Here's some early attempts at using my cheap little Wolf arc welder to join pieces of steel angle iron which have walls of about 3mm thick. In places the walls seem nearer 4mm.
In the first image, I joined two pieces of angle iron to make a bit of box section, to hold a wooden handle.
In the second image I had cut strips of steel from the angle iron (scrap found at the side of a road) and then joined them back together again. Here, the effective width was 2 x 3mm = 6mm and the depth almost 'unlimited'. I turned the arc welder up to the maximum current of about 140 amps and used 6013 rods of 3.5mm or 4mm.
In both cases the penetration seemed good and the joints appear very strong. The joints have not been ground down. I hope the new metal adds extra strength. I trust this sort of approach would work on a car bumper or some chassis components, perhaps. I'm showing the images here to give an idea of what a cheap arc welder can do, in the hands of a novice like myself, if anyone is interested.
In the first image, I joined two pieces of angle iron to make a bit of box section, to hold a wooden handle.
In the second image I had cut strips of steel from the angle iron (scrap found at the side of a road) and then joined them back together again. Here, the effective width was 2 x 3mm = 6mm and the depth almost 'unlimited'. I turned the arc welder up to the maximum current of about 140 amps and used 6013 rods of 3.5mm or 4mm.
In both cases the penetration seemed good and the joints appear very strong. The joints have not been ground down. I hope the new metal adds extra strength. I trust this sort of approach would work on a car bumper or some chassis components, perhaps. I'm showing the images here to give an idea of what a cheap arc welder can do, in the hands of a novice like myself, if anyone is interested.