Everything You Need To Know To Find The Best Pipe Welding Chucks

Are you planning to work as a pipe welder as a vocation? If so you will not make it w/o expert training. I am a retired union pipefitter/welder. Did far more fitting than welding as I was never a steady hand at welding and it showed. Today all welders are trained as fitters first. The old days of fitter/welder 2 man crews are not found except in pipeline work. Industrial/commercial the fitter gets you fit-up and tacked then goes to do same for another welder. Welders that start and finish a job have many, many hours in the welding booth at the union hall. I was known on some jobs to keep 3 welders working on big bore pipe. If this is going to be your vocation you have to start with manual arc and prove yourself before moving on to other types such as MIG and TIG or the computerized specialty work.

Any way, for practice to take a pre-job test we always used Schd 40 6" steel pipe. The job specs will dictate what the procedure is and what type rods. Standard un-specified work is root and first pass , finish with in number of passes to get the bead required by the procedure. Most practice is with the pipe in a horizontal mode, start at bottom on one side and put in the root pass. In going around the pipe you are doing overhead, vertical, and flat position. When you have that down you start learning to start at the top and work down (harder). Pipes running vertical are the hardest as that is horizontal all the way around. The tendency is to undercut the top and overlap the bottom pieces. Their is a real learning curve hear to control the puddle. The key to passing certification and/or no leaks is the root pass. A flaw here will carry all the way to the top unless you catch it and grind it out and redo that section.

I learned pipe welding in the beginning on OA torch welding on small pipe up to 6". Hot work, but it sure teaches you puddle control and makes arc welding easier (my opinion). Lots of luck. Join the union if you want to be a pro. Training is free once you are in.

Ron

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Edited

03-15- 00:-15- 11:36

We did a lot of DualShield when I worked at the Veco shop in Anchorage. We were using Lincoln wirefeeders, LN25 I believe it was. It took me a long time to get the hang of it, but I finally got pretty good at it.
For the cap on a position weld, I found around 27.5 volts was about right. I would set the wire speed around the same as the volts: 27.5 volts, 275 wire speed or even 10 or 20 less at times. You have a different wirespeed set up. You want to go by the sound, set the wirespeed so the puddle is making a 'ssshhhhhhhh' sound, if it's crackling the wire is too high. Mind you, this is just for position welds. On the rollout welds on the positioner I set the volts on 32 and the wire on 550. Smokin' hot, but slicker'n a minner's d!@k. Pretty tough on the welding shirts, though. 

For your weave motion, you want to go back and forth pretty fast to keep the whole puddle fluid. If you go slow, it's gonna look like crap. You can't really use the same weave as a , it doesn't come out good. You want to go side to side real fast, and don't go up in a big step like with , you want to take baby steps.

That said, you really can't make DualShield come out as pretty as stick, it just don't work that way. They use DualShield cause it's fast, not cause it's pretty. And always remember; ugly shoots, too!

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