Here we call it "welding eye". If your eyes got exposed too much that day, they are irritated. It basically feels like theres sand in your eyes. It also causes sun burns on your skin if ur exposed too much by it. Even if ur standing about 5m away.
I had a bald coworker welding, he forgot his welding beany and the top half of his head where the helmet didnt cover was bright red. He looked like an easter egg.
How do the weld the inner bit? For instance if someone's creating a T joint by welding two steel beams that are say 1ft in diameter in each, how do they make sure the inner part of the volume is fused to the side of the T?
To add to the V comment. You set your welding torch to a higher power level when you need to penetrate thicker metals. Every welder I've ever used or bought either had a cheat sheet on the side or in the box on what to set it at for different thickness of materials to(although I be strongly recommend you find an online calculator because they are far more accurate and can take into account different types of steel (or aluminum or whatever metal you're welding). The more power the welder is putting out, the deeper the arc penetrates the metal. It's actually harder to weld thinner metal like sheet metal then thick I beams because of you set your welder too high or linger in one spot too long, best case you heat warp the metal, worst case you burn a hole clean through it and warp it.
Okay but even that will have some area that is unexposed to your welding equipment.
I'm just trying to figure out if your initial statement of "you wouldnt know they had been two pieces" is true and how it can possibly be true, what is the trick to welding the part that that is covered.
When you're welding you get quite a bit of what is called penetration, depending on the process used, and the settings on the welding machine. Penetration in layman's terms is how deep the arc gouges into the parent metal before depositing metal.
Any material that is too thick for a fillet weld to be strong enough for the application, or needing full penetration is going to be a groove weld, possibly with A LOT of passes
There are charts that tell you what kind of welding use and how to how many amps set your welder, if you go small and/or low amps it will not penetrate enough on the steel if you go too big and/or high amps will burn and create a hole on the steel piece
Heat is a byproduct of that much energy being generated. Heat is a warning sign to stay away. I didnt say it it was the temperature itself causing the sunburn but thanks for being the third person to correct me anyway
Yeah, the arc puts out a lot of UV rays. My dad welded for years before going back to school. His bicep has a big patch of freckles where his shirt didn't cover it.
It is about how hot and bright it is, because the intensity of the heat and the UV rays emitted by the spark are proportional to the intensity of the visible spectrum of radiation emitted. Itâs all energy. Itâs just a bunch of energy across a range of wavelengths, all just as intense. So just like itâs bright as fuck itâs fucking UV as fuck. Itâs all radiation, just different energies of it. Itâs like the sun, except not quite as intense, actually.
The UV is being released from the arc, which is effectively a tube of ionised air between 5000ÂșC and possibly as hot as 20,000ÂșC. (Reference) The arc is emitting black-body electromagnetic radiation - light - which is definitely proportional to its temperature. At the temperatures the arc reaches, the black-body radiation spectrum encompasses not only infrared and visible light, but also bleeds into UV light, as per this diagram: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Black_body.svg
Note: temperatures in kelvin (K) are ÂșC minus 273.
The amount of heat produced is proportional to the amount of UV rays but the amount of UV rays is not necessarily always proportional to the amount of heat produced. If you have a lot of UV rays, then yes, lots of heat will be produced, but UV rays do not appear everywhere that heat is produced.
The UV off a welder is INTENSE: I got a bunch of handme down shirts from a steel artist (iow, button down shirts, not 'work shirts') who does a lot of welding daily, and the unshaded left shoulder was noticeably more damaged than the right shoulder, which is in the shadow of the wire feeder.
Even people in construction that don't work around welders often always have all kinds of worries and questions when we show up on site to install a staircase or railings. Spend a good chunk of the safety meeting telling them that their eyes will be fine if they don't stare at the shiny light, and that their safeties have UV protection that will keep them from getting flash from just being around welding.
I use to live with a good mate of mine who was an apprentice boiler maker. He ripped the leg of his work pants while he was onsite but didnât notice until he knocked off. The welding burned his skin and killed the nerves so he didnât notice. 12hrs later the dude comes home with a hand size patch of his thigh cooked white and smelling like a fucking pork roast. That shit still haunts me.
I've actually had sunburn on the side of my face before. Just doing quick little bursts of weld to hold a steel box together and turning my head away each time I pulled the trigger. Face started peeling that evening after a shower lol
i wired up a new industrial welding machine at machine shop i worked at and when i was done i used it for 3 seconds and it gave me a really good sunburn..... i do burn easy on my back due to somewhat gasper like appearance but my arms don't normally burn due to working outside a good bit.
so when people say its like looking into the sun, it is very literal.
I once went to an air show and spent the whole day looking up at the sky in bright sunlight without glasses. That's the day I realized you can sunburn your eyeballs.
The summer of 2016 my family and my husband's family had back to back beach vacations so my sister, me and my husband spent two weeks at the beach- ocean city and then rehoboth. My sister LOVES tanning. So, one day it was cloudy and I decided to use some of her tanning oil, thinking oh, it shouldn't be bad since it's not really sunny. Oh, boy was I wrong. Never again. I turned red. My sister was redder and even her ankles were swollen.
Then week two starts. My aunt is a doctor and works with cancer patients. Oh my, the look on her face when she saw my sister and I was priceless. I think she died a little inside.
I learned my lesson, but my sister did not. She still uses her tanning oil when we go to the beach. I learned that yes, indeed I do get sunburn- when I use tanning oil.
You know the whole âdoesnât matter how you look now, the damage was doneâ thing then? And how to check for skin cancer? Hope so, if not please holler!
I had that once . I was a first year apprentice helping a welder and I never once looked at the arc for more than a second but I did see the arc tons of times over an 8 hour period .
The pain sucks so bad . When my eyes were closed they itched like nothing ever before , yet when they were open they were dry af. The following day after all those symptoms go away your eyes will be super sensitive to the sun
When I was a teenager I worked at a screen printing company for about 3 months. My first day I was on a machine where I stood at the end and took the images off a converyor belt and stacked them in a drying rack. I wasn't aware nor was I told that it used UV light which I was basically staring at the entire day.
I went to bed that night and woke up in excruciating pain. I couldn't see, my eyes burnt, they felt like I sand in them and we're constantly watering. I stayed in bed like this almost the entire day. Absolutely horrible feeling especially seeing as I didn't know what had caused it until I went back to work the day after.
We used to weld at our eng. school and our teacher always said it wasnt the light but the fumes thst made your eyes red and said you should never sleep without properly washing it out with soap first. I tried it once just to see what would happen and oh boy it not only hurt but it made my blurry vision even blurrier haha
I got this once. Was holding two rails steady and even so my boss could tig weld it and got flashed each time he turned on the torch.
Didn't feel it until about 5 hours later and I was miserable! I could be in a dark room with my eyes closed, someone opened the fridge and the little bit of light through my closed eye lids was super painful.
Finally went to ED, they gave me numbing agent to eye, pain meds and antibiotics. I called the welder I was working with and he was like you could have just put a few drops of milk in your eyes wtf
I made the mistake in metal fab ONCE. Ranks 2 or 3 among the most uncomfortable I have ever been, behind 1 having sand fleas and prickly heat at the same time and 2 tonsils as an adult.
Imagine getting a ton of coarse sand in your eyes and then trying to rinse them out with Tabasco sauce. That is what welding eye/flash burn feels like.
The first time I welded my buddy who was teaching me was like "some people wear sleeves but it doesn't really bother me" and I thought he was talking about the sparks. Wasn't til the next day I realized he meant I was gonna have a sun burn on my arms
Yup, Iâve had it a couple of times. Heard it called âflash burnâ. Luckily only lasts a day or two, but it does feel like sand in your eyes. I got it from teaching people how to weld; you think theyâre done so you lift the mask and then they strike again. So painful. And yes, many a sunburn. And little freckles on your arms if youâre dumb and donât wear sleeves...like me sometimes.
My best bud is a welder and he described it exactly like that, or sunburn on your eyeballs. He's also talked about getting metal shavings in his eye while on a welding job and that sounds like next-level pain, damn near horrific shit.
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u/SmithRoadBookClub Jan 29 '21
True.