Starting Practice for Skills Usa.

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Hey guy's, I'm starting practice for a Skills USA competition for my junior year in high school. The competition is only going to be with stick welding this year then for senior year they will have the Tig, Stick, and art competition. My school is sending two student's and I happen to be one! So basically we will be using 7018 and welding an I beam to a plate, It will be a 3 pass weld. The competition is in February and I have already started practice. My teacher is taking this fairly seriously so this is just about what I'll be doing until then. So my teacher wants me to practice 7" long 3 pass welds with 1/4" plate. Heres two examples of what I have came up with so far. I want advice, and tips on what I can be doing better to make some of the best welds I possibly can.Machine: Lincoln IdealArc 250 ac/dcPolarity: DC+Rod: Lincoln Excalibur 7018.Amps: 95 Amps.
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Reply:Welding an I-beam to a plate, get ready to fight arc blow!Start your welds about 3/4-inch ahead of the edge of the plates, drag the rod back to the starting point. This will heat the rod for better starts, and help with the porosity.Don’t pay any attention to meI’m just a hobbyist!CarlDynasty 300V350-Pro w/pulseSG Spool gun1937 IdealArc-300PowerArc 200ST3 SA-200sVantage 400
Reply:Search "Horizontal Weld" on youtube
Reply:The others here are far more capable than I relative to commenting on your welding but I did want to congratulate you on both your talent and your focus. It's great to see a young man of your age striving for excellence in something more than computer games. And to your instructor and parents as well. Good luck with the competition.
Reply:Spentar here are a few things, Porosity in your 3rd pass, from not cleaning slag off 1 and 2 pass? Next you have too much undercut. Get your heat right and see if that helps. Try it a little hotter. Arc blow may be getting to you a bit. Move your ground to different spots on your parent metal. If they will allow it clamp a piece of 3/4" plate to where your weld will end(off to one side or the other and adjust ground as needed). That's where I'm at from a picture. Try that and see. The other guys will have good info also. Remember not to use everything you hear in the first 15 minutes. Give whatever technique suggested a fair shot. Good Luck. Keep us updated.Arcon Workhorse 300MSPowcon 400SMTPowcon SM400 x 2Powcon SM3001968 SA200 Redface1978 SA250 DieselMiller Super 32P FeederPre 1927 American 14" High Duty LatheK&T Milwaukee 2H Horizontal MillBryan
Reply:You need to work on your consistency. I see any number of places where the beads are changing in those picts. I see issues with travel speed all over the place and you need to work on getting the top nice and even rather than up and down.One big thing that pops out at me though is how beads 2 and 3 tie together. I didn't watch those videos, but the "pad" that is shown on video 2, you can see that the surface of those passes are almost smooth where the beads meat each other. Your weld is fair on the left side of pict one, but there's a lot of roll where the two meet on the right hand side ( what I believe you are showing better in pict 2). I see it in a couple of the other picts as well. I'm tempted to say go up in amps just a bit. You don't say what amps you are running. Other options are to increase your motions slightly so you are doing a better job tieing in the two beads, or increase your arc length slightly to go "hotter".I'm not seeing a lot of undercut, but I am seeing a bunch of slag trapped at the top toe of the weld. I can think of several things that might be causing it, but I'd certainly work on cleaning that off any final welds. Also if you are having that issue with welds 1 and 2, that needs to go before you lay in the next bead.7018 can produce a nice smooth bead with really tight ripples. This isn't the greatest example, but it gives you something to compare against yours and was the best example I could grab quickly.Note that the ripples are nice and tight and the bead isn't all humped. If stacking two of these over one another it's possible to get an almost smooth surface where the two meet. Also note the top is nice and even and not all up and down like it is in your examples.That bead was run really low in amps  ( 1/8" old poorly kept 7018 at 100 amps on 3/8" plate) to show how running a slightly longer arc length would do to the appearance of a weld. It's a lot shorter and wider than I'd have run it normally, but I was concentrating more on running that bead exactly like I did several others to show what just changing one thing would accomplish for another thread..No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! Ronald Reagan