Need some advice.

[swanman]

Hi everyone,

Looks like a great site you have going here!

Anyways. I have been stick welding quite happily for a year or so for a little fabrication business I have on the side.

Recently I thought I'd invest some of the profits and upgrade my welder to a mig. So a couple of weeks ago I bought a new (but cheap) chinese imported, mig welder rated at 145amps.

I bought some wire with flux core and straight away I was welding happily away. Now with this wire there is a fair bit of splatter and it is hard to see what you are doing. So I got some argoshield from BOC, as I weld mild steel. bought some cheep mig wire no flux, got me a regulator and hooked it all up.

Gas comes out of the gun, all cool, bu the welding is worse than with the flux wire. What gives? I have played with the polarity and the gas pressure settings, speed and amps and I can actually weld better when I turn the gas off! (though it is still not that good, btw how is it possible to weld without gas? Ithought it would just fuse and stick). Something is not right. The weld basically seems to stutter and sit up high on the practice plates I am using, where as with the flux core I was getting nice low beads etc.

I can only think it may be the wire, as it was cheep, about the equivalent of GBP8 for a 5kg roll. But I thought that wire was pretty much wire. I am normally pretty handy and tend to see probs as the come up but this one has me stumped. I actually did an evening welding course at my local college a few years back and I remember clearly that welding with gas was a lot better than this.

Any advice would be appreciated. Cheers. Swannie.

 

[Justme]

Hi,
Do you have a flow meter on the reg or just presure. Does sound a bit like lack of power / too much cooling from the gas but I,m not an expert. Post a pic then the experts will be able to tell you much more easily. Are you using .6mm or .8mm? What was the size of the fluxed wire. Could be that the settings are diff cos of the new wire. Remember that .8mm flux does not have the same amount of metal as .8mm solid wire so the feed would be slower.

Justme

 

[malcolm]

It does sound just like the wire feed is too fast with the solid wire as Justme suggested. Another thing is the polarity which should really be torch positive for solid wire (opposite of the normal set up for gasless) as that puts more heat into the metal.

 

[swanman]

Flux wire was .8 and the regular wire is .8 too. Have swapped polarity around still the same.

Have played with speed settings and still much the same.

There is a flow meter on the reg, what is the ideal setting for mig?

Will post pics for the experts to ananlyse.

Cheers. Swannie

 

[Justme]

I think about 8-15 L per min
justme

 

[swanman]

Here is a pic of the weld. As you can see sits up and proud. And this is a good one!
Looks like a caterpillar.

 

[weldequip]

You are using CO2 Gas???

 

[swanman]

You are using CO2 Gas???

Says Argoshield on the bottle. How do you check, if they got the fill wrong?

 

[TechnicAl]

It looks really bad.
Is that paint primer on the plate surface, if it is, get it off. Cleaning / grinding the plate surface should improve the bead appearance.
Where did you get the plate?

 

[swanman]

It looks really bad.
Is that paint primer on the plate surface, if it is, get it off. Cleaning / grinding the plate surface should improve the bead appearance.
Where did you get the plate?

Not paint primer. Have ground the plate clean,and the weld is still the same.

 

[malcolm]

What settings are you using? Looks like the metal is fairly thick - more than 2mm? I'd start off with the maximum setting on the welder, adjust the wire feed down until you start getting the occasional little ball forming on the end of the wire, then tweak it up until the welding feels and sounds smooth and continuous. A weaving motion with the gun might help flatten the weld a little too.

Distance from workpiece can make a difference - the end of the torch needs to be about 5mm away from the steel.

The shape of the weld looks odd. Is it solid inside or full of bubbles? Bubbles would mean not enough gas and could cause the weld to bubble into that shape. Do you hear a good hiss from the gas when you pull the trigger, and does it keep hissing after a few seconds? Otherwise maybe the regulator is set too low or has a blockage.

 

[Bigjoe]

Hi,
It looks like a combination of too fast wire speed and maybe not enough power,and also possibly you could try slowing your torch speed down a bit so you get better penetration.

 

[swanman]

Jeez. I have tried all variations of what people have posted here and still much the same. I put some flux core back on, welded no probs at all.

I am definitely getting gas at the gun. Have logically tried a pattern of all amps at 4 different speed settings, on clean steel. The high amp high speed wasn't too bad, but the rest were pretty much as per the pic.

To add insult to injury when I put the original spool of wire back on after the flux it wouldn't feed.... Whereas a small spare spool of wire of the same size feeds no worries. I even filed the point of the wire to make it easier to feed in, kept the feed to the trigger as straight as poss etc etc. The wire is just a fraction bigger according to my vernier than the small spool .78 versus .75. Bugger it.

I am going to buy some decent (in other words more expensive) wire and see if that makes a difference. BTW the cylinder definetly has Argoshield written on it, surely that wouldn't be filled wrongly?

 

[hoser]

"I put some flux core back on, welded no probs at all."

Did you change the polarity when you went to the solid wire? Wrong polarity will make it set up on top and give the caterpillar look... It works with the flux core probably because the polarity is setup for the flux core wire not solid.

Let us know how you make out...

 

[virago125@hotmail.co.uk]

mig welding.

HI. USE 6mm WIRE. THIS WILL MAKE WELD HOTTER. ALLOWING WELD TO LAY FLAT. THEN ADJUST WIRE SPEED FOR BURNBACK.
ALSO WIRE SPEED TO CONTROL AMOUNT OF WELD LAID.
SEEMS LIKE YOUR MIG-SET IS NOT ABLE TO TAKE THICKER WIRE DUE TO LACK OFF AMPS. ARE YOU USING THE RIGHT SIZED TIP FOR WIRE USED. KRIS. LONDON.

 

[cobminor]

Are you welding outside?

Malcolm,

I am sure that the positive side of the circuit gets most of the heat. I am going back a long time but that was my engineering training.

Yep, just checked, two thirds of the heat is generated at the positive pole.

 

[Wozzaaah]

Hehe, check the date of this thread guys!

 

[matt1978]

Hi Mate,

O.K.............

First thing first, if you are using Argoshield, then this would definately be a a Argon/Co2 mix, which is what you need for welding mild steel. It will have another name after Argoshield, such as Light, Heavy or Universal. Check this. For your application, then it would be best to have Light which is about 5-7% Co2, but you will be able to weld with any of the names I said above.

If your getting lots of Spatter, (The little balls you mention) this will be because, you have too much wire and/or or too little voltage, so what is happening is the wire is hitting the top of the weld pool and throwing molten metal (Spatter) onto your job.

The other reason that you will be getting spatter on 2mm Plate, is because that range, is around the mixed arc range for 0.8 wire, so you will need to increase the voltage and get into spray arc.

Turn, your voltage up to almost the maximium, and put your wire around the mid to 3/4 range, this should put you into the spray arc zone.

Once in Spray arc, provided your work piece is clean and free of rust and paint, you should not get any spatter.

Be aware that Spray arc in 0.8 wire would be too hot for bridging gaps on 2mm plate, so this would only be suitable for Lap joints and T-Fillets.

What ever you do though, you definately need to weld with gas! If you don't you will get Porosity (Holes) in the weld.

Hope this has helped!!

 

[Wozzaaah]

Matt, the original post in this thread was over a year ago!