Stick Welders, Oxyacetylene, and Portable Welding

Although every welder who is serious about doing a lot of welding – including both workshop welding and portable welding – should acquire a MIG (metal inert gas) welding machine, and possibly a TIG welder once their skills improve, the handiest types of welding equipment for portable uses are stick welders and oxyacetylene torches.
 
Stick welders provide the opportunity to weld many different kinds of metals with a minimum of setup – they are simpler to set up and start using, by far, than MIG welding machines, and even more so than TIG welding devices. Problems with wire feeding, such as birds’ nests, will not occur with a stick welder because of the simplicity of delivering the filler metal to the weld site – the stick is inserted and is fed in directly as the welding process continues.

Stick welders are not suitable for all welding jobs, however, due to the limitations of using a stick of fixed length rather than a continuous, spooled filler wire to supply filler metal to the welding pool. These welding machines are best for small, limited, rapid jobs, where only a short, uncomplicated weld is to be made. In this case, their disadvantages will not come to the fore, and the quickness of setup and takedown before and after the job will be an immense help to someone who does not want to spend longer preparing their machinery for use than actually using it.

Oxyacetylene torches – and torches using other fuel gases such as propane – are dangerous tools thanks to their use of explosive chemicals, but they have many of the same advantages as stick welders, as well as several of their own. They are not as versatile in actual welding as a MIG or TIG welding machine, only being capable of welding steel or braze welding other metals, but they can be used for steel welding as well as steel cutting and heating metals for bending.

The portability of oxyacetylene torches is also very high, since the system can be easily broken down into its components and carried to the site, where it can be reassembled fairly quickly. There is a pair of cylinders – one for oxygen, the other for fuel gas – as well as a regulator, a rubber hose, and a torch. Adding to the portability of these tools is the fact that they need no electricity to be used, and can therefore be used in remote locations, and without the added burden of a portable generator.