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Unfortunately I feel like I know very little about what I do for a living.
I only recently finished the first year of my apprenticeship.
I can't give you the material grade of the stuff I'm welding, beyond the fact that it's mild steel. The thickness of the C-channel and I-beams we use in the skids varies from 1/4" on the web up to 5/8" on the flange of some of the bigger I-beams. The majority would probably be 1/4" web with a 1/2" flange. I'm not sure of the exact designation of the wire, other than it's 0.45 all position flux core from ESAB.
I remember in school we welded with much lower settings, especially wire feed, but I'm expected to complete welds on beams 12" and under in a single pass. The only stuff we run multi-pass welds on are the lifting lugs.
I've cranked the machine as far as 25 and 350, that will pump out a reasonably nice 3/8" thick fillet weld on both the verticals and the overheads, but it'll blow right through the 1/4" stuff on a vertical weave if I'm not careful.
I suppose I could stop being stubborn and just learn to weld with the settings my journeyman likes, after all I did pass my CWB test with them... but it seems like with a little tweaking I could get much better looking and higher quality welds. I'm thinking of moving on to bigger and better things when I get my blue book back from the apprenticeship board, and I don't want to get laughed out of a shop that actually has some quality control.