Spent 3 hours chasing a bad weld before my kid pointed at the ground clamp

Last Thursday I was welding up a small gate for a customer in my garage shop and every bead was popping and spitting like crazy. I checked my heat setting twice, swapped the wire spool, even cleaned the nozzle and tip thinking I had a clog somewhere. After about 3 hours of fighting it I was ready to blame the cheap wire I picked up at the farm store. My 11 year old walked in to grab a soda and just pointed at my ground clamp sitting on a rusty patch of the table. I moved it to clean steel and the next bead laid down smooth as butter. I felt like an idiot but also kind of relieved it wasn't me or the machine. Now I keep a wire brush right next to the clamp so I have no excuse. Any of you got a dumb fix story like this, or is it just me?

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mason_lee10d ago

Man that ground clamp thing gets everybody at least once. Been there so many times it hurts. Mine was a bad ground on a trailer I was fixing, spent an hour cussing my welder before I noticed the clamp was on paint instead of bare metal. Same deal, moved it and everything ran perfect. Dumbest one for me was chasing porosity for a whole afternoon and it turned out my gas hose had a tiny leak. Kid pointing it out is great though, sometimes fresh eyes catch what we stare right past. Bet you won't make that mistake twice.

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