New Welder, advice please!!

[Gareth_16V]

Hi All,

First of all I'd like to say this is a great site, with so much information and experience. I've watched all of the tutorial vids - a lot to take in!

I've been wanting to learn to weld for a while, and have just got a used Clarke 150TE to start with. I got it from a guy complete with refillable bottle and regulator. He told me it had a gas similar to Argoshield light in it, but I've no proof of this.

So yesterday I managed to blag myself a strip of 2mm and a strip of 0.8mm mild steel to play with.

I've concentrated on the 2mm to start with - I had a quick go with the 0.8 but I quickly found out that I need to walk before I try to run!! So no pics of the 0.8......

I played with the wire feed and power settings a bit, but still can't seem to consistently stay between under-penetrated welds or blowing holes!!!

Anyway, I'd really like your collective advice! Thanks in advance, Gareth.

Now for the (slightly painful) pics:-
I've posted pictures of front and back of the sheet.

 

[shenion]

The welds look good.

The trick is there is a fine leine between full penetration and blowing through. You need a smooth torch speed and don't slow down.

I like to keep it to where it just gets full penetration. Gives you more leeway in torch speed.

Try moving a bit faster, that keeps the weld pool smaller so it is supported better.

Looks like poor gas coverage in some areas (brown soot.) Does look like an argon mix like argoshield.. Keep the torch near vertical and maintain a constant torch/work length. A push torch motion seems to be more consistent (kind of awkward pushing the torch toward you.)

Welcome to the forums

 

[pedrobedro]

Try a couple of runs along the strip instead of across it, you'll get a better idea of how it welds

 

[Ed.]

Small machines usually don't give a whole lot of voltage ranges to play with, so basically you need to put the volts in the ball park and then find just the right wire speed and then it's just a matter to try to manipulate the weld bead with technique such as travel speed, torch incline etc. to achieve a satifactory result.

On that size metal (2mm) I would stick to .6mm wire. I welded some 6mm steel with mine last week because I couldn't be bothered to change the spool and did a test weld as well. The pic below is of 6mm steel, welded on one side only, land of 2mm and 2mm bevel per side and welded at 26V 14.5mt/Min 118 amps using .6mm ER70-6 , gas is 93% Ar 5% CO2 and 2% O, and then hammer tested it and the weld did not break or crack. Once you find a nice setting that works then write it down somewhere so you can refer back to that setting if you are doing the same sort of welds.

Your first pic weld #4 from the left looks good, Clean your metal up to get rid of mill scale. Make it shiny, MIG doesn't like dirty metal. Hope this helps.