Damn cheap gasless wire....

[SiPMerlin150]

Heres my initial first welds with my own mig welder, ( 130 amp 0.8mm gasless)
3mm mild steel plate, 2/3'rds of the units power.

For a cheap near new welder, the wire feeder is smooth and consistant, but the nearly empty roll of wire is pretty poo in my opinion, theres no brand name, just says flux cored mig wire....


The soot left looks like its bare steel wire, or is this the behavior of gasless wire? Theres very little slag if not non except for this brown crud....

Is weldequip's SifMig gasless wire a decent consumable? I found their arc welding electrodes very good.

Heres some photo's..

I'm quite good with a gas shielded mig welder, its just this gasless wire showing me up!

 

[Lawnmowerboy]

Judging by the coulur of the unit it looks like an Aldi 130a gasless mig!! made or re branded by power wolf or something stupid! the wire feed isn't that bad but you could convert it to gas?!

 

[SiPMerlin150]

Judging by the coulur of the unit it looks like an Aldi 130a gasless mig!! made or re branded by power wolf or something stupid! the wire feed isn't that bad but you could convert it to gas?!

Yes! £50 quid from ebay, the fella only had used 2/3rds of the wire roll it came with, so at the moment the feed is quite good...lets see if it takes some stern use and still 'performs' for its price...

I was thinking of converting to gas at some point, the swan neck has gas holes in it, so was wondering if I could fit in a gas valve block sold on here from weldequip, (the ones that are found in clarkes, and run some thin gas delivery hose through the torch leads, and out to a requlator. (A solenoid isn't going to fit inside that case, its crammed)! Also finding similar wire rollers that isn't the knurled type to accept the bare wire. V-type? U-types are for aluminium.

 

[Wozzaaah]

If you want to convert it to run on gas my suggestion would be not to mess about trying to adapt the torch on it now but to fit a complete torch that already has a gas valve in it then sort out some way of changing the polarity. At least that way if it doesn't work you haven't butchered your old torch so can still use it gasless.

Having said that, take the torch casing off, there may already be a gas valve inside.

 

[jonnyBMX]

^^ or you could alway try and covert it to a euro type connector

 

[SiPMerlin150]

If you want to convert it to run on gas my suggestion would be not to mess about trying to adapt the torch on it now but to fit a complete torch that already has a gas valve in it then sort out some way of changing the polarity. At least that way if it doesn't work you haven't butchered your old torch so can still use it gasless.

Having said that, take the torch casing off, there may already be a gas valve inside.

Yes, was thinking today...it gets very hot (The torch, meaning the swan neck, and the gas shroud) not the plastic bit! I'm thinking that with the way i use it, the torch will burn out way before reaching the full duty cycle...

I have done some extensive 'testing' and have yet to reach its duty cycle limit.. Even tried long masses of tacks as i've heard that it works the transformer harder when creating the arc rather than maintain it..

 

[Lawnmowerboy]

They're actually good welders, You could fit a gas solenoid and transformer in the wire feed area on top, And use a eurotorch with the end taken off wired straight into machine.?

 

[Wozzaaah]

Yes, was thinking today...it gets very hot (The torch, meaning the swan neck, and the gas shroud) not the plastic bit! I'm thinking that with the way i use it, the torch will burn out way before reaching the full duty cycle...

I have done some extensive 'testing' and have yet to reach its duty cycle limit.. Even tried long masses of tacks as i've heard that it works the transformer harder when creating the arc rather than maintain it..

If you want to test the duty cycle, put it on max power and do long runs, it'll soon run out of steam.
Don't mess about with a euro torch conversion, the full kit will cost you in the region of £100 so not worth it on that little machine.

 

[SiPMerlin150]

I was thinking of a snap on / or other decent torch, but i'll wait till this current ones goes up in smoke first.. I rekon the torch may melt before duty cycle is reached...

At what distance should the wire stickout be? Bare wire mig with argoshield i have been taught to keep it 10mm and no more, but as you know i'm using gasless at home.

 

[Lawnmowerboy]

Take the shroud off too, You could use a Clarke torch with the gas block

 

[SiPMerlin150]

Take the shroud off too, You could use a Clarke torch with the gas block

Was thinking of that, but before that I was looking at the likes of a Binzel style torch. Perhaps a 250amp '25' model. Air cooled and a longer gas shroud, keep things cooler..

I'm loaded up with a .45kg of SIFmig gasless and its a hell of a lot better that the crap that was in there in the first place...I'll be burning through that wire in no time anyways..

I'm going to attempt a butt weld in 6mm mild steel with a open root gap of 2mm and a 45 degree bevel cut in both plates. (Should be 60 degree really?)

See how I go on

 

[SiPMerlin150]

Heres that attempted butt weld..... It started off with good intentions, but I think I needed a larger root gap, as it must of closed and prevented full penentration of the joint....

You can clearly see the heat is there with the blueing of the steel, but the welder needs more finer tuning on the wire speed..

 

[SiPMerlin150]

Getting there...

Getting there now, nice steady feed of wire is the key 3/4 power you can see its cutting into the plate nicely...

Still not a patch on my bare wire mig welding though....