Welding Supplies & Equipment

Welding supplies and equipment includes the various arc welding tools used to join metals through fusion. In addition to melting the base metal, arc welders will heat a filler metal which is added to the joint to form a weld pool; this is molten metal that eventially cools to form a joint that is as strong or stronger than the base metal. Some arc welding methods include: shielded metal arc welding (SMAW), also known as stick welding; gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW), also known as TIG welding; gas metal arc welding (GMAW), also known as MIG welding, and Flux-cored arc welding (FCAW). This section also includes brazing and soldering tools, which are metal joining techniques that use lower temperatures than arc welding methods. In brazing, a filler metal is melted into the joint; this filler material will have a lower melting point than the base metal work pieces, which will not be melted during this process. Soldering is simliar because the base metal is not melted, yet the filler metal for this technique will have an even lower melting point than the filler material used for brazing.