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Notes -
No, an arc. I know the difference.
Huh -- I've caught the odd flash, and it's pretty blinding even in the short term.
Was he like, doing short tacks while looking the other way? I've seen that before, but unless he was already blind actually looking at the weld sounds rough. (I don't think you'd be able to see anything anyways?)
Yeah, pretty much. Looking up, more like. He was doing repairs on some metal stairs parallel to the ones I was using (in the US of course both sets would be closed off, or they'd have built some sort of temporary barrier between the repair area and the open stairs), and I noticed because the flash was pretty bright even from where I was. There was a visor right next to him, but I guess he thought it was too hot or maybe it was easier to see where to start without it.
This one actually makes kind of sense from an efficiency perspective if you don't have an auto-darkening helmet -- the classical approach is to line up your stinger with the helmet up, then kind of shake your head side to side until it drops. This is a PITA if you are doing a lot of small discontinuous welds, and once you've done a few you don't really need to see what's going on with the weld pool to do an OK job. Auto-body workers do a lot of this when welding panels (to keep the head spread out and not warp them); I think I've seen a torch-head designed s.t. it's just the right distance from the panel if you press the nose of it up against the work that it makes a nice tack weld but hides the arc.
tl;dr -- that's pretty safe by Mexico standards; lots of people in the US will do it to if OH&S is looking the other way. (although maybe not so much anymore with auto-helmets being pretty cheap)
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