Welds general

My favorite thing to do between sets is look at the unbelievably shitty welds on the equipment

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youtube.com/watch?v=Ry1e4KpVJ1o
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>hope a fat ass never uses that

Please tell me you have more

I really can't tell with all the paint on there. But that looks like it could use 2 or 3 more passes.

just go to any Gold's, you'll find plenty

big void, crack visible through the paint

God I thought I was the only one

Christ, didn't even connect. Looks like it was done by one of those little robot arms from radioshack.

I got a bench on sale from Chinaland and the welds are horrifying. I'm scared to put too much weight or even attempt incline bench.

Explain to me what I'm looking at and how welding works.

t. STEMfag

I get that it's not on a pipeline or something but goddamn looks like Ford is building exercise equipment.

wow i do this too. but from welding my own shit i've learned that on most welds that look like shit, the steel itself will snap before the weld does. unless you're under strict code most fab shops just want you to get it done and go on to the next and not spend 2 hours grinding it clean and flush. so i don't really judge anymore because i'm never going to lift that much weight anyway.

... yeah ... cool ..

Basically shit got in the weld because it wasn't clean or the dude didn't keep an eye on his gas and ran out midweld. He may have just held the gun to far away letting the gas escape to soon.

kys

it's sewing but with metal

Weld didn't finish cause lazy welder. It's an """easy""" fix if he repeated two more times.

good welds are supposed to be nice and regular and even, like a "stack of dimes"

bad welds are fucked up and irregular, with lots of spatter and holes. functionally, on most gym equipment, it's not a problem, since they'll never be taking thousands of pounds of load. it just looks bad

Depends on the method

Electrode or "stick" welding is nigh on impossible to do neatly but can still leave you with a fucken stronk weld

MIG is the simplest option and you can be left with a much neater weld than stick, and any cunt can do it

TIG is for chads, and whoever wants to weld anything but mild steel. Difficult as fuck to perfect your technique, but once you level up you'll holding pools like your mom holds my cocks and feeding rods like a mad cunt to get results like pic

you should never see stick welds on gym equipment, unless the owner is out on the floor fabricobbling racks in real time

welds on chinese equipment gotta be MIG, just because a bottle of argon has to be cheaper than flux rod, even in china, right?

weight machines gotta be done robtically, right? or is there literally a person sticking together the parts?

reason #9001 to stick with free weights :/

Theres nothing wrong with a good stick weld if its done right it just p much always looks ugly. First thing i made when i learned to weld was a set of car ramps 8 years ago using 5mm mild and my dads old stick welder and they're mong strong enough to hold his 85 dodge van. I'd hate to see untidy welds on anything I bought though and I hate that shit even more on "professional weight training equipment" that im paying to use

Also you're assuming a bunch of savages are gonna supply their workers with quality welding rods and not just apply old sweepings to wire and call it flux or some shit. I always expect the worst from the chinese pls no bully

Depends where from man I dont really know manufacturing methods of gym equipment but if I pay for quality welded car parts I expect to see some fine ass hand welding. Run of the mill decent stuff will probably be robotted and your cheapo ebay specials will be Ling welded in middle china halfway through his 18 hour shift

>weight machines gotta be done robtically, right?
lol, you think a machine could fuck up a weld that bad?

youtube.com/watch?v=Ry1e4KpVJ1o

>pls no bully
no bully here friend, Veeky Forums is probably the third most racist board on Veeky Forums, after /cgl/ and /cm/

What are you smoking dude? Machines make things like 500000x safer than artisans.

As a welder by profession, these infuriate me

Oscillation is the biggest sign of an amateur mig/stick welder

fpbp

MIG uses CO2, which is surely cheaper than argon, I've seen 90/10 a lot though so maybe not

You seem like one of those guys that refuse to talk to anyone and stares at the wall between sets

bakersgas.com/mig-shielding-gas-selection-guide.html

mig shielding gas is ~mostly~ argon, I simplified to avoid adding a paragraph of detail to a fuckin Veeky Forums reply, though I should have known better than to do that near welders. to be fair, judging from all the spatter on those welds they probably used 100% co2

Most interesting thread in weeks

Shiiiiiiii i do that too OP

I learned about welding from my Dad, while at my first job in a fabrication shop. It was awesome to see him easily weld up all kinds of different connections. His welds were always the easiest to touch up with a grinder because there was hardly ever any rough or uneven spots. I always notice bad welds and it drives my crazy.

All the welds I’ve bothered to look at at my gym seem really uniform and smooth

i bought a cage once and had to prime and paint some sections where the powder coat was flaking off.

damnit, now im going to be staring at welds next time im at the gym...

Bumping interesting and unique thread.

Beautiful. This makes me realize how rare it is to see good welds.

this thread is making me a little paranoid

These two aren't bad, just ugly
This one is borderline unsafe if it handles a lot of weight

Heres a beauty on my shitty home gym machine

Jej nice natty piceroo

Thinking of starting a Fabrication and Welding apprenticeship soon so I can get a useful trade and stop being a worthless NEET. Think it's worth it? Job markets not gonna vanish anytime soon is it? My dad's gonna teach me how to weld beforehand as well.

this is the most delightfully autistic thing i've seen today.
you're not wrong, and i totally agree with you, but god damn that gave me a case of the keks

pic unrelated

Actual welder of 6 ish years here. Half of you guys should seriously shut up. You have not a clue. Let me enlighten you.

Concave welds generally mean too much heat. What most gym equipment has is too fast too hot. How can we tell? If the lines of the puddle are sharp and jagged, that means the welder is going at too fast of a travel speed.

Convex welds generally mean too slow/not enough heat, or too high of wire speed (considering most of these are MIG welds).

Most of these welds have so much wire pumped into them the steel itself will probably just break before the weld does. (See weld toe).

Incomplete welds however, especially hot passes, tend to crack at the end of the puddle if not filled in properly.

Also TIG welding is not just limited to aluminum and stainless, but mild steel as well. Whoever said that is really has no idea. TIG welding is a dc electrode negative process meaning the work piece gets most of the heat. Generally creating deeper penetration. MIG welding is electrode positive, meaning the exact opposite. At Planet Fitness we actually have multiple cable machines with cracked welds. But that should clear things up. Cheers.

if they're shitty but they work then it was the best solution
why use 50,000$ equipment and pay some guy let's say 100$ an hour when you can use 10,000$ equipment and pay 50$ an hour to weld that shit if it's just some retarded squat rack and not an oil platform or something?

>Stick is hard to make look good

You learned on a might didn't you? That's ok but you should really get some time on 6010 and 7018 rod. 6010 Wip and stich is awesome and teaches you good control. It's also a damn handy rod for out in the shit.

me too. TOPKEK

I thought I was the only one!!!!
I’m not a welder but work in engineering. I’m guessing they don’t certify the welders for skwert rerks

This thread pleases my autism

>stick welds can't look nice and are hard
>All the MIG fags

Please r8. 1/8inch 7018

I want to know if this guy is right or if you other guys are right.

>Take stick welding course
>doing great, instructor impressed
>a week before certification test, we get switched to new electrodes, generic uber cheap shit, really hard to make good welds with
>day of test comes
>boxes of uber cheap rods we are about to use were left in the rain by courier, then brought inside and left to stand damp all weekend
>never worked with rods this damp
>practice some runs before test
>shit spatters everywhere, undercutting, voids
>panic_n_frustration.exe
>fiddle with amperage and volts to no avail
>stuff damp electrodes up fume hood and inside boiler suit to try in vain to dry them out
>do test, not the prettiest, but still looks sound
>fail anal high standards because of a little too much spatter and undercut
>get called to redo test but unable to attend
>can still weld decent with dry electrodes pic related
>See this shit...

How the fuck does this pass QA? Jesus. I need to redo that course. With my own fucking electrodes.

Bullshit, stick can be made to look neat as long as the machine is set properly and the work angles and arc length are correct. High penetration electrodes like 6010 are harder than 7018 but not impossible by any means.

>letting the gas escape to soon
iktf

Hey retard, I read every post in this thread and you're just repeating shit that was already pointed out.

You feeling good about yourself now?

Why wouldn't you speak up and explain you were fucked over?