WelderEliteWelderElite 12-Piece Welding Coupons 1/8" Welding Practice Kit 11 Gauge Beginners Welding Mild Steel Sheet Can Be Used to Make 1 Dice and 1 Cube Frame

Great for practicing and an awesome learning experience

Great for practice TIG welding.

Getting started with welding requires a lot of practice. A really typical approach is to get test "coupons" of mild steel and just run beads and get used to the welder, then start using those coupons to build various joints (butt, lap, tee, corner, etc.) before building an actual project. This die kit is a great way to practice early, needed skills, tune and get comfortable with a new welder and create a fun project in the process.The Steel:1/8" medium carbon steel (1045). This has a little more carbon content and is a little harder than typical "mild steel" used for welding, but it's still suitable for welding practice. The higher carbon content might result in more corrosion if not properly coated. In my opinion, that's good practice too. It can be hard to properly coat the inside of a welded steel object that can't be reached for painting after it's welded. This little cube will force you to figure that out if you don't want it to rust.The Kit:Everything is CNC cut from a single sheet of 1/8" with small tabs left to attach everything. Breaking it all apart is simple. You're left with small defects on some of the edges where you break these tabs, but they're obviously easy to clean up with a file or grinder if you care. You should hit all these edges with a grinder to prep for welding anyway.Size and Quantity:A pretty typical coupon size is 3" x 3", which the outer squares of this kit give you. You get 6 of those. As a bonus, there are inside edges to practice on as well, so with the right setups, you'll get 8 edges per coupon to practice with instead of the typical 4 on a solid piece. In addition to the 6 hollow coupons, you get the 6 smaller knock outs for building the die. These sides are 1 13/16" square. If you weld these together as pictured, you'll have almost exactly a 2" cube (2 1/16"). The edges on this practice cube give you 12 corner joints to practice.Practice areas:You can practice butt joints, lap joints, tee joints, corner welds, 90* corner setups, proper clamping/stabilization, proper tacking to avoid warping, surface prep for inside surfaces, grinding/polishing finished welds, etc. When you're all done, you'll know your machine pretty well, be a better welder and have a cool show piece for your workbench or bookshelf.Price:I got this for free through the Vine program, but I've paid more for simple coupon packs and similar cube kits cost as much for just the inner sides, or solid pieces. For the regular price, this is a solid value.

They're are a lot of kits like this online, but most of those are 16g to 14g - not great if you're just learning TIG or even MIG. 1/8 is the way to go. These come mailed in a flat envelope and you just kinda twist the pieces apart.

A little smaller than I anticipated but good gauge metal.

Fun welding practice kit that gives you lots of outside corner joint practice runs. Edges only require minor clean up prior to welding but all metal should be prepped before welding anyways! If you want to get some practice on something other than an outside corner joint then I'd recommend only welding 3 pieces together first and then going back and doing a second run on the inside corner joint for additional practice time.

These are great for the first time beginner welder as they are very thin

I picked up a TIG welder to learn welding. A guy can only run so many beads on flat plate before you’re looking for something to put together. These were exactly what I needed to take the next steps without destroying something valuable. These did teach me that I’ll have to do more practice.