I'm not quite sure if I should post this here, or in General Discussion, and I searched for a thread specifically about welding, without any luck, so here goes:
Before being forced into early retirement, I worked in factories as an Industrial Electrician/Maintenance. I did everything from repair to rebuild to completely new build and installation of machines, automated equipment and even a couple of factories. In that time I picked up a lot of skills, so you could almost call me a Jack of All Trades, master of none. One of my skills that never got enough practice, in my opinion, was welding. Now, I've had to weld structural parts of a machine together, and they held. But the welds weren't what anyone would every call "good looking" and they all required a ton of grinding to make them acceptable. I once had a company actually inspect one of my welds (destruction testing, cut/polish/etch) and found that I was getting good penetration, but again, they just looked nasty.
Since I'm still in the planning phase of building my trike, my current area of investigation is....duh....welding.
I would like to know what other members have done. What style of welding have you used? Why did you choose one style over the other?
Which would you consider most appropriate for frame work?
Any and all responses are welcome (even the ones that say "SD...put the welder down and take 3 steps back"
Thanks in advance for all the input.
~SD