Critique my welding please

Little fast, will give you a more rounded, deeper penetration and less splatter.

Mig weld quality is tough to call from a single picture. there are lots of guys that can make a weld look great on top with little to no penetration.

[QUOTE=Lars;1832465]

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Originally Posted by Irving

Critique other people's welding? Must be an inspector. :p[/QUOTE

not an inspector, just a pipe welder that has spent a lot of hours behind my hood constantly trying to improve my own weld appearance and quality to match guys that have spent even more hours then me behind their hood.

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Don't mind me, the only thing I know about welding is that you're supposed to make fun of inspectors.

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Originally Posted by gta_spec

there are lots of guys that can make a weld look great on top with little to no penetration.

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Yep. We are constantly building custom tools at work. We have guys who's welds look OK but wont hold up under use. My welds look like junk but the stuff I've built has held up to hard use and a thousand foot pounds of torque or more.

If you need any small pieces of scrap metal to practice on shoot me a PM and I can probably hook you up.

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Originally Posted by gta_spec

Mig weld quality is tough to call from a single picture. there are lots of guys that can make a weld look great on top with little to no penetration.

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That's what she said.

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Originally Posted by gta_spec

Mig weld quality is tough to call from a single picture. there are lots of guys that can make a weld look great on top with little to no penetration.

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Having the OP cut a few welds will tell how good / deep he went. That's what our instructor did, after every 2 - 3 pcs. Looks good now let's see how it really looks. On the bandsaw it went.

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Originally Posted by Great-Kazoo

Having the OP cut a few welds will tell how good / deep he went. That's what our instructor did, after every 2 - 3 pcs. Looks good now let's see how it really looks. On the bandsaw it went.

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Yep. Cross section tells all.

Better than I can do!

When I first tried MIG, I thought I was doing great- then tested my welds to breaking strength and found I had penetration issues (no, not that kind). Once I learned to watch the puddle AND the surrounding metal, I got better.

As others have said it looks like you're going a little fast (based on the V marks, rather than stack of dimes), but can't tell if it penetrated well from that angle- best to test it's strength or cut it apart if you're learning. You also shouldn't have spatter like that on MIG (Flux core would)- was it dirty, or maybe the wire speed is off?