I joined welding school and started taking TIG welding courses. I wanted to learn TIG welding and be able to do my own custom fabricationsc, like furniture. It felt like just the thing I was looking for. Something that is challenging, requires skill, something not everyone is able do. I’m doing great and enjoying every moment when practicing welding at school.
Recently I came accross laser welding and saw various welding youtubers reviewing the technology. It seems like it beats TIG in every way, except thick materials where one would probably use MIG/MAG anyway instead.
And that ruined my excitement a little bit about TIG, because anyone can pick up a laser welding machine, learn it in 20 minutes and make perfect welds, even better than TIG.
I’m trying to find out if it’s worth even investing more time and money in TIG. It’s starting to seem like TIG might get obsolete compared to Laser and that makes me feel discouraged.
What are your thoughts?
Way you talk about it, I get the impression that you’re taking the class mostly for your own fulfillment, not to get a solid-paying job in the industry. If that’s the case, what does it matter if laser welding is the new hotness? Laser welding might be “easier” for a rookie, but does that make your growing skill at TIG welding irrelevant? I wouldn’t say so. TIG is still a skill that not many have. Is the classical painter’s skill and the beauty of their work reduced by that of the digital artist?
Yes, I agree with you, it doesn’t matter, yet it still makes it less fulfilling knowing that someone else with a laser can do a better job with much less effort.
I’m actually a developer, I love writing code, it’s my greatest passion. When LLMs showed up and for devs writing code using copilot became a thing, I felt the same way. That was such a massive hit to my enjoyment of programming, because it was so much more accessible and people who don’t even understand what they’re doing that well could suddenly write code. Everyone that uses LLM assisted programming is much more productive. And I hate that it’s no longer as hard and challenging as it used to be. This is exactly how I’m feeling about welding now.
It’s the knowing that with my hard work I can achieve what others can’t and that’s what impacts my fulfilment of the work that I do. The harder it is, the more satisfaction I feel.
I don’t understand why the exclusivity is a factor, but that doesn’t mean you’re somehow wrong to have that mindset. My own mindset just doesn’t jive with that idea.
To draw more parallels between welding and painting, the process may be more accessible now, but you can still make your creations distinctly yours. A master of a craft can leave their mark on even the simplest expressions of their skill. Perhaps that’s an angle to take? Develop your own style and expression of your skill. Make the weld itself a part of the beauty of what you’ve created, not just there to hold it together. While others can make a basic weld with little practice, few if any can make a weld like yours. The stroke of the brush can be just as much a part of the art as the paint it lays down. Maybe getting to that level of skill is enough of a challenge to reignite your enjoyment.
In any case, I do hope you find that spark again.
Yes, thinking in a way that you describe does make it better, I should try to change my mindset, thank you! :)
Everyone that uses LLM assisted programming is much more productive.
Have you seem them being more productive?
Because I haven’t. I have seen people producing worse code, and actually taking longer to get into working software. I also can’t feel AI is helping me if I try to use coding agents. (I can use them as Stack Overflow, it’s just useless to let them touch my code.)
I never tried any coding agents, but I do use LLMs just like you said - as stack overflow and it helps a lot which is fine, but I remember a year ago or so, I needed a quick javascript script for one time use and I hate javascript. I made chatGPT write the entire thing from start to finish, I didn’t even look at it, it worked fine. I bet the code was probably garbage.
I would often see devs talking about using coding agents that make them more productive. I no longer feel that bad about it actually, because now I hear they’ve relied on it so much, that they’re no longer able to write code themselves, haha.
But initially, all the craze about it did make me feel frustrated and took all the joy out of it. I don’t feel that way anymore though, I am slow compared to someone who just used autocomplete, but I know I’ve written every single line myself while those who just review code that an LLM has written probably haven’t thought about the problem they’re solving as deep as I have, leading to worse decisions in code overall while the code may still technically work.
Tig is like an art. I’m not super familiar with laser, but get the impression it is more like mig, rough dirty. Automated stuff is totally different than the typical specialty work you’ll use tig for in industry. Though you will use stick with structural the most.
Basically handheld lasers are so good now, they can make full penetration while keeping a very small heat affected zone and with perfect consistency and very fast welding speed and make welds just as clean if not cleaner than TIG.
Yes, in automation this is relevant, but not in real world applications.
I’ve done time as an operating engineer for asphalt plants, hobby hotrodding stuff, and painted cars professionally for several years where I mostly worked solo and do all operations, although I did have employees twice for a few years. I did some tig, but mostly mig in automotive and stick at asphalt plants while doing maintenance, which is likely far more than you realize.
There are several hard facing jobs that get done at a plant. It is a nickel rod used to extend the wear surfaces of different parts. Hard facing gets you a lot of practice. It is applied to things like a wheeled front end loader’s bucket. You’re simply spending a couple of days making cross hatch patterns on all of the primary wear surfaces so the beads wear out instead of the bucket. The other one is the crushing hammers in a rock crusher.
Most of the time with tig, you’re messing with ultra thin or dissimilar materials. There is a ton of nuance required to understand temperature, expansion, and how heat flows through various surfaces. Your prep and cleaning are super critical. These become the main job. Automotive paint is exponentially more prep oriented, but still, actually striking an arc is only around 5% of the work for tig. Your setup, cleaning, and prep are a far bigger part of the job. You’re building a strategy to manage heat and expansion. The actual process of controlling the molten pool is complex. In both welding and machining, your primary sensory feedback is actually sound. That is how you know when the settings are dialed correctly.
In all of this, it is very possible to setup automation to replace the welder. You’re just going to need to spend a long time setting up the machines and ruin a couple dozen workpieces to dial in the operations until the weld passes xray and empirical tests.
Seeing someone make metal sticky is totally irrelevant except in decorative consumer junk. If someone is going to be facing life or death because of the quality of the welds, the expectations and requirements are stringent. In those circumstances, the human welder will not be replaced unless the goal is to make hundreds of items or more. The human is far faster and cheaper at any smaller scales. One day there will be something like humaniform AGI, and long after these, one might specialize in this type of operation, but this kind of sensory and spacial awareness, with very complex feedback systems are orders of magnitude beyond anything that exists in the present. Just the software complexity for the humanoid robots that already exist is ridiculously impossible to coordinate in a high level meaningful way.
If you want to weld, you’ll have a job. Just be aware that it sucks as a job. The fumes are toxic awful. Tig in particular sucks because you are going to slip and touch the tungsten to the weld pool from time to time. That causes a flash that is way brighter than any welding hood you can actually use will block. It will blind you over time. If you use an auto darkening hood at all with any form of welding, you will lose most if not all of your vision later in life. That fraction of a second before the glass darkens is faster than your brain can process, but it is not your brain getting damaged, it is your eyes, and that electromagnetic radiation and searing photons are still getting to your retina and damaging it a little bit every time. Selling your body parts off to eat today is an insidious haunt you’ll likely regret one day. You may think you’ll wear a mask/respirator, but you’re going to find yourself in extremely cramped, hot, dirty, nasty, scary AF places where you must find a way to get the weld done right. You do not matter in these circumstances. Your skill and pay is largely measured by your willingness and ability to never say no and get the job done. That is how you make a decent paycheck welding.
I’ve been on a fully extended manlift a hundred feet in the air, in a gusty wind, with the tipping alarm going off, getting motion sickness, with the bucket periodically banging against a silo so hard I could barely stand.
I’ve crawled into a tiny opening of a tractor trailer size drum cylinder made of steel that was barely under 140° F in air temperature, with it pitch back because I went in the actually pitch-tar shoot where hot dry aggregate mixes to make asphalt – exits to go up the silo elevator. I got burned through my coveralls because the surface was so hot. I was pouring sweat, and it sizzled on everything it touched. I replaced a large steel shelf called a flight inside. I had to cut it out, dig out the aggregate, and weld in the replacement as fast as humanly possible because the way the old flight failed stopped the elevator full of asphalt on the chain and buckets. If that stuff solidified beyond what the motor and transmission could overcome to restart, it would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars in the middle of a major freeway paving operation in the middle of the night. Chiseling out the elevator takes at least 3 whole days. I actually ruined my favorite boots doing that one, the bottoms were melted beyond any further use. That is the kind of thing to expect. In an expensive place like Southern California, if you can do jobs like that, and don’t mind the diesel fuel bath afterwards to get the tar off your skin and clothes, you’ll make a six figure income and afford to live in a lower end 3 bedroom house kind of life.
Wow, thank you for sharing that perspective.
I know tig, mig, oxy, etc and each has their pros and cons. I’m sure it’s the same for laser welding. It will have its uses for somethings. Don’t let that discourage you. Tig is awesome.
Thank you! I’m determined to keep working hard on learning TIG. I just hope that if some day I decide to look for a new job, TIG is still in demand. From what I’ve read so far, it seems that laser equipment is not as portable which makes it good for manufacturing, but not for working on field. :)
It’s starting to seem like TIG might get obsolete compared to Laser
It’s a different process that has different applications.
Even though MIG and TIG are used today for the majority of jobs, there is still applications where stick or brazing does the job better (or is the only way to get the job done sucessfully).
Right! Thanks for the reassurance! :)
