Drawn Arc Stud Welding Explained: Process, Parameters, Code and Troubleshooting

Setting the Parameters: Current, Weld Time, Lift, Plunge and Angle

Two knobs on a stud welding controller decide whether a weld passes inspection: current and weld time. Current melts the base metal and the stud end. Weld time decides how long the molten pools mingle, spread and freeze into a fillet with fusion behind it. Lift, plunge and gun angle deliver that heat the way the procedure says.

The relationship is predictable: bigger stud, thicker base metal, more current and more time. A 12.7 mm stud on light gauge deck and a 25 mm stud on heavy plate are different weld problems, and their settings should look different too.

Current Melts, Time Fuses

A commonly published starting point for drawn arc is on the order of 80 A of welding current per millimetre of stud diameter. For a 19 mm (3/4 in) stud that rule lands near 1,500 A, and the University of Iowa study of stud welding ergonomics and fume welded its 19 mm studs at 1,700 A, in the same band.

Starting Points, Not Gospel

Carbon steel stud, carbon steel base metal, reasonable thickness, controller in good condition: this is the band most operators work in.

Across the 12.7 to 25.4 mm range most drawn arc cycles land between 0.5 and 1.4 seconds of arc time, and both current and time climb with diameter. A 19 mm stud at 1,700 A and 0.95 s is a typical production setting on heavy composite deck.

When the Numbers Fight Each Other

Most bad stud welds are not mysteries. They are the predictable result of four specific mismatches you can spot on the bench.

• Too much current, too little time: spatter, a blown-out ring, shallow fusion. The arc outran the filler.
• Too little current, too long a time: a cold, undersized fillet with poor penetration that cracks and pulls off in the bend test with almost no effort.
• Too much energy for thin plate: burn-through, sagging and distortion that shows up hours later as a deck that will not lie flat.
• Dragging the stud: moving the gun while the arc is live smears the pool instead of building it, leaving a cold weld with a lopsided fillet.

Lift, Plunge and the Angle of the Gun

Lift is the gap you leave between the base of the stud and the workpiece before you trigger, typically a few millimetres, so the arc has somewhere to strike. Too small and the arc will not strike cleanly; too large and you are fusing across a gap of molten air. Plunge is how far the stud travels into the arc once it is established. The controller drives the stud down at a set rate while molten metal climbs the stud base to build the fillet. Too shallow and the fillet sits on the surface; too deep on thin plate and you punch through.

Hold the gun at 20 to 30 degrees from vertical, with the base of the stud square to the work. The tilt lets the ferrule and the arc clear the surface and puts the weld metal where the fillet belongs. General arc mechanics are reviewed in the Arc Welder’s Guide; the stud-specific geometry lives in your WPS.

Your Settings Are Part of a Qualified Procedure

This is where good work gets thrown away. Current, time, lift, plunge, gun angle and the stud and ferrule combination all belong to the procedure qualified under the AWS structural welding code, which the AISC steel specification calls for on shear connectors. Codes allow a narrow band around those qualified values, commonly about ±10 percent on current and time, before the procedure must be requalified. ISO 14555 works the same way, tying the permitted parameter range to the tested material group and diameter.

Nudge the settings in the field because the weld looks wrong and you have stepped outside your qualified range. The shift’s bend test will not catch it, because that test used the qualified settings. It surfaces later, in the inspection report.

The Energy Arithmetic

Energy per weld is voltage times current times time. At 44 V, 1,700 A and 0.95 s that is 71,060 J, roughly 71 kJ delivered into a single 19 mm stud. A resistance spot weld in a car body panel puts in a fraction of that in a fraction of a second. That gap is why stud welding distorts more and throws more fume than the panel work most welders grew up on.

Base Metal Variables

Settings do not exist in isolation. They exist against a specific base metal in a specific condition.

• Thickness. Thin plate caps how much current you can push before you burn through; heavy plate gives room but needs more energy to reach fusion.
• Coatings. Welding through galvanized deck is generally not permitted by project specifications. The stud must be welded directly to the base metal, which is why the through-deck case shows up in research rather than in standard practice.
• Cleanliness. Paint, rust, mill scale, oil, moisture and galvanizing all stop fusion. Each gets ground back to bright metal, and mechanical removal such as carbon arc gouging is sometimes used. Aluminum has its own prep rules in Aluminum Cleaner for Welding.

For a stud added after the fact, hand-stick stud welding is sometimes used on site; the trade-offs are in Advantages of Stick Welding, but it does not create a qualified shear connector without an engineer’s written approval.

Code, Qualification and Inspection: AWS D1.1 and ISO 14555

Stud welding is one of the few processes where the code will not accept a good welder with good equipment. It wants documented proof: a qualified procedure, a qualified welder, a passing production test at the start of every shift, and an inspection record. In North America the governing document is AWS D1.1/D1.1M, Structural Welding Code, and the stud welding requirements sit in Clause 9.

Clause 9 in plain English

Clause 9 is short and unforgiving: stud welding shall be performed by welders qualified in accordance with the code, using procedures qualified to the code. That means two qualifications, and neither covers the other. The procedure, a WPS and its supporting PQR, proves a set of parameters produces acceptable welds on a particular base metal; the welder qualification proves a particular person can make those welds. A flawless WPS does not qualify a welder, and an experienced operator is not covered by somebody else’s procedure.

Qualifying the welder

The AWS D1.1 welder qualification is built around ten test welds: two in each of the four positions, flat, horizontal, vertical and overhead, plus two more in flat, showing repeatability in the position the welder will work in most often. Every weld is evaluated by a qualified person, and the set is macro-sectioned so weld metal and fusion zone can be checked for cracks, porosity and incomplete fusion. Passing the bend test but showing a lamination or cold lap on the macro section still means failure.

Training new operators against a written procedure beats imitation. The Arc Welder’s Guide training material is a common reference, and the aerospace welding standards and careers guide makes the same point in a different context: qualification is a process you run, not a certificate you hold.

The production test

Qualification is the slow part; the production test protects the project. It is five consecutive welds, all bend tested, repeated at the start of each shift and whenever welding parameters, equipment or base metal conditions change. That is where field arguments start: a new current setting, a different stud gun, a different beam with a different coating, a different ferrule size, a repair area ground back to bright metal. Each counts as a change, and each means another production test.

This is where the story at the top of the article resolves itself. Those first five studs of the shift get picked up, hit with a hammer, bent about 30 degrees and thrown in the scrap bin, destroyed on purpose, so a wrong lift setting or a dirty flange gets caught in the first minute of the shift rather than after a thousand studs are under the deck.

The bend test and the acceptance criteria

The bend test is the acceptance test, and it is simple. The stud is struck with a hammer or press and bent approximately 30 degrees from its original axis. If the stud bends and the weld stays intact, the weld is acceptable. If the stud breaks, or the weld cracks or peels at the base, it fails and the cause must be found before welding continues. A passing stud may be left bent; a failed bend test is a setup failure until proven otherwise.

Visual inspection covers the rest. The code and the project specification generally call for:

• A continuous fillet weld all the way around the stud base
• No cracks in the fillet or fusion zone
• No undercut at the stud base
• A minimum 1/16 in (2 mm) fillet weld leg around the stud base, unless the drawing or specification requires otherwise
• Macro sectioning of qualification welds to confirm sound fusion

Inspection frequency is usually a bend-tested sample of studs from the lot, often around 10 percent, with the bend test performed the same way as the production test. Do not treat that percentage as a universal rule: confirm the frequency, weld size and test method against the current edition of the code and the project specification, because both can override the default.

The paperwork that has to exist

Auditors look for four things: the WPS and the PQR that qualified it; the stud manufacturer’s certification and mill test reports, confirming the studs welded were made to the specified grade and diameter; the operator’s qualification record showing who was qualified to run the procedure and when it was maintained; and the inspection log recording each production test, bend test, failure and corrective action. A stud later gouged out and rewelded goes through the same qualifying process, bend test included.

ISO 14555 and AISC 360

Outside the United States, ISO 14555 is the international standard for stud welding. It covers drawn arc products alongside the other stud welding processes, groups stud materials by material group and diameter, and for drawn arc stud welding up to 13 mm diameter covers material groups 1 and 2.1 under material groups 8 and 10. It carries its own bend test and macro test requirements for qualification and production, and its acceptance criteria are not identical to the AWS ones. Aluminum studs have their own preparation requirements, covered in the guide to prepping aluminum for welding.

Closer to home, AISC 360 Chapter I, Section I8 covers shear stud connectors and headed studs and requires the welding to conform to AWS D1.1. That is why a designer specifying a shear connector can demand a qualified procedure and a passing production test even when the drawings are silent. If a stud fails and must be removed, air arc gouging is the usual way back to clean metal before the replacement is welded.

The Invisible Cost: Fume, Heat, Ergonomics and Fire

Stud welding has a clean reputation: short cycle, no shielding gas, no spatter trail, no grinding slag off a finished deck. Against aluminum flux core welding that reputation is earned, but not in absolute terms. The measurements tell a much less comfortable story than most shops assume.

The strongest evidence is a peer-reviewed University of Iowa study in the Annals of Occupational Hygiene, which measured the fume a welder actually inhales while stud welding composite beams with conventional handheld gear rather than laboratory surrogates. The study is open access.

Fume levels: bare beam versus galvanized deck

With conventional equipment, inhalable fume averaged 18.2 mg/m³ welding to a bare steel beam, nearly twice the ACGIH inhalable threshold limit value of 10 mg/m³ for particles not otherwise specified. Through galvanized composite deck, the situation most stud welders actually face, it climbed to 65.7 mg/m³, about six and a half times the TLV.

Zinc explains the jump. On bare steel it measured 0.21 mg/m³; through galvanized deck it hit 15.8 mg/m³. That is not the stud weld melting steel, it is the deck coating vaporized every time the arc is struck. The welder is smelting zinc off the deck and breathing the result. Manganese ran 0.88 to 1.54 mg/m³ against its 0.1 mg/m³ TLV, nine to fifteen times the limit, and manganese is the metal most associated with the neurological side of welding fume.

Why the plume follows the welder’s face

The plume rises. A welder bent double over a beam puts their breathing zone in the path of that rising column and inhales the concentrated core at close range. The same plume disperses harmlessly for anyone standing upright 1.4 m away, which is why the helper feels fine while the welder cannot stop coughing by lunch. Dilution ventilation across a big open bay therefore may not protect the person who matters. You need capture at the source, not clean-up at the ceiling.

What welding fume does to you over time

The NIOSH Pocket Guide entry for welding fume lists metal fume fever (the flu-like Monday morning symptoms of fever, chills, nausea and malaise), interstitial pneumonitis that can progress after heavy or repeated exposure, and potential occupational carcinogen status with lung cancer as the cancer site. This is a chronic exposure, not a nuisance.

Stud welding can trigger a separate hazard too. OSHA identifies hot work such as welding stainless and other chromium-bearing alloy steels as a major source of hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen. That matters if your shop runs stainless stud welding on the same extraction and respiratory program as carbon steel work.

The posture problem nobody budgets for

The ergonomics of stud welding are as measurable as the chemistry. The same Iowa work found a mean trunk inclination of 80.4 degrees with conventional equipment against 8.9 degrees using an upright system and tool balancer. Eighty degrees is not leaning, it is nearly horizontal, held for the length of a thousand-stud shift. Studies link low-back pain risk to the proportion of work time spent with the trunk flexed beyond 45 degrees, and chronic low-back pain prevalence sits near 40 percent among construction workers generally. Add the repetition, the twisting to reach flanges and the weight of the gun and cable, and you have a job that injures backs quietly and predictably.

Heat is the other hidden cost. A 1,700 amp stud weld is short, but a shift of them puts real radiant heat into the head and shoulders of someone bent over a beam, and heat stress on a hot deck in summer is a genuine exposure. OSHA’s 1910.253 welding, cutting and brazing standard sets the hot work program requirements that apply.

Fire: the 35 foot rule that catches people out

Stud welding on a composite deck is hot work on thin steel deck, often with timber, insulation and combustible coatings underneath. OSHA 1910.252 requires combustible materials to be kept at least 35 ft (11 m) from the work area during hot work, and where that is not possible, fire-resistant blankets or shields must protect the combustibles.

• Hot work permit for every shift, signed before the first stud.
• Fire watch with the authority to stop the job, present for the duration and 30 minutes after the last weld.
• Extraction at the source: a hood or arm close to the gun, not a fan across the bay.
• Respiratory protection where exposure limits are exceeded, under a written program with fit testing.
• Eye and skin protection for welder and helper. A helper is not a spectator.

Bottom line: the invisible costs of drawn arc stud welding are not small. Fume sits above exposure limits in ordinary conditions and gets dramatically worse through galvanized deck. The posture is a documented injury mechanism, and the heat and fire risk are real. None of that means you should not run studs. It means budgeting for extraction, a tool balancer, a respiratory program and a hot work permit the way you budget for the studs themselves, because they are the same job.

Nine Common Drawn Arc Failures and How to Fix Them

Most stud weld problems arrive dressed as a mystery: the stud looks welded and the bend test snaps it off the flange. Here is the working list shops keep next to the controller.

1. No fusion, or the stud pulls off by hand

Cause: Contaminated base metal. Paint, rust, mill scale, oil, moisture or galvanizing sit between the arc and the steel, so the stud fuses to the coating. Insufficient plunge or a weak ground connection look the same.

Fix: Grind to bright metal, clean and dry, and confirm the ground clamp bites clean steel. On aluminum studs, oxide removal is not optional; see this guide to prepping aluminum for welding.

2. Porosity in the fillet

Cause: Oil, moisture, paint, grinding dust or debris trapped under the stud base. A damp or contaminated ferrule does the same.

Fix: Clean and dry the base metal and the stud, fit a clean ferrule, and check the gun. Porosity at the root means the arc never had clean metal.

3. Cracking at the fillet

Cause: Excessive heat input and a slow, restrained cooling pool, hydrogen picked up from moisture or oil, or a very hard result from welding unapproved materials.

Fix: Bring current and time back to the qualified values, remove hydrogen sources, and check the stud mill certification against the approved material list.

4. Undersized or missing fillet

Cause: Wrong ferrule size for the stud diameter, low current, short weld time, or not enough plunge for the puddle to climb.

Fix: Match the ferrule to the stud and adjust within the qualified range. AWS D1.1 requires a minimum 1/16 in (2 mm) fillet around the stud base, so a thin fillet is a code nonconformance, not a cosmetic complaint.

5. Undercut at the stud base

Cause: Too much current with too little travel, so the arc dwells at the root and digs in rather than sweeping around the base.

Fix: Reduce current, or increase weld time and lift so the puddle moves. Persistent undercut on one stud size means the table, not the gun, is wrong.

6. Burn-through on thin plate

Cause: Energy matched to the stud, not the plate. At 44 V, 1,700 A and 0.95 s, roughly 71 kJ goes into one stud, enough to punch through thin plate.

Fix: Drop current and time to the values qualified for that thickness, or use a smaller stud and a larger pilot hole.

7. Excessive spatter

Cause: Too much current, a dirty surface, a loose ground clamp, or welding through deck. The University of Iowa study saw substantially greater spatter through galvanized deck than on a bare beam, with particle number concentrations far above other arc welding.

Fix: Clean the surface, tune the current, and keep the clamp clean. OSHA 1910.254(d)(2) requires magnetic work clamps to be freed of adherent spatter on the contact surfaces before use. The same study measured manganese above its applicable limit in every condition tested, even on clean bare steel, so contamination control is a fume-control measure as much as a fusion measure.

8. The arc will not strike, or the gun trips

Cause: Bad ground, a worn contact tip, a damaged gun cable, or a controller fault.

Fix: Test the ground, inspect and replace the contact tip, replace any cable with damaged insulation rather than taping it, then reset the controller and check the gun range.

9. The stud is crooked or wobbles

Cause: Wrong gun angle, inconsistent lift, a bent stud, or a worn chuck.

Fix: Square the gun at 20 to 30 degrees from vertical, set a repeatable lift, sort out bent studs before they reach the gun, and check the chuck for wear.

Change one variable at a time

Reproduce the failure on a coupon before touching production, so you learn what the setup is doing without burning more studs. Change one variable at a time: adjust current, weld time, lift and plunge in sequence and record each result. If three settings move at once, a passing coupon tells you nothing, and the qualified procedure still does not cover what you just did.

A failed bend test is a setup failure until proven otherwise, so the fix belongs in the WPS as a documented change with the qualification behind it, not in the operator’s thumb. Field re-tuning until the studs pass is the fastest route to a rejected inspection and studs that have to be cut out.

Field Practice: Faster Studs, Better Fills and Fewer Rejects

A good production day is decided before the first stud is struck. The welder who resets the angle, re-clamps the ground and re-checks the lift on every stud will never beat the one who sets the station up once and leaves it alone.

Monday morning: prepare the metal

Start at the joint, not the gun. Grind the stud location back to bright metal and remove paint, rust, mill scale, oil and moisture. Each is a fusion killer, and cleaning costs a fraction of re-welding a rejected stud. Check base metal thickness against the qualified procedure, since thin and heavy plate cannot share the same settings. Where a coating has to come off, air arc gouging and carbon arc gouging strips it back clean and fast.

One shop practice deserves a clear label: pre-drilling a pilot hole slightly smaller than the stud diameter on thin or finished plate. It cuts spatter and lowers heat input, because the stud is driven into a partly formed hole instead of a closed surface. It is not an AWS D1.1 requirement and does not replace a qualified procedure, but it belongs in the WPS.

Setup: where the clock is actually won

Clamp the return lead close to the weld and on the same piece of steel being welded. Set the gun at 20 to 30 degrees from vertical, square to the work. Set the lift once and leave it there. Confirm the stud and ferrule match the gun and controller setup. Two habits cut rework most: staging studs and ferrules at the point of work, and parking the ground clamp next to the weld instead of trailing it across the deck.

Before the first pull, check every connection to the machine and spread out coiled welding cable. OSHA 1910.254(d)(2) requires all connections to be checked before operations begin and coiled cable spread out so it does not overheat. On a generator site that is five minutes of cheap insurance.

The weld itself

Pull the trigger steadily and hold the gun still through the burn. The urge to drag the stud to “help” the arc is the most common cause of a cold, undersized fillet. The observed cycle time is 3 to 8 seconds per weld, and each of those seconds is where a defect is born or prevented. Moving faster fixes none of them.

After the burn

Knock off the ferrule and look at the fillet. Inspect every stud visually for the first hour of the shift, then sample at the frequency the code and specification require. Run the five-stud production test at shift start and again after any change to parameters, equipment or base material condition. Bend testing is destructive, which is why the first studs of a shift get sacrificed: it is a feature of the control system, not waste. A stud that bends smoothly instead of snapping at the fillet tells you the setup is good before you have placed a thousand of them.

Throughput and ergonomics

Stud welding runs in continuous bouts of 20 to 30 minutes before the equipment has to be moved. In that window the gains come from setup, staging and ergonomics, not from squeezing the trigger faster. Stage studs and ferrules within arm’s reach and keep cables out of the walk path.

The upright system evaluated in the University of Iowa study cut inhalable fume to 7.2 mg/m3 on bare beam and 23.4 mg/m3 through galvanized deck. That is a real improvement over conventional equipment, but the deck figure still sits above the 10 mg/m3 inhalable TLV, so ventilation stays necessary. A tool balancer and an upright stand keep the welder out of the stooped posture that drives low-back risk. Rotate tasks and take micro-breaks; posture, not the arc, is what wears people out. Details are in the peer-reviewed study in Annals of Occupational Hygiene.

New welders and the paper trail

Run new starters on coupons with an experienced mentor before they touch production steel. The paper trail matters as much as the fillet: the WPS and PQR, the stud manufacturer’s certification, the operator’s qualification record, the production test log and the inspection log all have to exist. Keep them current, keep them with the work, and ready when an inspector walks the deck. Current requirements are listed through the American Welding Society standards and AISC steel standards pages.

Note: If the shift ends with more rejected studs than the log can explain, the answer is usually in the first ten minutes of the day, not the last. Write down what you changed, when, and who changed it. A weld that failed because the setup drifted is a setup problem, and only a record shows the drift.

Where Drawn Arc Stud Welding Is Headed

For all of its reliability, drawn arc stud welding is far from stagnant. The industry is changing all around it, driven by automation, stricter design requirements, and a long overdue focus on the well being of the welders that keep these jobs moving.

Automation and The Changing Skill Set

On high-volume composite floor and deck projects, the future is already here. Automatic deck stud welding machines are becoming commonplace, and in controlled production environments, robotic stud welding is beginning to take hold. These systems are able to fire hundreds of studs with unwavering consistency, all whilst eliminating the need for an operator to crouch over every individual weld.

That being said, this won’t eliminate the trade, it will evolve it. The welder of tomorrow will need to know just as much about programming a carriage or calibrating a networked controller as they do about the arc itself. The knowledge of fusion will never become obsolete, it will simply be applied to a new set of tools.

Smarter Inspection Methods

Despite all of the innovation surrounding the equipment, bend testing will forever remain the standard destructive acceptance check. When done correctly at the start of a shift, it’s still the quickest and most honest way to catch a bad setup before production begins.

However, for the most critical of projects such as bridge work, magnetic particle and ultrasonic testing are being utilized more often for non-destructive verification of stud-to-base-metal fusion. These methods aren’t a replacement for a qualified procedure, they’re an added layer of confidence for welds that simply cannot fail.

Tighter Codes and a Human Focus

The bar for acceptance is only getting higher. The current edition of the structural welding code is AWS D1.1/D1.1M:2025 with Amendment 1, and AWS has authored more than 350 welding standards and codes to uphold it. Alongside AISC 360 Chapter I and AWS D1.1 Clause 9, seismic provisions are continuing to drive the adoption of PJP and seismic studs. With less wiggle room than ever before, there is no room for guesswork within a qualified WPS.

Most importantly, the industry is finally addressing the human element. Peer reviewed findings, such as those published within the University of Iowa’s fume exposure study, have proven that drawn arc fume can exceed exposure limits, especially when welding through galvanized deck. Paired with the extreme trunk flexion of composite work, these hazards are very real. For this reason, the best employers are investing in extraction, articulated arms, tool balancers, rotation, and proper respiratory controls to protect their workforce for the long haul.

All of the robots, standards, and extraction hoods in the world exist for the same reason they always have. So that the first production test stud of the shift bends like it’s supposed to, instead of snapping at the fillet. That’s the standard. It always has been, and it always will be.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between drawn arc and capacitor discharge stud welding?

Drawn arc uses a continuous arc burned for roughly 100 ms or longer at a controlled current, producing the strongest and most ductile fillet of the automatic stud processes. Capacitor discharge dumps a stored charge very quickly, about 1–3 ms with peak currents that can reach 3,000 A, so it is much cooler and faster but makes a smaller, less ductile weld. AISC 360 composite shear studs normally assume a drawn arc process.

What current and weld time do I need for a 3/4 inch (19 mm) stud?

A widely used starting point is roughly 1,000 to 1,300 A for about 0.5 to 0.8 seconds, and published parameter tables scale current at about 80 A per millimetre of stud diameter, which lands near 1,500 A at 19 mm. The University of Iowa study ran 1,700 A at 0.95 seconds for a 19 mm stud. Always set your values from the qualified WPS and the stud manufacturer’s table, not from a generic range.

Can you stud weld through galvanized steel deck?

Generally no. Most project specifications and AISC 360 practice require the stud to be welded directly to the base metal, so the deck is drilled or a hole is cut at the weld location. Welding through galvanized coating vaporizes zinc, and the study measured 15.8 mg/m3 of zinc in the fume compared with 0.21 mg/m3 on bare steel.

What is the minimum base metal thickness for drawn arc stud welding?

Drawn arc stud welding generally needs about 3 mm (1/8 in) or thicker base metal because of the high heat input of roughly 70 kJ per weld. For thinner or finished sheet, capacitor discharge or short cycle is usually the better choice, since it delivers far less energy and is less likely to burn through.

How often should studs be bend tested?

AWS D1.1 requires a production test of five consecutive welds at the start of the shift and whenever parameters, equipment or base metal conditions change. Ongoing inspection is normally done by bend testing a sample of studs from the lot, commonly around 10 percent, with the exact frequency set by the project specification and the current edition of the code.

Why is my stud weld not bonding to the steel?

Nine times out of ten it is surface condition: paint, rust, mill scale, oil, moisture or a galvanized coating under the stud. Grind back to bright metal, confirm the ground clamp is clean and tight on the same piece, and check that the gun has a proper lift and plunge. If the surface is already clean, suspect the parameters or the ground connection rather than the stud.

Is stud welding safer than MIG welding?

It is not automatically safer. Stud welding has less heat and no filler metal, but the fumes it produces are concentrated and can be surprisingly high, and the stooped posture required drives low-back loading. The study measured 18.2 mg/m3 of inhalable fume on bare beam and 65.7 mg/m3 through galvanized deck, so extraction and ergonomics have to be managed deliberately.

What PPE do I need for drawn arc stud welding?

You need arc-rated eye protection with side shields, flame-resistant clothing, leather gloves and safety footwear, plus hearing protection on long shifts. Add a properly rated respirator if ventilation cannot keep exposure below the applicable limits, and remember that spatter burns are common enough to warrant an apron or sleeves on the hands and forearms.

Do I need to be certified to stud weld?

Yes. AWS D1.1 requires stud welding to be performed by qualified welders in accordance with qualified procedures, with the qualification test program and the shift-start production test documented and available to the Engineer. Many fabricators also run their own in-house stud welding certification, and it carries well when a welder moves between shops.