Newby Help Please - T130p

[allstar_07]

Hi,

This is my first venture into welding so here's some stupid questions! I'm going to borrow my friends T130p gas/gasless welder to do some car repairs. At the moment he just uses the gassless wire but from what I've read I really need to use gas? Is that right or could I get away with it?

If I do need gas what bits will I need to connect a bottle to the welder apart from a regulator? I need to do some bits on the bulkhead/footwells/sills etc. Will I be better getting a decent sized bottle or disposables?

For the stuff I'm doing (~1mm) am I right in thinking I should have the 0.6mm wire and an argon/co2 mix?

Thanks for any help.
Chris

 

[the snooper]

i know someone that welds up 1mm with gasless with no problems at all
co2/argon is the correct gas and 0.6 wire would be fine.
as for disposable bottles a complete waste of money they last no time at all

 

[allstar_07]

Is it fair to say you can do it if your experienced...because thats not me!

 

[the snooper]

its the same principle gas or no gas just get some and have a go there is no better way to learn everyone has to start somewhere

 

[allstar_07]

right a little update...

I had a little practice with the gasless wire and thought it was going ok so had a go on the car which happened to be a section of the sill (10cmx5cm). I'd decided to cut the shape out to fit the hole and therefore have a butt joint...in hindsight I probably should have put a patch on from the inside and then just filled it rather than trying to be clever.

Anyway with the power setting on low-high (T130p) and wire speed set to roughly the 9pm poistion i managed to tack it in place and then actualy weld along the top join quite well using the curved zig-zag motion. However when it came to the sides which didn't quite join up so tightly (i.e. 1mm gap say) I ended up just blowing a couple of holes in it (presumably due to the edge being exposed?). I turned the power down to low-med and the wire speed to slowest. This just seemed really underpowered and just spat lumps everywhere. There doesn't seem to be a middle ground so not sure what I could actually do to make it better?! What do people do when theres a gap in the join? Also is there a remedy for filling in the small whole, in the end i used the med power setting untill i got enough crap on there to fill it - but far from ideal!

Should i just stick to overlaps?!


Cheers