So the 'new' welder has been bought, and after a fair bit of faffing around, buying the odd little widget from Weldequip I managed to get it doing both gas & gasless (I got a ton of gasless wire to use).
I've got a front wing of one of my project cars that has been chopped up into smallish bits for practice - as I'll be welding mostly car bodywork, it makes sense to practice on something that size.
First attempts with the gasless were predictably blobby, but with much less spatter than I was anticipating:
I then changed over to gas, using a chuckaway argon CO2 mix (turned up to max) and put a few beads next to the gasless (3 on the far right of the plate above).
Surprisingly easy (better penetration too). Needless to say I'll be sticking with gas if I can help it
So the next challenge was to try welding a few bits together:
Here's my second attempt at a butt-weld, using a non-continuous method - tack each end to hold it, and then put little blobs of weld along the line.. As you can see I didn't do a particularly good job of stripping the paint off - I'm impatient, and I think it'll be my undoing
Anyway, I'm off to chop up some more metal, need to keep up the practice, but also need to keep a few bits left to patch up the red-shed (BMW) to stop it filling up with rainwater.
I've got a front wing of one of my project cars that has been chopped up into smallish bits for practice - as I'll be welding mostly car bodywork, it makes sense to practice on something that size.
First attempts with the gasless were predictably blobby, but with much less spatter than I was anticipating:
I then changed over to gas, using a chuckaway argon CO2 mix (turned up to max) and put a few beads next to the gasless (3 on the far right of the plate above).
Surprisingly easy (better penetration too). Needless to say I'll be sticking with gas if I can help it
So the next challenge was to try welding a few bits together:
Here's my second attempt at a butt-weld, using a non-continuous method - tack each end to hold it, and then put little blobs of weld along the line.. As you can see I didn't do a particularly good job of stripping the paint off - I'm impatient, and I think it'll be my undoing
Anyway, I'm off to chop up some more metal, need to keep up the practice, but also need to keep a few bits left to patch up the red-shed (BMW) to stop it filling up with rainwater.
