Arc welding is probably the easiest and most available welding process on the face of the earth.
Almost anyone can access one of these machines. It is also called stick welding, and the technical name for this process is manual metal arc welding, or MMAW for short.
But don’t go around town saying you can or are doing MMAW welding or that you are doing manual metal arc welding. People will look at you and think you have a few beers short of a six-pack.
It is simply called arc welding or stick welding.
One of the main reasons that arc welding and stick welding are so available in any country is the simplicity of the arc welding process and machine.
Basically, an arc welder is just a big electrical transformer. Your job is to transform electricity. What does it transform into questions? Well the transformer in an arc welder will transform the power going into the welder, that is, from the power point at 110v, 220 or 240v or 415v etc, into a more stable and controlled power source that can use for soldering.
Hard as it may be to believe, when you are arc welding, the actual voltage across the welding arc is only very small, around 20 volts or so up or down a few.
So the transformer transforms the power from, say, 240 volts to about 20 volts and in doing so will allow for a usable welding arc.
Most stick and arc welding machines are DC, which is direct current. The electricity comes from the power cord that is plugged into the wall outlet at, say, 240 VAC, and the transformer does its part and reduces the voltage and rectifies the circuit so that it is now a DC source, ideal To weld.
You know you can take two 12 volt car batteries and put them together to make 24 volts, and so you can solder with them. Yeah true. Car batteries have a very large current draw capacity, which is exactly what you need for soldering. And see how the two batteries equate to 24 volts, this is good enough for arc welding.
Many four-wheel drive and long-distance bush drivers in Australia generally have two batteries in their four-wheel-drive (SUV). So all you have to do is put in a general purpose electrode pack, either E6013 or E6012 of a small diameter (try 2.0mm) and you can arc weld in the middle of the dessert if needed.
Any savvy traveler will have a set of jumper cables at the rear of the vehicle. So all you have to do is join the two batteries together using some existing cables from the vehicle. This is done by connecting the positive terminal of one battery to the negative terminal of the other battery.
Then simply clip the jumper wires to the now larger 24-volt battery, and you’ve got a quick and simple arc welding machine that you can use to do roadside repairs in the middle of nowhere.
Cool…
Arc welding can be easy to learn if you do it the right way the first time.