Having problem with .6 wire in Nu-Tool 255P welder.

[Richard B]

Hi,

My Nu-Tool 255P welder is playing up (again). there does not seem to be an appropiate section in the MIG Welders area. Apologies if this should be posted in a different area.

I have been welding with .8 fine but I want to do some car bodywork and switched to .6 I am using CO2 gas.

I changed the tip (to a new .6) and the wire feed roller to .6
This welder has always been temperamental with .6 wire. The first few welds were ok, now it keeps arcing back and sticking to the tip.

Am I doing something wrong? Does the machine need a service/repair? or should I look at another model.

With .8 wire it is fine.

 

[Cobbler]

Just a quick thought, is the liner one of the plastic windscreen washer tube ones? Could be its shot, causing the thinner wire binding up & unable to slide easily. Drop the wire feed off & pull the wire from the torch end, it should slide easily with virtually no resistance. These are known to cause all sorts of feed problems, change it for a steel one, several people on here have used springy curtain wire for it with good results, it's apparently the same size, although a proper liner is not expensive

 

[Richard B]

Thanks for the advice all. I have gone back to .8 mm for now as I am doing plug welds and it is working fine.

I might invest in a second (smaller) welder for when I need .6 for welding in patches. I don't think this welder has ever worked on .6 in the 10+ years I have owned it.

 

[mr migwire]

did you turn the drive wheel in the feed rollers around. the rollers usually have two grooves, one for .8 and 1mm and the other for .6 and flux cored or summit like that...

 

[the snooper]

did you turn the drive wheel in the feed rollers around. the rollers usually have two grooves, one for .8 and 1mm and the other for .6 and flux cored or summit like that...

he says he did in first post

 

[mr migwire]

he says he did in first post

sorry snooper my joined up thinking has left me and the halflings claret has muddled my mind...lol

 

[Tigman]

where are you buying your wire from ? is it a good brand ? sometimes the spooling is not good on cheap wire and binds on itself !

 

[mike 109444]

Are you using a 4mt or more torch ?
3mt works better

 

[Ed.]

x2 what Tigman said, I have a 15kg roll of cheap 0.6mm and it has the same problem you have, this particular spool binds the wire where it touches the spool side flanges, away from the sides no problem, but as soon as the wire reaches the sides it binds, the wire appears to have been wound on the reel too tightly and the wire has slightly burrowed in at the edges and restricts the wire feeding, so the wire melts to the tip occasionally or stops welding till I loosen it. As I hardly ever use 0.6mm wire size I just put up with it, I am hoping that as the spool gets used up, the faulty wire layup problem may go away. If it doesn't I will have to replace it, just goes against the grain to turf an almost full 15kg spool of wire!

 

[Richard B]

Yes it is a 4 metre torch. I'll try my other 3 metre torch. I changed the spooler wheel to the .6 groove and fitted a new tip.

Would it be the power setting is too high? For .8 wire I normally have it on 4 (range is 1 - 8), I had put it on 3, maybe I should try 1 or 2.

The thing is back to .8 wire and its fine. Just that the welds and the surounding metal get to hot. This bodywork is on old (60's & 70's) cars.

The plug in earth terminal has two (-) sockets on the welder, I never did understand what they were for?

There is also a (+) socket for the torch to reverse the polarity.

 

[mike 109444]

Yes it is a 4 metre torch. I'll try my other 3 metre torch. I changed the spooler wheel to the .6 groove and fitted a new tip.

Would it be the power setting is too high? For .8 wire I normally have it on 4 (range is 1 - 8), I had put it on 3, maybe I should try 1 or 2.

The thing is back to .8 wire and its fine. Just that the welds and the surounding metal get to hot. This bodywork is on old (60's & 70's) cars.

The plug in earth terminal has two (-) sockets on the welder, I never did understand what they were for?

There is also a (+) socket for the torch to reverse the polarity.

I changed to a 4mt torch (using 0.6 wire) thinking it would be better to get in/under difficult areas but did read advice against the longer one and did find poorer welding. I believe that what tends to happen is that the feed rollers are pushing the wire but with the resistance of the liner + swan neck + tip there is a build up of "sprinning" for want of a better word Then as you stop and start (typical in car body welding) the sprinning is released suddenly so you get a very uneven feed resulting in an unstable arc. This is reduced (but not completely) with a shorter (3mt) torch. With 0.8 wire the effect is reduced quite a bit. This all relies on having a good liner + clean feed rollers (set correctly) + good swan neck + good tip.
I have now gone back to a 3mt torch for 0.6. Working on early 60's Ford!
You might want to consider a spool gun if you do lots of welding on car body's
The two "-" sockets MAYBE for changing inductance. You would need to look inside welder to see if the two sockets attach to two different points on a large coil (may look like a transformer).