At Fellesverkstedet you don’t need to have a background in welding or have a hot work certificate in order to use the welding equipment. As with all other machines at Fellesverkstedet you get training in how to use the machines according to the project you want to do.

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Types of welding available at Fellesverkstedet

Fellesverkstedet currently has machines to perform 2 different types of welding: MIG-welding (=MAG-welding) and TIG-welding. Both techniques are a form of Arc welding, which means you use electricity to melt metal and join pieces together. At Fellesverkstedet you use a shielding gas in both these techniques to protect the molten material from reacting with atmospheric gases.

Which type of welding you will want or need to utilise will depend on what you are trying to weld, the experience, time and/or patience you have and your preference.

There are a bunch of other welding techniques besides MIG and TIG welding but on this page we focus on what is accessible at Fellesverkstedet.

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MIG-welding

If you’ve never welded before, this is probably the easiest way to getting started. You can almost compare it to using a glue gun. With this type of welding, the material you add to the melted area gets automatically fed through the welding gun into the weld pool. The downside with this machine is switching to different materials as you need to replace the spool and possibly the gas. Currently (April 2025) we only have the machine set up for regular steel - but there are future plans to test aluminium welding using the same technique.

With our current welder you can weld up to 8 mm thickness steel.

🤓 Difference MIG/MAG welding

TIG-welding

TIG-welding takes a bit more practice to get into but once you do, a world of possibilities opens up. With this technique you use the torch which contains a tungsten electrode to melt the metal. The other hand is used to add material to the melted area (so-called weld pool). This technique requires more finesse and a bit of a stable hand to get used to, but once you get control over the process you can get super clean welds. In addition, if you want to go hardcore in-depth into this technique you can use a pedal to control the amount of voltage/heat you apply to the area you are welding.

Unlike with MIG-welding, this process can also be used for thinner pieces (< 1 mm) as well as different materials (aluminium, stainless steel, bronze, etc).

In short:

MIG (Metal Inert Gas) Welding – Automatically feeds metal into the melted area
- Easy to learn, fast, currently only regular steel (April 2025).
TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) Welding – Uses a tungsten electrode to melt the area for manually feeding more material into.
- Very precise, clean welds if you get the hang of it, can be used for thin and more exotic metals, but slow and skill-intensive.

What about laserwelding?

Laserwelding is quite hyped these days and is gaining a lot of traction. It seems to give super clean welds and looks very easy to use. Fellesverkstedet has looked into the possibilities of offering it and currently the risks and costs involved with using a laserwelder are too high for our current setup at Seilduksgata 29k.