malcolm
& Clementine the Cat
- Messages
- 9,624
- Location
- Bedford UK
Rob came over yesterday and we sorted out his welder. There was an intermittent blockage in the regulator. The welder was a Migmate 100 and I was quite impressed. Running on full power it could just about get penetration in 2mm sheet.
I found a couple of things that might be interesting to other people:
I didn't notice any difference at all between straight CO2 gas and the Argoshield I normally use. Welds seemed about the same shape and spatter wasn't a problem with the CO2.
Using 0.6mm wire makes a lot of difference. The welder felt funny as if there somehow wasn't enough punch, but it worked fine, penetraion was OK, and above all the welds ended up smaller and neater. I'm going to pick up some 0.6mm for myself.
There's probably some production variation in these welders. Where the manual suggested setting the wire speed at 5 we found a setting of 1 did the trick much better.
One thing I found odd about the Migmate - my own welder will weld consistantly but the Migmate would weld nicely then occasionall stutter and need to strike a new arc again to get happy. Anyone any idea why that would be? The wire feed seemed good, and the transformer is a transformer so shouldn't cause problems. Possibly not quite enough current for the thickness of weld?
I found a couple of things that might be interesting to other people:
I didn't notice any difference at all between straight CO2 gas and the Argoshield I normally use. Welds seemed about the same shape and spatter wasn't a problem with the CO2.
Using 0.6mm wire makes a lot of difference. The welder felt funny as if there somehow wasn't enough punch, but it worked fine, penetraion was OK, and above all the welds ended up smaller and neater. I'm going to pick up some 0.6mm for myself.
There's probably some production variation in these welders. Where the manual suggested setting the wire speed at 5 we found a setting of 1 did the trick much better.
One thing I found odd about the Migmate - my own welder will weld consistantly but the Migmate would weld nicely then occasionall stutter and need to strike a new arc again to get happy. Anyone any idea why that would be? The wire feed seemed good, and the transformer is a transformer so shouldn't cause problems. Possibly not quite enough current for the thickness of weld?