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Unexpected wire-feed advantage

As a beginner, I am offering this observation to other beginners. I have discovered an unexpected advantage to my new mig welder. When you are attaching a piece that is hard to hold in the correct position with clamps, it is so EASY to just hold it in one hand while tacking it. The wire feed, together with an auto-darkening helmet, makes it simple to put a tiny tack weld just where you want it, and eliminates all the tedious and infuriating clamping effort. I was never able to do this very well with a stick.

-- Leo Lichtman snipped-for-privacy@worldnet.att.net

Reply to
Leo Lichtman
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Yep. That coupled with the c-style vise grips, and you can get some work done pretty quickly. If you are slick about it, you can cup a gloved hand around the joint and not have to even use a hood.

Now to teach the saw man what all the little lines between the numbers mean...

Reply to
John L. Weatherly

This is a really great trick for welding patches to the pan of a car. Cut a patch to about the right shape, tack one edge down. Now shape with a hammer--the tacks you put down hold the parts already to shape and allow you to get pretty close to the right contours easily.

Not that I recommend anyone do this lying on their back in dirt and rocks as I did.

Steve Smith

Leo Lichtman wrote:

Reply to
Steve Smith

I really like that, and you can do a series of spot welds that are perfectly spaced, and it comes out looking very very good. Lots of slick stuff you can do with a wirefeed, an auto dark helmet, and some creativity. One of the greatest things to bring out this feature on a wirefeed is an auto dark hood.

Steve

Reply to
Desert Traveler

I think of my mig as a "hot glue gun" for metal. I can hit, say a broken lawnmower handle with a quick pass of the grinder to clean it and vee it, then zap it with the mig and it's done. A simple hanger that sticks in the ground to hold barbecue tools next to the grill, or a quick custom wrench or super-deep well socket is even easier.

I suspect that those junkyard wars-type shows depend a lot on the mig. If you can get two pieces of metal close enough to one another, you can glue them together with enough wire from the mig.

Dave Wilson

Reply to
Dave Wilson

This feature was a great help for me today. I was trying to tig weld some thin ( approx. 18 ga) furniture legs to 3/16 steel flanges, and it was hard to avoid burning holes in the tube, largely because my vision is not quite good enough to see the exact moment that the puddle forms. If you don't immediately dip the rod in the puddle to cool it and start moving, a hole forms and is hard to stop. Finally I gave up and took the job to where I had a mig to use, and it couldn't have been easier. Normally I weld almost everything with tig, since I'm not in a hurry and most projects are done sitting at a bench, using the foot pedal. This job was perfect for the mig, because it wasn't quite so important to see the puddle well. As long as the machine is set correctly, you can pretty much tell by the sound how the weld is going. The "glue gun" aspect does sometimes leave me wondering about having sufficient penetration, but in this case I was just making furniture legs and know the welds were strong enough. Gary Hastings

Reply to
GaryH82012

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