Welding guides from 16 years in the trade
Practical welding answers: hooking up your leads (positive or negative), amps for 6013 and 7018 rods, why rods stick, welder’s flash and more, from Randy Williams.
Jump to the amperage chart: how many amps for your rod?
Free welding tools
Find out why a weld went wrong, get starting MIG settings, check your polarity, size your welding cable, decode a rod number or test what you know. Built from published sources, free, with no sign-up.
Welding Troubleshooting
Why does my weld look bad? Pick stick, MIG, flux core or TIG and what you see to get the likely causes in order and the fix for each.
Essential
MIG Welding Settings Chart
Starting MIG settings for steel: pick the thickness, wire and gas to get the wire speed, voltage and amps, with gas flow and polarity.
Essential
Welding Polarity Chart: DCEP, DCEN or AC
Is the ground (earth) positive or negative? DCEP, DCEN or AC for every common stick rod, MIG wire, flux-core wire and TIG job, which lead goes where, and which rods run on an AC-only welder.
Welding Cable Size Chart
What size welding cable do you need? Enter your amps and the length of both leads to get the copper cable size in AWG and mm².
Beginner Welding Rod Chart and Rod Number Decoder
A free printable beginner chart for E6010, E6011, E6013 and E7018 (what each rod is for, AC or DC, amps by size), plus a decoder for any stick rod number.
Welding Practice Test with Answers
A free welding practice test: a question of the day and short quizzes on safety, polarity, stick, rods, MIG, flux core, TIG and weld defects, every answer explained.
How many amps for your rod?
Pick two stick electrodes and a rod diameter to see how many amps each one needs. The numbers come from the shop chart in Randy’s guide to welding rod sticking; E7018 also has the range from ESAB’s data sheet, listed first.
80–130
90–160
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About Welding Tribe
- Welder and writer
- Randy Williams
- In the trade
- 16 years
- Writing guides
- Since 2019
Hi! I'm Randy, the guy behind WeldingTribe. I've been in the metal welding industry for 16 years. I asked many questions, made several errors while practicing, and learned a lot of things, all which I'd love to share with you here.