strange weld result?????

[Torchy]

Can anyone help me with a very strange problem I have with the weld from my Eland 130.

When I weld for around a 10mm line or so and release the trigger I have noticed that the weld continues to melt for a couple of seconds after and grows an upright nib onto the weld about 3/4 mm in height. I have never seen this happen before as usually once the trigger is released there is no further movement or flow in the weld afterwards. I also am getting some splatter which I would say is more than normal.

I have stripped the welder completely to check it through recently and gas flow/ rate seems fine ( have held trigger and get a constant audible hiss). It also did this with the last of the previous gas as supplied by Air Products, so I have ruled out the gas.

My only other thought is that the wire is contaminated/ wrong grade of steel or has impurities in it. Has anyone else experienced this??

The wire is 0.6 and supplied by Steeley ( but I suspect probably manufactured in China so who knows what the quality is like!)

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Sean]

This was covered in a thread elsewhere recently

Ive always put it down to contamination of the metal the little mound is gasses bubbling up through the cooling weld pool( they are hollow) I get this if I dont have access to the back of the metal I'm welding or if there is slight pitting on the surface.

other solutions were to increase the heat of the weld, something i cant usually do as most of my MIG welding is on <0.8mm rusty French car.

 

[Torchy]

strange weld result due to faulty wire??

Hi Shaun

Thanks for your message.

I almost bought an Autostar welder on ebay yesterday, but glad I didn't win it.

After, I decided to backtrack on everythiing I had checked, and came to the conclusion it could the wire.

I had Sealey 0.6 wire in the machine which I bought a couple of months back ans had not had this problem before then, but when I contacted Sealey about the problem their technical guy assured me it should be okay and nothing to do with their product.

I then bought a spare spool of Murex 0.6 wire from my local welding supplier around two weeks ago, and yesterday decided to try it in the absence of anything else left to try, only to find the weld result and characteristics changed immediately for the better!

I was no longer getting splattering or porous and uneven welds and there was a better smoother flow and texture to the weld.

I have yet to speak to Sealey again, but I suspect some of these general tool suppliers have brought in cheap grade poor quailty wire, most likely from China or thereabouts obviously in the name of profits rather than quality. They are both supposedly rated to the ISO 14341A standard but there must be something in the quality of the steel/ impurities etc that this classification doesn't cover!

If anyone else knows more on this subject or has had a similar problem it would be great to hear about it!

Cheers Shaun

 

[Sean]

Hi Shaun

........
Cheers Shaun

Ahem!

S_E_A_N

 

[Sparkey]

Hello Torchy, SEAN!
Are you really sure it is the wire? When you have a lack of shielding gas at the end of your weld you will get the same result...either you pull the torch away too soon or your gasflow isn't right...Indoors it should be around 10 lpm (liter per minute) not enough gas causes problems but too much causes trouble too! Do you have any pictures?

 

[Sean]

Sparkey he's Shaun,I'm Sean

Shaun,the offending wire hasn't gone a bit rusty or been sprayed with WD40 or the like has it?

 

[Sparkey]

Sparkey he's Shaun,I'm Sean

Shaun,the offending wire hasn't gone a bit rusty or been sprayed with WD40 or the like has it?

Yes, i should've wrote Torchy and Sean, sorry! lol Sean and Shaun!

 

[Torchy]

Hi Sparkey/ Shaun ( or is it Sean?? dunno anyway....

With regard to the wire I did have the machine stripped and checked and correct any gas flow problems. I found the electronic part of the gas solenoid to be loose and a slight restriction in the hose ( where the hose passes through the frame it had discoloured, hardened and restricetd slightly, so couldn't be seen at a glance but luckily I pulled the hose out to inspect it). I continued to try and butt weld a seam but it left very lumpy hollow welds again. I then changed the wire to Murex and hey presto it was better straight away. It's difficult to say 100% but I did notice the Murex reel actually carried a labels saying it complied to ISO 14341A, whereas the Sealey spool had no casting numbers or markings with just a label saying 0.6 wire and a product number. The question is there are different grades of steel out there so who's to say that all mig wire is all of good quality grade steel, with little way of checking especially where it might have been imported from say China etc??