The hard work of the welding process

I am a welder who has been doing welding for five years. I learned welding when I was in technical school, and then I was assigned to the factory as a welder after graduation.

Compared with the current college graduates who cannot find a suitable major, we were still professionally matched at that time, and we did what we learned.

I have been doing this welding job for about 5 years, on and off! In the end, I gave up the welding job. As for these five years of welding experience, I can only say one thing: being a welder is really hard!

When welders are working, because of the radiation of arc light and sparks flying, in order to protect ourselves, we need to wear thick work clothes all year round.

You can feel this feeling! Wearing thick work clothes in the hot weather in summer, the discomfort will only be known by those who have really experienced it!

Because the monthly output of my group was not very large, the conditions in the production workshop were not very good, and there was no air conditioning. At the beginning, we took a thermometer to test it ourselves, and the highest temperature reached 48 degrees Celsius.

You can imagine how hot and uncomfortable it was for us to wear thick denim work clothes in such high temperatures! Compared with those people who are now wearing shirts and sitting in the office with air conditioners, we were like the Flaming Mountain.

The worst thing was that we could not turn on the air conditioner or even the fan, because we used carbon dioxide shielded welding. Once the fan was turned on, the wind would blow away the carbon dioxide gas that protected the weld, and the products would have problems.

Working at a high temperature of 48 degrees Celsius without air conditioning or fans was really like being in the Flaming Mountain!

However, the wisdom of the people is infinite. We still came up with some methods, that is, to fix the air pipe of the compressed air in one place and let the compressed air blow against my back, which could cool me down a little bit, but only a little bit!

The logistics support of the factory at that time was still good. In summer, in high-temperature workshops like ours, there would be an ambulance parked at the door to respond to and prevent accidents at any time.

Maybe some people will think that if we have a hard time in summer, then winter should be quite easy, how warm it is!

In fact, from my point of view, I hate winter more. Why? The temperature difference between inside and outside is too big.

When we are working, we are hotter, so we can't wear too many clothes under the work clothes, otherwise we will be too hot, so we usually just wear a cotton sweater, and add a woolen vest when it is the coldest.

So when we are at work, the most painful thing is when we change our work clothes before work, it is so cold! But there is no better way, we can only cool ourselves down!

When we are working, it is indeed not cold, but you can't stop. Once you stop, you will be too cold to bear it, so in winter, we don't rest much when we work!

When I was a welder, getting injured almost became my daily routine. When I was working, sparks splashed everywhere, which were all hot iron water. Once splashed on my body, it was basically scalded.

Although I was wearing work clothes, there would always be leaks. It was impossible to protect them tightly, so getting injured was commonplace. I still have more than a dozen scars on my body that were clearly visible from burns.

I was doing assembly work at first. I was swinging a hammer and hitting iron fixtures all day long. If I wasn't careful, I would hit myself.

The hammer handle kept rubbing against my hands, and a thick layer of calluses grew on my palms. I haven't done electric welding for more than ten years, but the calluses on my hands are still there.

Another painful thing about being a welder is the radiation from the arc light. The radiation from the arc light is very strong, and the main damage it causes is to the skin and eyes. If the skin is burned by the arc light, it will be a layer of skin off!

At first, we always joked that this was a kind of free skin-changing cream, but the burning feeling of being burned was not an easy taste to bear.

If the eyes are injured, it will be more serious. It is like having conjunctivitis. The stinging pain is unbearable. The eyes can't be opened and the tears don't stop. It is several times more uncomfortable than when the eyes are touched by chili oil! Although there are eye drops to treat this, they are not easy to use. We usually look for special medicine-human milk.

I am still lucky. I have not been injured for several years. This is a kind of luck in misfortune. There are no major injuries, but minor injuries are constant!