My welder is weak, or sick. Its a wire-feed mig, gas shielded. I am running .030" wire, with argon/C02 mix (@ 40-50CFH~) into a Campbell housfeld 20/30amp (75-80~weld amp) welder.

I tried it on some .085" thick steel exhaust tube, and it wont even burn a hold through on the hottest setting at any wire speed. it just makes bird poop.

I wound up using an arc welder for most of my turbo project because of its bird-poo-state, but i would like to use it to finish the project.

what do you think the problem is?

 

could be ground problem, tip, liner, dirt, or any number of problems. nothing changed but now it does make good welds?

 

Oh, no it still makes crappy welds. I just have 3 welders, so i used a different one. I would like to use the mig welder though, its much easier to use from under a car than an arc welder is.

im going to take it to a shop tommarow and try their gas, and their wire, maybe its just a crappy welder.

 

Sounds like this could be a polarity problem. Make sure when using gas shielding that the gun is positive and the clamp is negative. Many small migs like that come from the factory set up for flux core welding which uses gun negative and this will not work very well at all with the gas. There should be a couple of studs with removable wing nuts or something just inside the cover to allow you to switch the polarity back and forth. The mixture gas you have should work fine for any mild steel. I would also use the 0.23 wire as it will burn nicer through small 120 volt migs. In fact it will likely penetrate deeper than the 0.30 anyways.

 

Turn your gas down, you should get good shielding between 10 - 20 cfm. I run mine between 10- 16 cfm depending on the amperage. Sounds like your cooling the weld pool before it can form.

I just set my welder on 80 amps and 40 cfm and tried it. I could get a pool started but it was not making any penatration or flowing very well.

See if lower gas helps...

Jeff