First day welding

[ReddZed]

My first post, and my first day welding as my Draper 70049 MIG Gasless 120A inverter arrived today - I found this forum after I'd ordered it, oh well, I'm making the best of it

Previous welding experience was about 5 minutes with a pal 10 years ago, and it spattered and spat so much and I couldn't see a thing - it didn't encourage me to weld again...until now.
Forgot to take pics until later on, so have already attacked the welds with the grinder (somewhat ham-fistedly).


I did the obligatory burning of my initials into a piece of sheet, and a couple of not very straight lines to check it was all working and make sure my PPE was all good - it was.

Welding practice kit off Amazon, small postcard sized 0.8 or 1mm panels, the middle pops out and then you can weld it back on or at angles. I'm assuming that's what you do, it was just a box of steel with no instructions...I suppose you could weld it in-place as well.

First up a fillet weld about 8cm long, I tacked both ends first to stop it deforming...which seems to have worked well.
Would love to say it was then a single smooth movement, but it was very stop start with the arc either stopping or electrode getting stuck to the material. I think I was having difficulty judging/controlling the distance from the work piece

The weld itself has gaps and the electrode was wandering all over the place and from the stop starting.


Played with the welding mask a little (auto darkening) and turned the wire speed (and indirectly the power) up to ~30% (was being cautious about blowing the fuse/breaker, 16a into a 13a plug)

Next, I flipped it over and welded the outside of the same edge. I found it easier to see what I was doing and less sticking.



Next up some 2mm steel sheet offcuts and butt welding two pieces together. Felt brave so turned the wire feed/power up to 6 (out of 10).
This was MUCH better, even managed to do some little circles with the electrode - I was quite pleased with the way it turned out.

Then I looked around the back and am less sure it penetrated through. Suspect I need to turn the power up.


Anyway, thanks for reading, I'd be interested in your thoughts on my first welding.

 

[BrokenBiker]

Best advice I can give you is get some 4 or 5mm thick steel, clean it all back to nice fresh shiny metal and just max the welder out, then practice on that. You will be able to see and feel a lot more at higher current than you will on 1 and 2mm stuff to start with and gasless isn't ideal for thin metal anyway.

All the welds pictures are cold, but that is to expected of a beginner. The butt joint looks half decent but there isn't any penetration so still needs to go hotter.

Start with tacks, light up, let the puddle form and grow to about 6mm then come off it. After you are consistent, start running straight beads on flat metal, focuson on that same 6mm bead width. This bead width will control your travel speed as too fast and it will thin out, too slow it will hump up or burn through. Then move to butt joints, lap joints and fillet joints, but be prepared to need more juice for a fillet.

You also want to focus on maintaining a 12ish mm stick out, so the amount of wire between the contact tip and the work is about half inch.

It will all come with practice, hell I've been practicing about 18 years and I can almost do it now

 

[ReddZed]

Thanks BrokenBiker, that definitely makes sense to me about the cold welds.
On the earlier welds I was just dragging the electrode along and not really paying attention to the puddle at all.
I started to notice it more on the butt joint, and will be trying out your advice this week.

I'm picking up some 10mm plate for a welding tabletop later in the week, so will source some thicker off-cuts as well for the practice.

 

[BrokenBiker]

I use 10mm plate a welding surface, it works well but given you are limited on power I would also suggest what we call air gapping your work piece, so say you have some 5mm plate to weld on, I would put some offcuts under it to keep it off the large, cold steel bench, as that 10mm plate can and will suck the heat out of a weld. Not so much of an issue for me as Ive got 250 amps on tap with the mig so I just turn it up a bit, or travel slower but to get the best chance at starting out, id be doing the above til you get the technique down.

The other benefit of the 10mm plate is that once you have welded something, you can put it flat down on the plate and it will cool a bit quicker so you can handle it sooner to grind, cut or tack something else one without shrinking fitting your gloves to your hand

 

[dave h 2]

The earth clamp will slowly drive you nuts the ones with copper jaws are much better.

 

[BrokenBiker]

The earth clamp will slowly drive you nuts the ones with copper jaws are much better.

I used to wrap a load of multi strand copper wire around each but if the cheap earth clamps, made a huge improvement as got better contact with the table and the wire sunk into the gaps in the jaws so got better contact with the clamp too

 

[dave h 2]

We mean these ebay or Amazon do them note the lead goes direct to the jaws so no hot hand either you just need a lug to suit the earth cable sqmm ( it's written or embossed on the lead)

 

[northwest]

The earth clamp will slowly drive you nuts the ones with copper jaws are much better.

That's the spirit, get him buying right away!

 

[BrokenBiker]

That's the spirit, get him buying right away!

I was gonna give it til post 10 to suggest buying a 200 amp inverter

 

[ReddZed]

You think I've NOT been eyeing up bigger and better toys already ?

As I put a fresh blade on the hacksaw this afternoon I was thinking that if I just put a proper power supply in the garage, I could be doing this with a plasma cutter
And if I'm not limited by a 13a plug, a more powerful welder would just be the next sensible thing.

Might have to sort out heating/insulation in the garage as I'll be living there if I've spent money on all of that!