sooty welds

[Richard07]

I made up a lead today to run the mma side of my inverter. Ran a few beads with various rod sizes to see how it went, everything was fine, ran great. So the i switched back to mig to carry on with the current project, i didnt touch any of the mig settings. Now im getting allot of black soot around the outside of the welds. Checked my gas, comming though fine at 10 lpm, shroud isnt clogged. I clean the beads up and they look fine. Also switched from argoshield light to pure co2, it was a little better so switched back to the argo shield and it was still sooty. Also, when i started welding with the mig tonight the regulator needle was chattering while i was welding, i turned the pressure up and it started flowing normally. Any ideas?

 

[pedrobedro]

Sooty welds, don't do it man Does Sweep grind up after him ? I sometimes get the rattling regulator but it doesn't cause any problems. Can you borrow a reg to try out on your argoshield ?

 

[Richard07]

Sweep grinds them but i thought it was sue that cleaned up the sooty deposits, at least that what ive heard. Unfortunatly i cant get hold of another regulator. Ill have another mess about tonight and get some pics aswell.

 

[Mr shiney]

10lpm is a bit low in my experience for MIG. I run my Thermal Arc at 15lpm. At college we were told to use 18lpm. if I run the gas lower I get back sooty welds at 15lpm I get the normal brown soot that just wipes off.

 

[steviec_lj]

10lpm is a bit low?

I've been running 8lpm on both CO2 and Ar/CO2 and only experience the odd bit of soot. So I can't see that being the main reason.

18lpm is just wasteful!

 

[BrokenBiker]

i used to run about 10lpm with mig, never had sooty welds so don't think it is that

 

[Davek0974]

I use 7-8lpm measured at the tip with a peashooter, seems to work fine, AR/CO2 mix

 

[Richard07]

Well im stumped, went back to it last night and its fine Played around any way with settings and stuff, ended up with exactly the same settings as i was using beffore, a little bit of a brownish deposit around the weld but im not worried about that. All the metal was clean so it cant have been from contaminates, dont think it was the wire as i use it most days and doesnt sit long enough to rust. Condensation on the the steel? Would the cold wether affect the gas cylinder or regulator in any way?