I resurrected an old Lincoln tombstone and started pushing some rod to try and get my skills back. I last learned to weld back in the early 80's, and have had little to no opportunity to use it since, and my current projects are leaning toward needing the skill back. So today I'm thinking about what I'm doing as I burn some 1/8" 6013 at
120 amps on some heavy angle iron, with both straight and wide beads. At this current, the best arc length has me dragging the rod on the edge of the puddle while I try to keep a straight line (had that problem when I ran track, too!) and I must say that I have impressed myself, and I'm sure I have good penetration, judging from the puddle I see. When I "apprenticed" to a weldor/machinist after class in high school, he had me burning up a surplus 50lb can of some rather big rod (7018??) at higher currents, and I never recall dragging like that, so I wanted to know if I had this right? Didn't do much small stuff back then, and how it felt is all lost to me now. Is there a spot on the web where there are several pictures of weld passes, with the various issues looked at? All I've seen is like four or five black and white pictures of obviously faulty welds, but nothing in the middle for more detailed critique. I've got rather sharp edges of the trailing bead ripples. Not the bigger ripples, but the big ripples have lots of smaller sort of ripples in it, and I don't recall what that means. Is the heavy iron I'm on (3/8") cooling the weld so fast that it causes this?- posted
18 years ago