If you are a welding professional, you must know about welding electrodes and their usage. Welding electrodes are pieces of wire connected with a welding machine to generate an electric arc. Current passing through a wire produces the arc and generates much heat for melting the metal and joint with welding.

There are mainly two types of welding: (i) consumable and (ii) non-consumable. Here you will get a brief idea about various types of electrodes and their benefits and short-coming to determine which is the best.

Different Electrodes for Welding: The rods applied by the manufacturer in stick welding and MIG are termed consumable electrodes. The filler material melts to help in welded joints.

Non-consumable are electrodes are those which are mainly used in TIG welding. These are made with tungsten which hardly melts because of its higher melting point as compared to consumable electrodes. As per the welding electrode manufacturers, it only supplies an electric arc which assists filler material to complete the successful welding procedure. In this case, filler material is to be fed manually.

You can capture the difference when you notice that consumable electrodes are consumed in the melting process whereas non-consumable electrodes do not.

Consumable Electrodes: The supplier supplies these electrodes for MIG, stick, and another flux-cored welding. These add shielded arc electrodes, heavy-coated electrodes, and also light electrodes.

There are some consumable electrodes used on many occasions:

• Light-Coated: It has a thin coating by brushing or spraying on the surface. The coatings and electrodes are made with different kinds of materials. The filler metal is almost the same as the welded base metal.
• Bare Electrodes: Usage of this kind of electrodes is a bit tricky as the arc is too difficult to control. The coating of light enhances the arc stability and makes it manageable. These have limited applications like welding Mn steel.
• Shielded Electrodes: The different forms of coating applied by the welding wire manufacturer serve various purposes. Cellulose coating uses a gas layer to save the weld region. In mineral coating, slag may be produced in which a mixture of cellulose and minerals must be in place.


Non-Consumable Electrodes: These electrodes are quite simpler to observe as there are mainly two forms: Carbon Electrodes: It can be used for welding and cutting. It is made with graphite and coated with a left bare or copper layer.

There is nothing like a particular specification for this electrode. But for military purpose, particular specification is applied to manufacture this electrode.

Tungsten Electrodes: TIG welding is preferred with Tungsten electrodes. It consists of tungsten in maximum amount with a little bit of zirconium and a little percentage of Thorium.

For pure-tungsten electrodes, the usage is quite rare. It is not durable and may suffer from high current. Tungsten electrode with 0.5% of zirconium is suitable for altering current. You can see the improvement as compared to pure tungsten.

With the addition of little Thorium, the electrode becomes reliable with higher resistance. They can resist a higher current. It is of greater control to make an easy start to the welding process.

But it is always a good idea to allow maximum threshold current to control the arc.