I finally got a chance to follow up on a thread from a week or two ago. The discussion was about using 6010 for cutting. Not having DC on my old monster, I wanted to see what would happen with 6011 and AC.
I soaked 1/8" 6011 in water, and set my welder to 200 amps. (The thread talked about using 6010 at 250 amps, but that was using DCEN [? I think?] to avoid burning the rod up so quickly. Since I am using AC, I decided to start out at 200 amps and see what would happen.) I tried cutting some old bed frame, perhaps around .1" thick.
The results were both impressive and unexpected. The arc was actually less exciting than I had expected it to be, and the cut was far smoother than I expected. Note that I did not say "smooth" -- but certainly nowhere near as rough and ragged as I had expected. In fact, at least as far as the edges of the cut are concerned, it was as good as I have gotten with my *very* limited experience with cutting using O/A. I had expected this process to be a matter of melting away the material, leaving a blobby melted edge. For the most part, however, what I got was a relatively clean looking edge. Apparently, this process actually causes the steel to burn, somewhat like cutting with O/A -- or at least I am thinking that is the case, since the steel that dropped onto the table continued to sparkle and burn for a few seconds.
Hmmm ... I recall that the problem with moisture in lo-hy rods is that the hydrogen separates out of the water in the arc and gets deposited into the weld. Could soaking the 6011 in water and then using it for cutting put enough *oxygen* into the process to help the steel burn?
I plan to do some more cutting today; hopefully, with practice, the results might even get better! I will try some different thickness of steel, and also some different amperage settings as well ... anybody got any ideas about that? I'm assuming thicker metal would benefit from higher amps ... ?
Andy