Well I busted out an old mig welder my dad had today to try and learn to weld with it. I've been messing with a torch for awhile and brazing brackets together and picked this up pretty well. Penetration is so-so but my beads are looking pretty good I think. Anyone have an sites I can read up on more or suggestions for some thick walled metal welding? I'm taking over a solid axle swap in a blazer and I'll be welding up all my own brackets and xmembers (it's a coil-sprung axle).

One major problem. I started out well and seemed to get the hang of it but then after a bit it seemed like the welder was kicking the wire and sputtering it out. The thing is only 5 or so years old but the sputtering is making laying out a good bead almost impossible. I pulled the tip and cleaned it out (made sure it was the right size for the flux core wire I was using and everything; didn't seem to work). I'm pretty sure it wasn't overheating because I stoped, cleaned everything up, went inside to eat for awhile and came out and it was still doing it. Anyone able to shed some light?

 

http://www.lincolnelectric.com/knowl...icles/list.asp

I'd be more worried about penetration the what your bead looks like at this point. Get good penetration so its a strong weld. Then work on looks.

 

what kind of welder is it?

 

you're using flux core wire? So I guess you're not using any shielding gas. Flux core wire spatters more than regular wire used with shielding gas.

 

The welder is campfeld haus--something or other. Nothing fancy, probably a harbor frieght special or something.



Yeah, I figured that it spattered more but that really wasn't the issue. I meant that the wire was kicking in and out of the gun itself, sometimes kicks far enough to hit my work.

...?

 

How many amps? Regular household plug in or 220? What direction are you welding in? You should be "pushing" the tip not pulling or dragging.

 

from your description it sounds like the wire is actually hitting the work and pushing back before it arcs, is that right? Sounds like you have a bad round or a bad contact inside the machine.

I just found that the contact block/gas distribution block in my Hobart had torn out threads for the retaining thumbscrew which caused arcing inside the block taking all sorts of divots out of the bore and melting the sealing rings in there, causing a similar situation.

Before you go digging into the welder try repositioning your ground to a clean area closer to your weld… sometimes I’ll even use jumper cables and attach them to multiple places to make sure that I have a good ground.

Also, make sure that your gun liner is tight and that you’re not using a worn out contact tip. The tip should be tight on the wire, any slop in there will cause the kind of action that you’re describing.

Don’t worry about the flux core, when you get it right you should actually have a smoother weld/arc going then with gas, you just get more smoke coming off of it which can make it difficult to see what you’re doing. I actually prefer flux core for some jobs, but usually not on thin metal, that’s tough to do well with flux core.

Campbel Hausfeld makes some OK tools… mostly air tools and similar… I’ve never used one of their welders but I’m pretty sure that they are actually just rebadged major name welders, I’d bet that some good pics of the front face, under the side cover and the disassembled gun and some of us could probably guess who actually made the thing.

you should almost NEVER be pushing the gun with flux core. With gas shielded wire you push or pull depends on conditions and the direction that you’re welding. In general pushing results in less penetration but also a flatter, prettier bead, were pulling results in deeper penetration. Most people find pushing easier with gas shielded wire, but there are situations where it just will not work (try it welding down hill sometime, you’ll run some of the ugliest beads that you’ve ever run).

 

Thanks crossfire. I'll check out the tip and ground and such. I cut the stock xmember off of my blazer and will try welding a new one in this weekend and see what happens.

 

I like millermotorsports.com

 

you should almost NEVER be pushing the gun with flux core. With gas shielded wire you push or pull depends on conditions and the direction that you’re welding. In general pushing results in less penetration but also a flatter, prettier bead, were pulling results in deeper penetration. Most people find pushing easier with gas shielded wire, but there are situations where it just will not work (try it welding down hill sometime, you’ll run some of the ugliest beads that you’ve ever run).

Not trying to be a dick, but I think you need to double check that. You drag a stick welder but not a mig. Pulling a mig will give you LITTLE penetration because your just adding weld to the weld you just laid and never touch the base metal. Pushing ensures you are ALWAYS adding your bead to the base metal ahead of you. If you doing something like a vertical down or filling a gap then you will obviously be pulling but the correct way of welding with a mig is to push. Example, if you need a vertical weld the correct way is up, which would be a push which means your always adding to the base metal. If you vertical down your welds will be thin and weak and gravity will work against you and allow the weld to ball up and fall to the floor. If the work your doing isn't critical (ie structural steel) then you can easily get away with something like a vertical down. If we are going to give advice to people wanting to learn welding we should give correct advice so we don't dicourage people trying to learn.

 

Woa, not trying to be a dick but you’re totally wrong:

Pulling forces the wire deeper into the existing weld puddle resulting in more penetration.

You should never be actually hitting base metal… your wire feed is always into the weld puddle, except obviously when you’re just starting a bead.

Pushing you hit the shallow part of the weld puddle and your filler tends to spread out and not penetrate, again, you get a shorter, wider bead.

only if you’re stick welding. If you try this with a mig in most applications you’ll end up with globs of weld bead dripping out of the weld. I used to have a problem with this having always been told to start from the bottom and work my way up by people that were taught with the traditional “arc/stick first, then tig or gas… and then you can do anything.” I ended up talking to a friend that does welding certification and teaches classes and he suggested that I try it on a project.

Right, exactly. Pull out a mig and try what you suggested, it won’t work.

 

Even better, here is the example he showed me of pulling a mig bead downward (funny, we were both working on big caddy engine swaps and custom pans at the time)

 

I weld structural metal 10 hours a day, Mark. Your not trying to add wire to the puddle your trying to melt the base metal, thats where your penatration comes from. Your not going to penatrate anything adding wire to an already molten puddle. Think about it. By the way I am a certified welder... Looking at your picture (I could be wrong but I don't think I am) it looks like your oil pan was done doing little stiches a bit at a time. Considering how thin the pan is that wouldn't surprise me. The thin metal is why you had to pull, not because "its the right way". Nice job, by the way.

 

i don't know too much about wealding.... just enough to describe, but that is a NICE looking pan.

 

WITH A MIG? Generally anything structural is too heavy and MIG is too expensive a process for that, arc is the normal approach.

I REPEAT, you should always be aimed at the weld puddle with the wire feed. What you want it to do depends on what you’re doing and what kind of wire you’re using.

Again, that’s not my pan, and that was welded in straight, long beads. In my project I ended up using the caddy pan rails and maybe an inch of the pan sides for the top part of the pan and then a poncho pan for the bottom half to match the chassis. The poncho pan is wider but shorter so it ended up looking like kickouts on a road race pan.

Here, this was pulled also, but this was done on some very heavy steel (the flange is ¼”, the el is thicker), and before you say it, it is a continuous bead (a the friend that I was doing it for asked me if can make it look something like a pretty tig bead so I did), and before you say anything #2, you could see penetration thought the back side even thought that was on some very heavy stuff with a 110V Lincoln SP135, but it also got a continuous bead around the inside to seal it that looks similar.


BTW, to further add ot the topic, this was done with flux core and actually looked like a perfect little tig bead when it was completely cleaned up.

 

So I should be practicing arc for doing any sort of suspension/bracket kind of stuff? (solid axle swap on my chev?)

 

No a mig is more than enough for that..... Mark, I'm done with this thread. I don't need to debate "the technical aspects of welding" with you. I would do some research on the abilities of a mig welder though. I weld 1/2" thick tubing and 1 1/2" thick plate steel 10hrs a day, 55 hrs a week with a Miller 400 and 0.45 wire. Alot of high pressure pipe and boiler work is done with robotic migs nowadays so while agree that stick welding is still a very common type of welding in industry its not where the future in high production manufacturing is headed. O and since your trying to do the nah nah thing your pipe weld you posted is not a continous beed. The brown marks every inch or so are where you stopped and restarted. Sorry. I'm done.

 

arc would be fine for that, but properly done mig or tig will work also. I’m redoing the brackets on my moser and 99% of it is being done with my mig, though I’ll proably touch a few spots up with the tig, depending on how things go.

By structural steel you’re usually talking about heavier steel members used to hold structures up, cat walks, supports/braces…

And yes, that probably is 3 beads (probably at least one of those was where I had a tack weld and didn’t want a lump)… the point was that I didn’t start/stop with every one of the “dimes” (popular thing to do with some chassis fabricators, especially 4x4 and lowrider, which results in a weld with no penetration, but that looks nice, a lot like that one)

 

Till it falls off and passes them on the road somewhere!