Change of wire and all goes wrong?

[vitus992]

I'm using a Clarke 90EN with flux core wire. Im using that at the moment as I am completely new to this and thought I would burn a couple of reels of fluxcore just to get used to actually handling a welder.
So I have just gone through the first reel, no lable on it. After a lot of trial and error and thanks to the settings on the tutorials here I started to get things going and a reasonable bead.
That reel run out and I have put a reel of clarke branded fluxcore on, supposedly the same gauge and its all gone pear shaped.
The welder is sputtering all over the place, I can feel the wire hitting the metal and rather than a constant sizzling sound it's stuttering all over the place and getting realy bad (even for me) welds. Also the welds seem to be covered in a very black soot rather than the grey/white powder residue of the previous reel. I have tried different power settings and wire speed, reset the earth clamp and retentioned the roller and reel.
Is this just a bad reel or have I done something very wrong?

 

[mike 109444]

This has cropped up a few times on the forum. Member runs out of wire (usually flux cored) and the "new" spool welds crap. Try a spool of the SIP wire from Halfords as one member found that to be fairly good after trying like you to get the correct setting.
Some have even found that a spool with same brand markings to weld crap compaired to one that had just ran out!

 

[vitus992]

Thank you Mike, I should have done a search first. Lots to learn. Spent way too long getting really annoyed at this.

 

[V6BOY]

Yep that's me been there done that,Clarke wire rubbish SIP good stuff.

 

[christofloffer]

i had, and still have a reel of that clarke stuff. i was feeling quite good about my welding until i bought some of that. its evil, drop it. i used SIF stuff for a while, and though its a bit more pricey its far far better.
the clarke stuff i had produced a lot of slag and inclusions and was infuriatingly labour intensive to clean up. the sif stuff though left a nice light brown skin of slag that came off nicely and cleaned up really well. it was also more stable in use i found and went further for the money. much less spatter too.

 

[vitus992]

Grabbed a reel of SIF stuff from Halfords on the way home - all back to normal. Do clarke not batch test their stuff? Surely people then only buy their product once??

 

[roofman]

Grabbed a reel of SIF stuff from Halfords on the way home - all back to normal. Do clarke not batch test their stuff? Surely people then only buy their product once??

Iff you shop at Machine Mart and buy Clarke gear then it can turn you into a stamp collector or train spotter as its the easiest route to get put off this game