As said, I use net curtain wire for steel. Most would call it a bodge but it works and I'm tight (£5 > 79p). :) I do have a teflon liner for aluminium as I was told I needed one. Never got around to welding any aluminium with it though. When it comes to welding aluminium it's a case of "all...
I use net curtain wire as a liner with 0.8mm flux cored MIG wire. First time I tried it was about 10 years ago and it was such an improvement over the nylon liner I was using before that I've never looked back. The only potential problem I see is the curtain wire is very flexible so I can...
First off, if you haven't already got one get an auto-helmet and make sure you adjust it so you can see when you're welding. If you can't see what's happening you're never going to make it work. The welding shields that come with welders are way too dark to see what's going on in my...
I mainly weld car bodywork using a SIP HandyMIG, the only modification being a steel liner. I find the drive rollers push the 0.8mm wire much more smoothly. The 0.6mm doesn't feed well at all, making life very difficult. The SIP is notorious for having a poor wire feed so this might just be a...
Great, I'll give pulse a go. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words so this is what I'll be trying to weld (still waiting for the teflon liner to arrive). In the meantime if anyone has any advice or suggestions I'm all ears! :-
Video doesn't show a close up of the welds so it's hard to see what results you're getting. The weld looks a bit cold to me especially on the first go so maybe try cranking up the power a bit? The popping you're getting is probably down to the material not being clean enough, you need it to be...
Thanks for the advice. I'll definitely be keeping the torch lead as straight as possible, I might even zip tie a length of bamboo to it if I get desperate! To be honest I don't have high hopes! I'm using a 90A SIP HandyMIG so won't have much power to get heat into the aluminium. That...
Welded plenty of steel before but I've got a small aluminium job to do and this is the first time I'll have attempted to MIG weld aluminium.
From reading up on here, I understand I need a teflon liner and an oversize contact tip to weld aluminium. I'll be using 0.8mm 5356 wire and I have a 1mm...
I know you've ditched the SIP now, but to be honest - after fitting a steel liner I've got no complaints about mine. I've done plenty of vehicle welding with it and it's worked fine for me. I think this "SIP welders are rubbish" thing is a bit overstated. Mine does the job and I doubt I'd do...
Just a quick question (great work by the way!) on one of the pictures I can see you are using intergrips. How do you remove the pin that holds the back once you've finished welding? Did you have access to the back of the panel or do you just leave the pins to rattle around behing the repair...
That's why I went for a Draper 08166 helmet as it was the only one I could find that took 2 x AAA batteries. I specifically wanted replaceable batteries as sometimes the helmet sits in its box unused for a year. I've owned this helmet for about 5 years and it still works fine (last used a...
I often use flux cored wire on a gas only MIG without any problems. I can't reverse the polarity on my set but have found the flux cored wire to work just fine. Maybe it would work better with torch negative but I'm not able to try that so I just get on with the job using the equipment that I...
I've always been happy enough with my SIP to be honest. Done plenty of vehicle welding with it and never had that much difficulty. Only modification I made to it was to fit a net curtain wire instead of the original nylon liner and to use red rubber grease on the spool holder to stop it from...
Depends how much time you've got before the MOT expires and whether you'll still have transport if it fails. If the answer is not much time and no other transport then I'd leave the previous repair there, cut off the frilly edges around the two holes to get back to something solid, spray with...
There's no quick answer to the question. In my experience :-
Top end tools, a reputation for quality is everything. They can only charge top dollar because people can depend on them. If they supplied rubbish word would get around and these companies' ability to charge top dollar would vanish...
I've got a hole I need to patch close to the bottom flange of my outer sill where it meets the inner sill. Normally I would strip the interior on that side but time is in short supply and I'm working outside in the dark so I'm wondering whether it's strictly necessary to remove the seats and...
+1 for the net curtain wire. That's what I use on a permanent basis with 0.8mm MIG wire and I find it works brilliantly. Why pay more for the real deal when net curtain wire works and is available everywhere for under a quid?
Thanks. I think I'll return it and buy the PN25 rated one from Toolstation instead. Whether it makes any difference in real terms I don't know but I might as well go for the highest PN rating I can easily lay my hands on.