If you asking what thickness you can weld with an arc welder. i wouldn't be afraid to weld 25mm thick plate with my 180amp welder, 3.2mm root run, then keep overlaying with 4mm rods to build the weld up
dont know really ive made swiss cheese out if really thin stuff before, but the stick set i got goes down to about 20amps, think it limited by thiness of rod available. anyone got any ideas of the thinest rod about? for comedy value i could try 1mm plate with 4mm rods and about 150 amps, just dont know if there will be anything to take a photo of!!
geth
Thinnest rod I have is 1/16" (1.6mm) Those are what I used in the picture posted. I was doing 0.049 (1.25mm) steel with a 0.062 rod. Seems about right, minimum is slightly less than the rod thickness. I could have gone a bit thinner with those 7014 rods as they are med-low penetration.
For 6013 1/16" the thinnest is just over 1/16" by my estimate.
Funny, there are members here that MIG with 1/16 wire.
The "beast" goes up to 470A but amazing can go as low as 5A. I was probably near 20A.
If you like to run rods a bit hot, you had better not let the 1/16" rod stick. It will quickly glow red and drop to the floor.
I put the front of a mini back together with a stick welder, quarter panels, front wings and front panel, rods were like straws, if they stuck to the panel they went all droopy in about 2 secs, passed MOT first time, I was about 19 at the time, done outside one summer.
I finished welding up my welding cart last night, some of it was 1mm wall thickness box section tube as it was made of offcuts n bits n bobs of tube that were lying round. The feed mech is broke on my mig at the moment and Im out of tungstens so it was my trusty SIP (well it hasnt broken yet) wizarc. Now its got one button on the front (low or high) but I couldnt tell you how many amps the two settings correspond to so I set it to low, and used some really thin rods I had lying round, and it welded up fine, although I did make a hole in one of the 20 or so welds that make it up. It was also a bit awkward to start the arc initially, but Id put that down to me being out of arc practice rather than any equipment problem.
Ill post some pics of the welds later on.
Edit, I just looked up the specs on the wizarc and it reckons the two settings are 50 & 100amps, but 50a seems mighty high. Ill take a look at it later and see if I have the model right...
You`ll go thinner with an inverter arc. Stainless rods are particularly good. Problems come on thin stuff when there are gaps and you are on the edges of the metal. If it`s a must do job stick some heavy ally or brass behind it to help.
Pics came out crap. Rods were 2mm and the welder was on the 40a setting (lowest it could do). My camera is pants sorry.
This shot is 2mm to 1.5 mm box...
I managed to stick some 1.2mm wall box section together with an arc and 1.5mm E6013 rods for some tables in our student bar when I was at college, welds didn't look too pretty, but stood up to several large rugby boys jumping on them!