.
Feel free to ask any questions you may have.
Also, there has been some recent talk about women and welding. Women are people, and all people are welcome in my classes. If you register for a spot, I’ll do my best to make sure you can get to welding.
The best way I’ve seen is to do a quick demo like our current class, and then instead of having all of the class watch each person weld, split them into pairs or threes or even groups of 8 or something and then the instructor float to multiple welding tables.
We discussed it at the last metal shop committee meeting, and we were thinking something like 3 or 4 tables, and then one or two instructors could teach as many as 24 students at a time.
At this point, we could buy a few more helmets, we’ve got 2 TIG machines, we just need two welding tables and we could double the class size.
I think if you are only going to learn one process, TIG is the best. You can weld almost anything and gives you the most operator control.
Were the same class to be taught in MIG, we could use the Hobart and the Miller.
As in you don’t think you could handle the multi-task, or you see some reason to prohibit it from happening?
TIG is the cleanest of the welding processes. If it weren’t for the bright light you wouldn’t know there was someone welding in the same room as you. The first step in TIG welding is making sure the weld piece is very clean, and so there aren’t really “fumes” to speak of. With MIG, there can be some smoke/fumes, but Stick is the one we definitely don’t have the exhaust to do that for.
Since you’re in the thread, I really enjoyed you’re lathe class, if you’d like to take the TIG welding, I’d be down for teaching you a thing or two If you were going to have to weld something on your scale, TIG is the only process that can be precise enough to do it.
If you can sit on a barstool, the metal shop has two or three of those. I normally instruct the students to learn to weld sitting down on a stool since they have fewer things to worry about with balance etc. It does require enough footwork to control the pedal, but if you can drive then you should have enough dexterity.
The class is typically an hour of me talking about the safety and dangers of welding, and then a demo, and welding one by one a few times around.
What I’m trying to say is, I’m willing to make it safe and fun for you to weld if you want to try it.
Aww, man; I missed it. I need to keep an eye out for the next one. Watching “This Old Tony” on Youtube has given me the TIG welding bug, so I really want to learn it.
