Learning submerged welding

Only sub arc I have been around has been for fillet welds only..Sorry

First thing: It is unusual to expect full pen on a weld joint using sub arc, one side. Are you welding up the other side before/after? ( seal bead)

3/32 is pretty small for this application. Can you up the wire diameter to around 5/32? For one inch plate you should expect to be pumping in well over 500 amps. I have seen guys run over 900 on one 5/32 wire You have to keep notes of each pass noting wire feed setting and travel speed. Have you tried 500 amps and around 34 volts? Then higher for the upper passes? You won't be able to pump much over 500 through a little wire. Also I have seen real screwups with tack welds. Grind your welds tacks and keep them small. They can be long but not big gobs. If you can avoid tacks in the root so much the better.

Randy

One last thing to do is if you have your underside seal bead done and are wondering just how much heat to tie in look under the plate as your machine is doing the upper prep. The seal bead should show an orange. If it shows a bright orange you are about to blow through. When you are done look at the seal bead. If you see blistering of the scale then you were damn lucky not to blow through. Randy

they build river barges close to where I live and we do service on some of their machines , I don't know the settings but they are running dual 5/32 wires on their plate welder , one inch thick and about 40 feet long I will ask tomorrow as we have to repair a gantry crane on-site tomorrow