Welding school started

admin

I enrolled in a tig welding class at my local community college and it started last week, tonight was the first day of welding.There was an intro class but I skipped it. So I've never had a true welding class and wasn't sure what to expect. I'm not sure on how I feel about it personally.First lets start with the teacher. Guy has over 50 years of welding experience under his belt; straight shooter, no bs guy. I like him. He needs an assistance; this guy is running around helping all 15-18 students and you don't get much of his attention. Not his fault. Awesome guy and wants your beads to be perfect (from what others say)Students: Younger kids, some that like to fart around and some older guys that are nice and willing to help. I had one show me how to work their shear today and he had no issues with helping me learn the machine.Lecture: Ya there really isn't one. He talks for a few minutes and we go to the shop for a few hours.He told me to run some beads with filler on a coupon so that is what I did. I used a 1/16th tungsten from my kit (it was red and he swapped it out for gold), used a lincoln 185 welder, and water cooled 20 torch. I really like these welders, they weld really nice and smooth. So anyway I welded a good 15 beads and showed him a coupon with 3 beads and he said oh that looks pretty good. So I next was to run beads short ways on the coupons so he can see my start and stops. Did a few and he came into my area and said I was doing it wrong. (dip and move), he said to just leave the wire in there and oscillate the torch. So he runs a quick bead and I follow suit. I think they are ugly, but he said we are not going for appearance. If you work in the field they don't care what it looks like; time is money. So the faster the better. I see his point. So I do that coupon and turn it in and he tells me to do a butt joint. I did about 10 of them and one was soooooo perfect until the last 1/8" I messed up. So I'll have to do it again next week, but he would show me what looks good and what looks bad on the bead. Also the stools are way too tall, and I'm short, so I put my foot pedal on a few bricks, but I am still hunched over and it's not comfortable at all.Is it odd that I expected more than that? Like what to watch for in the puddle, how to read it, etc etc?One thing I dislike is that of the 15-18 students, there is only 1 or 2 tig welders. The others are for stick, mig, or oxy. They throw all the welders into one class. They only had 3/32 filler and 1/8" coupons and he said to use 75-85amps, no more. In no particular order are some of the welds from tonight. I quenched one of them and it instantly looked like **** after it, so I started to quench and wire wheel and they look much better.So while doing the butt joint and moving the torch back and forth, how am I supposed to read the puddle to know when it's too wide?Torchmate 2x2 CNC with Flashcut CNC controlsHypertherm Powermax45 Esab ET220i Razorweld 195 MigRazorweld 200ac/dc TigTormach 770, Tormach xstechRazorweld, Vipercut/Vipermig, SSC Foot Pedal Dealer