Welding

First, I am going to start off by explaining what welding is. Welding is the process of joining two metal pieces together by heating the surfaces to the point of melting. To do so, you have to use a blowtorch, or an electirc arc.

What project are you working on?
At this very moment, I am actually not working on a project but I do have one in mind for the future which I will keep it up to date here. As of right now I am focusing on practicing welding and getting better for the upcoming project.

What made you be interested in Welding?



What made you be interested in Welding?

Ive been in the Alternative fuels academy for about two years now. I have always been interested in this type of hands on work, and throughout the whole first year we worked on rebulding our own small engine. I remember seeing some of the kids that had been in the academy longer, welding something and at first I honestly didnt pay it any mind. It wasnt until this year that for some reason I decided to give it a try and once I picked up that torch of the MIG welder, I knew it was my thing. Turned out that my teacher thinks I am pretty good at it (I still do need a lot of practice though.) I think the fact that there arent really a lot of Female welders, made me even more eager to learn. The picture above is me Welding and using the Jessy Combs welding gloves for women that my teacher Mr. Grosinger bought so I could weld more comfortably.

Above is a picture of my first Weld. I started off a litle messy but soon enough caught on to the motion and did a pretty decent job for a first timer.

After catching on to MIG welding, I began practicing welding on a more diffucult joint, coped tubes. I actually had to cope the tubes myself because we didnt have the tubes like that already. Due to small sharp metal pieces left behind, They could cut someone if not handled carefully.  So,when I finsihed coping a tube, I had to file the edges of the inside.  Below you'll see the tube right before I began welding.

  

After finishing Welding, this was the outcome.

• After we finished welding, We test the weld to see how strong it was by beding the weld using leverage.We noticed that it wasnt the actual weld that broke, but the tube so it told us that the weld was actually strong. It was the tube that couldn't take all the force. 

Are you trying anything other than welding?

I have been practicing another type of welding that is similar to MIG welding just done differently and known to be a little bit more difficult, which is called brazing. In regular welding, the torch already has the filler metal inside of the torch, so you could just go on and weld. In brazing on the other hand, the torch only gives you the heat (fire) and the acutal filler is separated. So in a way you can have more control over where you would want to braze, but since you'd have more control, it would be a bit more difficult.

Would you recomed this to other students?

Yeas, definitely! Especially any other girls out there that are interested in this type of work/field, they should really try it out. They shouldnt feel discouraged because welding is usually believed to be "A man's job," because it really isn't. I believe more girls should be getting into the engineering business. If you do some research there are actually a few woman welders out there, such as Jesse Combs that truly set an example for other young gilrs out there to not be afraid to take on these types of jobs.