Night welding course?

[Jay_G]

I want to do a night or a couple of weekends course to learn some welding skills and get a certificate in case i ever want to build an ICV or have to get something engineerd or scruitineered.
currently my mig and stick welding leaves a bit to be desired and i wouldn't mind learning the basics of tig, i cannot seem to find and suitable courses around Newcastle short of being a full 200 hr course.

anyone done anything like this before?

[Deano]

i did a couple of coarses. not sure if nsw and vic are the same but i started at the local tafe and did an introduction to Tig welding and that was mostly mild steel on old crap machines. did a small amount of st/steel but to expensive to do much. did about 5min of ally welding. once again they say it is to expensive for material and i had to take my own. the machines were not new (bout 20yrs old) and even the instructor couldn't get hte machine set up.

anything with a cert ment that you had to do the intro to welding then the 'rutine' (practice) and then you were able to enroll in a cert coarse in the welding style that you did the first 2 coarses in.

i was in the same mind as you thinking that if i could get certified then great. the instructor reconed that i would get my cert within 6 months based on the welds i was able to do but in the end i got very frutrated with the whole process. i was one of 40 people that were welding 2 nights a week and there were constantly 3 or more people following the 2 instructors around for advice or opinions on welds. to make it worse there were not enough machines to go around so you either had to share yor tig with a couple of others or go home and try to get there earlier next week.

In the end i gave up on the coarse because i would spend more time wating for an instructor for advice or a machine than welding. A couple of times i couldn't finish my module cause they didn't have the material so they just said go and keep myself busy welding other stuff.

the other thing i found was that you would get the hang of the schools tigs and then i would go home and practice on my new tig and i would have to change my style again as my tig was so much easier to use.

i am sure not all shcools are the same and i did learn a bit but to be honest i learnt more in 45min when i had a professional ally welder come around after work to look over my sholder and give me advice and show/explain things to me and also teach me using my machine.

this was my experiance at the shcool that i chose so dosn't mean if will be the same for you. if i need to weld something that needs a cert then i will tack it in place and take it to a pro welder.

good luck

[Matt]

If you were in Brissy I could give you a few pointers mate but I dont know of any courses other than the adult education ones they have at Tafe