converting from gasless to CO2

[captainbland08]

hey there,

obviously I'm knew to this forum but I have been welding on and off for some time now... perfecting my technique with a gas-less welder...

the reason I was using gas-less was purely because it was space saving and I wasn't welding enough to warrant getting a large gas cylinder...

now that I'm rebuilding my old mini I've decided to convert to a large CO2 bottle (I know argoshield would be better, but i have the CO2 already)

HOWEVER! i thought that once everything was plumbed in that it would be a doddle... as I'm assured by allot of people that welding with shielding gas is considerably easier than gas-less welding due to no mess...

now I've hooked up the SWP reg I bought to my pub gas bottle of CO2 and plumbed it all into the welder I've got excellent gas flow to the welder, i also bought a 5kg reel of wire from the same place as i got the reg, the wire was about £12 which i thought was awfully cheap considering 1kg of gas-less is the same price...

now that I got it all set up however... I'm getting absolutely NO penetration on the metal what so ever... as if there isn't nearly enough power...
its a Clarke 90en so I did switch the positive and neg feeds round to suit the gas welding but it wont work, even if I switch it back... no change in power, wire speed, gas flow or evening making sure that the work piece is like a mirror to weld on, it makes no odds... the welds just sit on top of the sheet, making a small sausage of seam weld which can be picked off with pliers once finished... that's how little penetration its getting...

i thought for a second my welder was knackered so i chucked the gas-less wire back in and it welds perfectly... so I'm doing something wrong... anyone care to shed some light??? could the wire I bought be complete pants????

many thanks in advanced...

Chris

 

[gordon stephenson]

I have never welded gas-less,But check your pub bottle to see if it's 100% Co2, I have heard it mentioned on here that some pub bottles have a percentage of Nitrogen which is apparently a big NO NO for welding.

 

[captainbland08]

that would explain why my gas line keeps icing up... but im also told that i should be able to get some penetration at least with the gas turned off?

 

[Wozzaaah]

If it's icing up, does your cylinder have a dip-tube? If so then it'll need to be inverted as a dip-tube will draw liquid CO2.
Also, what flow rate are you using? You should be around 10 litres per minute (lpm) if you're welding indoors, slightly higher outdoors to compensate for what gets blown away.

 

[shenion]

What size metal are you testing on?

Gas MIG setup will have less heat than gasless, but it should not be drastic.

If you gas line is icing up, sounds like you are using a CO2 tank with a dip tube to supply liquid like a fire extinguisher.

 

[captainbland08]

well i did get the tank from a fire extinguisher company:P so that makes sense! haha

just been out and bought another reel of more expensive wire... only a .7 reel but it seems to be working brilliant now!! a hell of alot easier than gasless and neat too!

lesson learnt. dont buy the cheapest wire.

 

[shenion]

Make a stand to hold the bottle upside down

Cheap Chinese wire is awful. I picked up some and it would even feed correctly as the wire size varied.Then it corroded in just a few days.

Good to hear your up and going. Yeah, I used gasless when starting out, one use with gas and I'll never go back.

 

[mike 109444]

CaptianB Chris You were orignally using gasless SMALL spool Then you went to a 5kg spool of gas wire (which welded crap) then went and got another (better quality?) SMALL spool which welded good. Could it maybe be that your wire feed, liner, tip is not working as well as it should and your wire feeded is not able to pull the wire off a larger and heaver spool. Might be worth (befor you ditch it) cutting say 20ft off the 5kg spool and feeding that in and trying some welding. Should be enough to see if that's any better. If not then let us all know the brand of the crap wire so we can all avoid it!