MIG Welding

I've had the same experience. With my tired old eyes and the fact that I weld only very occasionally, I select stick 6011 for anything needing strength. No way you won't have penetration with this rod. I use mig where the stick is going to burn through.

Karl

Thanks to SteveB, I use 7018 almost exclusively...

I find that the tables glued to the inside door of the machine are often for butt joints in flat plate, I usually set up as if I'm welding about

50% thicker material than what I'm actually using. This lets corners weld really nicely. When subjected to destructive testing the steel tube tears out well before the weld fails.

My sentiments exactly. I am too often amazed at beautiful MIG welds that have NO penetration on one side. Makes me nervous about the consequences of failure.

I use 6013 - it's basically a contact rod so that my loss of touch from infrequent use is not a problem. I have 6010 (more like 6011, I think), but it sticks enough to be too frustrating and I very seldom use it.

7018 may be a great rod, but it can't be enough better than 6013 to be worth needing an oven to keep it dry.

Bob

Wire welding is used extensively in joining fabricated pieces for a wide variety of highway-use implements.. trailer hitch receivers, trailers, etc.

For any utility welding (not art), forget about weld appearance, as in the expression: chrome won't get you home. The second habit of mine is not to rush the welding. Taking the time to know that the proper penetration is taking place, will always produce stronger welds, IMO.

I have used flux core wire for the last several years, and the only weak welds that I've experienced were welds that had full penetration, but pulled out completely, because the material was OBF (old bed frame) angle iron. That part was remade from new mill steel, even though it was just a mount for a fractional HP electric motor.

I'm not a certified weldor, more like a certified futzor.

The last highway-use item I fabricated and finished was a hitch-type receiver at the back of a camper trailer, for a bicycle rack. From the receiver tube, the commercially-made rack extends several inches horizontally, then several feet vertically, then about a foot vertically again, forming the perch where 2 medium weight bicycles mount.

The owner traveled from western PA to CO, NM, AZ etc. on a month-long trip last year, and then numerous other shorter trips since then.

The welder is a 5-6 year old (purchased new) Hobart 135 120VAC model. I wouldn't find it practical to weld 1" steel with a 120VAC machine, although Ernie L has done it, but he's been a welding instructor and professional weldor for a long time.

I'll probably get a higher current model when I locate a place with a decent sized shop area, but using a quality 120VAC machine isn't as miserable as some folks might think.

WB ......... metalworking projects

Curt, everything that I have seen so far suggests that flux core is a lot hotter and always guarantees fusion. (none of this is based on any personal experience). Possibly, the way to go for me, if I want to expand my own welding, would be to use my LN-25 wirefeed (which so far has not seen any use) with fluxcore.

i

Curt who, Ig? heh

I believe I've read that using CO2 with steel wire is hotter, from numerous sources, but I haven't tried it myself.

AFAIK, there are no "always guarantees" (about nearly anything).

WB ......... metalworking projects

I define anything critical as more than 1/8" thick. MIG with FCAW can give good penetration and holding power. MIG with larger wire, higher settings, and operator skill can give good penetration and holding power. Trouble is, most operators are looking to put down "beautiful welds" and not holding the puddle long enough at the end of the swings to dig into the base metal. Thin stuff don't matter, because the base metal will fail or tear first.

Even though you may have thought you had a negative experience, think of it this way: lots of guys think MIG is the way to go on everything because it is so easy and looks so purty. Even guys who own 110v. units will say they will hold. Then their spare tire goes bouncing past them on the Interstate.

Not so with 7018, eh?

You learned, saw, and now know the difference.

Steve

Steve

Straight CO2 is suppose to give you a bit more penetration, but you'll get more splatter than say with a mix. It should be cheaper than the mixtures too.

My trouble, currently, is that if I make my best shot at figuring out parameters, and then weld, and look at the nice looking weld, there is no way I can tell if the weld is any good.

Yes. What I like, as I think we both said in the past, is if the weld looks like shit, but spans both pieces being welded, it will have fusion.

I've seen and have tried anti-splatter sprays, but I suspect that if the fluid gets into the weld zone, that it most likely has an effect on the quality of the weld, but maybe not.

It seems to me, anyway, that anything other than filler metal in the weld would be a detrimental contaminant.

One could cover the seam/weld zone with masking tape and then remove the tape after spraying, but that kinda defeats the instantaneous push button solution/miracle that most folks expect from an areosol product.

I ended up using the anti-splatter product that I had as a corrosion inhibitor on my steel stock, since it seemed to feel like a parrafin-type residue.

WB ......... metalworking projects

Look at the back of the weld, if you can get at it. If not and you need to be sure it is good, do some practice runs on similar material where you can see the back side.

You should see some decent discoloration and maybe even some slight melting on the back side with good penetration. Seeing this on one side of the joint is not good.

For me the story told by the back side is more important than what the weld looks like on the front side.

I was starting to wonder of there was another Curt here! :)

Mig is not all that hard to learn to do right. But for thicker structural stuff like you tried, you really do have to test it like you did as you are learning to find out what works and what doesn't work. It was a real eye opener for me when I started to do bend tests on the MIG welds.

You have to keep the wire contacting the leading edge of the weld pool. A big mistake is to let the weld pool spill out in front of the weld as you are adding the wire to the top of the pool. The heat is being added at the point the wire is contacting the weld pool, and when you add it to the top, and let the edge spill out over the metal, the leading edge gets too cool and just cold laps onto the metal instead of melting it. So keep the contact point of the wire, and the heat, as near to to base metal as possible to make sure you are getting enough heat there to melt the base metal. The more you do it, the more you will be able to recognize when the base metal is correctly melting instead of cold lapping.

When doing a fillet weld, it's far too easy to end up with it contacting and melting one side of the weld while cold-lapping the other. I like to use a circular pattern or weave (depending on position size, etc) to make sure the weld is melting into both sides. If you do a straight stringer pass on a fillet, the odds are one side will weld and the other will cold lap on you.

The other fun thing to do is crank up the voltage and wire speed to get it into spray transfer mode (assuming you are on a machine large enough to do that - my little 220 V machine can't do it). It just slices through the metal allowing for huge amounts of penetration. You don't have cold lap problems in spray transfer mode. When stick welding 3/8" steel in a T (fillet) with 1/8" 6010 or 7018 it took some practice to make the weld actually penetrate past the point where the two pieces came together. It's hard to get even 1/8" penetration there. But with MIG in spray transfer mode, I was getting penetration on the order of 1/4" deep without even trying.

The problem with 7018 (and stick in general) is that it's easy as hell to trap slag in the weld and end up with a bad weld just like MIG. The defect is different, but the result can be just as bad. Again, do a bend test on a weld if you think your 7018 weld is solid and you will find out it's probably not anywhere near as strong as you thought it was.

Our school had a machine for doing bend tests that looked like the second diagram on this web page:

I don't know if your school has any such machine, but if they do, it's wise to start using it to learn just how strong your welds really are. It's very time consuming to do it correctly however because you have to cut 2 test strips out of your weld coupon, grind the reinforcement off, and then bend them (one as a root bend and one as a face bend). It takes a long time but once you get the basics down of running beads and making the weld look half decent (which I'm guessing you have already mastered at least for

1G welds), it's a real eye opener to see how strong the weld really is.

If you've ever seen the back of an open root pass in pipe, this will be obvious. The front side can look beautiful, but if it doesn't go through and melt the root, it's toast.

Steve

In my experience, straight CO2 runs colder than mix.

Steve

Trade that LN-25 in for a LN-15, get a Lincoln 350 power supply, and link them with a "brain" cable. Learn parameters for pulse, keep a cheat sheet in the LN-15 box, and use 95/5 argon/CO2 mix. You can weld just about anything with little to no distortion. (still need pre-heat on thick stuff, tho...)

I've run both the LN-15 and LN-25. The 25 is a piece of !&^%. I've run very little spray, lots more pulse, and we have different machines for dual-shield.

Did your spray warp your plate? I like pulse because I can weld for long times without warping the joints, but your point about where to aim the wire was dead on. If you aren't pushing the leading edge of the puddle forward along the joint, you won't get fusion.

I don't remember it warping, but it was just a 8" test coupon not something I cared about. I probably didn't even look to see how much it warped. I would expect it to be a real problem on some work however simply because it does put so much heat into the weld.