I doubt you have any need for a full penetration weld since it is an angle plate. I would set your plates so that you have one lapping over by a quarter inch to a max of three eighths. Put your gussets in and tack weld every thing up. Move around so that you are welding on the open corner, the inside corner and your gussets. If you intend to do it the way you mentioned I would grind/machine a bevel on one corner of one of the plates. 1/4 by 1/4 deep should be enough. That way you will have a groove to weld into . When you machine the faces true there will still be weld holding the angle plate on the outside.
As long as you are not cooling the thing rapidly you can use just about any rod you like. 1/8 inch 6013 would be fine. You won't need preheat because your angle plate is so small. It will be piping hot when you are done. I am guessing that you will be machining afterward??? Let the item cool as slowly as possible. You don't want any hard spots that the machinist might find. They have been known to take the piece out of the machine and throw it at the welder :')) It would be pretty difficult to pop a 30 amp breaker with 1/8 rod... NO worries. Don't exceed your duty cycle rating. By the time you chip and clean between each rod you should be OK My guess you can run continuous at around 80 amps and you likely will be running 125. If your rod is running right you should be able to knock the flux off with one hit. If you have it too hot you will see lots of spatter and you will have to chip like crazy to get that baked on flux off. Randy
I have an upcoming hobby project that I was hoping to get some advise on. I'm going to be welding a 6" x 12" x 1" hot rolled steel plate to another 8" x 12" x 1" HRS plate to make a large angle plate for my milling machine. The weld will be made along the 12" dimension.
The welder I will be using is my old AC-225 (AC only) stick welder. This is by far the heaviest weld I've ever done and I'm going for a really good quality, full-penetration weld.
My thinking is that I should butt the vertical plate against the horizontal one for a fillet weld on the topside and a butt weld on the underside. Is this a sound idea? Does it matter?
Assuming that the weldments will be fitted up that way, should I put a vee in the underside, and if so, how deep should I go with it? (this will be easy to accomplish on the milling machine)
I have a bunch of old 1/8" 6013 rod. I suspect that this is not the optimum rod to use. What would be a better choice (oh, and I guess I should mention that I can't supply more than 30 amps input to the welder, so I can't achieve its full output amperage. I'm not sure what my max output would be before popping the breaker)?
Is there anything else I should consider, or is this not a doable project with my equipment and novice skill?
Thanks very much!