Braved the cold this afternoon to weld the handle onto my first project, a welding trolley (will show in the projects section when finished). After having used the same settings for the last few sessions, I cleaned up the steel and went straight to it without practicing first....
... and it popped and spat all over the place - doh! the weld clearly wasnt happy looking like a worm and decided to take on the appearance of an erupting volcano instead, leaving a right old mess full of pin holes!!
Long story short. Never had the problem before. ALL of the following things 'appeared' to contribute:
- My shroud was about 25% blocked. There was some improvement after unblocking it;
- The gas flow was a bit low. There was some improvement after increasing;
- The hole in the tip was covered in black deposit. Big improvement after replacing with new tip (I could have simply cleaned it, with ?something?);
Once I got things going successfully on the bench again, I turned back to welding the trolley and got the same problem, but intermittently this time. Didnt take more than a few seconds to realise that a sudden gust of quite light wind into the garage was causing exactly the same 'eruption' problem...
Newbie conclusion: insufficient shield or poor tip/wire contact = eruption
I probably wasted an hour working this out. Do the experienced people agree that all these issues have this same symptom?
... and it popped and spat all over the place - doh! the weld clearly wasnt happy looking like a worm and decided to take on the appearance of an erupting volcano instead, leaving a right old mess full of pin holes!!
Long story short. Never had the problem before. ALL of the following things 'appeared' to contribute:
- My shroud was about 25% blocked. There was some improvement after unblocking it;
- The gas flow was a bit low. There was some improvement after increasing;
- The hole in the tip was covered in black deposit. Big improvement after replacing with new tip (I could have simply cleaned it, with ?something?);
Once I got things going successfully on the bench again, I turned back to welding the trolley and got the same problem, but intermittently this time. Didnt take more than a few seconds to realise that a sudden gust of quite light wind into the garage was causing exactly the same 'eruption' problem...
Newbie conclusion: insufficient shield or poor tip/wire contact = eruption
I probably wasted an hour working this out. Do the experienced people agree that all these issues have this same symptom?