Seeking advice

[Bill Richardson]

Hello to everyone,

I need to buy a welder that will allow me to weld galvanised fence wire tensioners onto scaffolding tubing.
I'll have quite a few to do - around 400 welds - but I don't want to spend a fortune. Can anyone advise me on a suitable product.

Many thanks,
Bill

 

[scarecrow]

If they are the ones I am thinking of then the backplate will be about three millimetres in thickness you should be able to tack with an ark welder

 

[Towing and trailers]

Cebora 130 tirbo a cheap little set that will not let you down it is a bit slow for this type of work but I have put a Hiab on with one of these.

Pete

 

[scarecrow]

Cebora 130 tirbo a cheap little set that will not let you down it is a bit slow for this type of work but I have put a Hiab on with one of these.

Pete

Forgive me if I'm wrong but I thought the limit on a 130 was about 3 or 4 millimetres putting on a hiab well that impressive with a 130

 

[Towing and trailers]

The Cebora 130 was the first set I had and before I upgraded I used to build a few commercial bodies and I put 2 or 3 Hiabs on running it flat out with not enough wire feed causing it to spray and cut in the blocks were 60mm Square and the plate was 10mm thick and I had 4 per hiab. it used to cutout (over heat) 3 or 4 time per block as i did about 6 runs (route run or 2 then multirun 2 on top and 3 ontop of that) but I never had one come back with any problems.

donot believe any specifications that welder manufactures state.

as I regular used to weld 5-10mm with that set. If you ran it correctly it would do a faultless weld. I have never kad a weld that I have layed come back as it is inadequete.

I have looked at the welding calculator on this site and I have put the spec in for some of mysets and the EWM sets I have I have never turned below powersetting 7 and I have welded 1.2mm sheet at that using 1mm wire according to manufactures you should not do this with 1mm wire. and according to the calculator power setting 7 should be used on 2.7-3.4 mm plate and dependant on the joint / finish / position I hav welded 3mm plate on settings from 7 to 15 regular and even above this on certain jobs 7 I find slow but you can lay a weld thet does not need dressing on fancy jobs 15 is for fast production runs the calculator states this setting is for 7.8-9.7mm and these jobs look very respectable.

When building a recovery body we use material from 1.5mm-10mm thick and we tend to use power settings 9-14 we use the 14 that it states 7-8.7mm on welding 3mm to 2mm as this is the bit that needs a lot of welding and the 10mm we normally tend to be on power setting 10

I have welded 3mm on power 21 and the calculator stares I should use this setting for 13.5-16.8 mm material.

as a rule I do not run my main sets below 7 and above 21 as they are always on the same choke setting and normally have 1mm wire in them below 7 the arc begins to wander slightly and above 21 the wire is spraying @20m/min you can get it up to 24 but you need to be carful with the tips.

The output of the set means very little if it will lay a good weld it is about position joint finish and structure that develops the strength.

Pete

 

[malcolm]

The calculator on this site is based on joining 2 bits of metal in one run. I extrapolated a bit above the max of my welder, though it's within the sort of range that Miller suggest.

There's a lot that can be done with technique. Calculator here is deliberately for slow travel too - pros will move their torch faster and use higher settings, but I figured they wouldn't need a calculator.

Lots that can be done with weld prep too - is there a rule of thumb for the minimum possible amps? Too little and all the heat goes away and the weld doen't "stick" though occasional use and lots of runs a little mig can do big things. I've gone half inch on 150 amps and it worked well enough for what I wanted.

 

[zardoz]

Just a thought but surely any welding on a galvanised bit of metal will cause phosgene or some similar awful poison gas. so make sure where you weld onto the galv has been ground well back.

 

[irondarren]

I always try and stick weld anything that is galvanised, just found it easier than mig ing galv unless its real cleaned back

 

[Bill Richardson]

Thanks

Thank you to all who have replied -lots to think about