Hello,

I am the owner of the Creston Trail Industries E-bay store as well as the owner of Weldcerts.com.

I write these guides in an effort to help explain some of the mysteries of welding so that you can make the right choices in purchasing, learning and certifying in this booming industry.

There are four major welding processes in the welding industry, this guide will discuss all four in an effort to give an overview of the different processes.

SMAW (Shielded Metal Arc Welding):

Ths process involves using a flux coated electrode usually about 14" in length with weld metal transfer taking place through the use of an open electric arc that generates a plasma column reaching temperatures in excess of 11,000 F.

So what does this mean to you?

That technical description does carry a lot of information but for the beginner does not explain why one wold choose this type of welding over another so lets talk about why one would choose this process.

1. The equipment is relatively cheap and simple.

2. You can use this process to weld outdoors.

3. It is a very portable process.

4. It has a long history of success in many large and small projects.

The downsides:

1. This process is slow.

2. This process is not very efficient. From a 50 pound box of electrode the most one can expect to get in weight of weld metal deposited is 30 pounds.

3. It takes more skill to weld with this process and consequently people with this skill can command a higher wage.

The next process is GMAW/FCAW (Gas Metal Arc Welding/Flux Cored Arc Welding)

These two processes are both similar to SMAW in the fact that they use an electric arc. This process uses a a spool of either solid or tubular wire as the electrode. This has the advantage of allowing the welder to make long welds without stopping.

Some other advantages include:

1. Speed. This process can put down many more pound of weld metal per hour than other processes.

2. Ease of learning. This process can be learned relatively quickly compared to other processes.

3. This process is quite versatile in terms of the metals you can weld and the range of thickness that can be welded easily.

The downsides:

1. Most forms of this process use shielding gas which will blow away from the weld puddle in a slight breeze.

2. Equipment is more costly and more complicated.

3. The equipment is not as portable as other processes.

The next process is GTAW (Gas Tungsten Arc Welding) sometimes known as TIG or HeliArc.

This process also uses a gas shielded electrode but in this case the electrode is not transfered to the base metal as part of the process. Instead it is used as a heat source to melt the base and fill metals allowing them to be joined.

The uspides:

1. This process is extremely clean and is used quite often for aerospace fabrication and other applications that need to be of X-ray or code quality.

2. This process can be used for joining many kinds of metals.

3. This process allows the welder to easily control the input of heat which can be critical to controlling warping and burnthrough on thin metals.

4. This process can be used to weld metals together without the use of any fill metal which can be critical in some projects.

The downsides:

1. This is the slowest of all electric arc processes.

2. This process takes much more skill than the other processes and so costs more to use.

3. The equipment for this process can be the most expensive.

4. This process is very difficult to use outdoors as the slightest breeze can blow away the shielding gas leaving a porosity filled weld.

OAW (Oxy-Acetylene Welding)

This is the oldest form of welding in use today although it is not nearly as common as the electric arc forms of welding. The same equipment can be used for cutting steel as well and is used often in the welding industry for this purpose.

The upsides:

1. This process is extremely portable because it consists of a torch, one bottle for fuel and one for oxygen.

2. This is the cheapest welding setup you can buy. If you only need to weld once in a while this process will work for that.

3. This process produces a flame which is seen by most new welders as the coolest thing they have ever seen.

The downsides:

1. This process is very dangerous consisting of compressed fuel gas and highly compressed oxygen in close proximity to an open flame. Proper safety training is an absolute must for this process.

2. The use of compressed gases means a higher sustained cost for this process.

3. This process requires a great deal of skill to get quality welds compared to many electric arc processes.

As you can see there is a large difference betwen the welding processes. Many times people that are new to welding choose a process based solely on price without taking into consideration all of the parameters that should go into this choice.

When choosing a process you should list the types of projects you are going to build, where they will be built and any other parameters like heat control, speed, electrode efficiency.

You should also think about the kind of work you want to do when choosing the process to learn and certify with.

If you have any questions you can reach me at my contact page on my website, weldcerts.com or you may contact me through e-bay if you would prefer.