norlander
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Last time I used gasless mig was in 2000 using a little Clarke. Welds were very rough and spatter was really bad.
So I got a Gys SMARTMIG 162 3 weeks ago. Initial practice/projects had to be done with 0.9 fluxcore as no budget for gas.
So here is what I found:
The Gys was not set up for gasless so polarity was changed -easy job.
The Gys gasless kit was purchased-part no 041240-this consists of:
http://www.hd-outillage.com/soudage-sans-pour-fourre-p-2407.html the shroud is cut right back and the tips (1mm were supplied not 0.9) stick out from the shroud.
It worked well and I had no problems seeing where I was welding which I understand can be a problem with fluxcore.
The welds were way better than my previous efforts and when the settings are right they resemble stick welds-not as pretty as stick (I'm not too bad at stick as I did two years of an apprenticeship in steelfab).
Spatter was nowhere near as bad as before, I did use anti spatter for some jobs to protect clamps etc but it was nothing like the problems I had some years ago.
Fumes are pretty bad-if I was going to do a lot of it I'd get an airfed helmet, I got a disposable mask for welding fumes which helped-when the wind was fresh it was not too bad and I did not need the mask as long as I stayed upwind of the arc.
Clean up was pretty easy-hand wire brush, wire cup on angle grinder does a top job as you would expect.
Pretty happy with gasless mig, I pulsed on some thin stuff 0.8 I think it was and it went pretty well.
The wire was from a DIY shed-not bad, may try a bigger spool from the pro welding supplier to see if thats even better-but happy with results from the DIY stuff.
Note: I'm not running down the Clarke- I probably did not change the polarity back then, and the wire may not have been the same standard.
As it happens though, for the first few practice runs with the Gys I forgot to change the polarity, it did not seem that much different-but penetration may have improved when I did switch polarity but I did not do any tests to prove that.
So I got a Gys SMARTMIG 162 3 weeks ago. Initial practice/projects had to be done with 0.9 fluxcore as no budget for gas.
So here is what I found:
The Gys was not set up for gasless so polarity was changed -easy job.
The Gys gasless kit was purchased-part no 041240-this consists of:
http://www.hd-outillage.com/soudage-sans-pour-fourre-p-2407.html the shroud is cut right back and the tips (1mm were supplied not 0.9) stick out from the shroud.
It worked well and I had no problems seeing where I was welding which I understand can be a problem with fluxcore.
The welds were way better than my previous efforts and when the settings are right they resemble stick welds-not as pretty as stick (I'm not too bad at stick as I did two years of an apprenticeship in steelfab).
Spatter was nowhere near as bad as before, I did use anti spatter for some jobs to protect clamps etc but it was nothing like the problems I had some years ago.
Fumes are pretty bad-if I was going to do a lot of it I'd get an airfed helmet, I got a disposable mask for welding fumes which helped-when the wind was fresh it was not too bad and I did not need the mask as long as I stayed upwind of the arc.
Clean up was pretty easy-hand wire brush, wire cup on angle grinder does a top job as you would expect.
Pretty happy with gasless mig, I pulsed on some thin stuff 0.8 I think it was and it went pretty well.
The wire was from a DIY shed-not bad, may try a bigger spool from the pro welding supplier to see if thats even better-but happy with results from the DIY stuff.
Note: I'm not running down the Clarke- I probably did not change the polarity back then, and the wire may not have been the same standard.
As it happens though, for the first few practice runs with the Gys I forgot to change the polarity, it did not seem that much different-but penetration may have improved when I did switch polarity but I did not do any tests to prove that.
