Technology & Patterns

Last Christmas Santa brought Matt and I materials and blueprints for a REALLY cool go-kart called The Arachnid. This go-kart is build from standard square tube steel stock, a Predator motor and other knick-knacks (pedals, steering wheel, brakes, etc.) from sites around the internet. We’ve done a lot of motor work and assembly before so we had confidence in that. What we were nervous about was cutting and welding such a complex thing that would be carrying us over the ground as 30+ miles per hour!

So, last weekend my son, Matt, and I attended a welding class at the Virginia School of Metal. We took Welding 101: Introduction to MIG Welding. Headline: It was excellent.

The team at VA School of Metal (Owner: Steve, Instructor: Matt) were friendly, crazy knowledgeable and good teachers. We had a great time learning, improving our technique, and, most importantly, learning the WHY behind good technique and bad technique.

There is no shortage of how-to welding videos on YouTube. I’ve not yet seen one that explains the WHY very well. What we did at VA School of Metal was to fiddle with:

• gas volume
• voltage
• wire speed
• inductance
• stick out
• arc spacing

We would manipulate each of these settings and weld a little bit until we developed a sense of the impact the adjustment had on the weld. Then, we’d interrogate our instructors to understand WHY that was happening. For Matt (my son) and I it was an excellent way to learn.

We now KNOW that caused our nasty looking welds and how to fix them!

Here is a fillet weld that looks a LOT like the welds I was making before attending this class:

and here is a polished weld of two square tubes that I welded back together:

It’s hard to believe but there is a weld in there (you can see the side welds in profile).

In the end, we were really close on technique. We had learned to deal with the “violence” of welding that can be intimidating when you first start. We lost our fear of the volts and current that are the stock and trade of welding and we now feel confident building our high-powered go-cart from scratch and doing it safely!

If you are into this kind of thing I can’t recommend Steve, Matt, and the VA School of Metal highly enough!