1st Gen Lunchtable Thread - General Discussion

My welds yesterday were pretty bad, I tried a 90 degree bead and I dropped the steel on the floor. The bead actually broke off intact, meaning there was zero penetration.

I'm just following the chart on the door for the thickness of metal I have.

 

Look away from the door chart of failure. Crank the heat up and wire feed down if your not getting penetration.

 

How can you tell if you're getting good penetration, it's that discoloration of the metal on the opposite side, correct?

 

How do you figure out the right wire speed and heat without looking at the chart, seems like it would be completely arbitrary choosing a combination until you get it right.

 

That doesnt mean much. I can turn the heat way down and just concentrate on one area for a while and it will turn colors. The flatter the weld, the more its burning in. You dont want a really raised weld bead ideally.

This is hard to describe so Ill do the best I can. But when welding thicker metal, you wanna be able to see the base metal being carved out on the edge of your weld puddle, its hard to look for. Just gotta slow down.

As for selecting settings without using a chart, use your eyes and ears. A good weld will have a unique sound to it, with no sputtering. A weld with good penetration will be flat across the top if its a fillet joint, a low raised hump is fine for flat joints. Start with your heat high and your feed low, then bring the wire feed up until it sounds right and is easy to control.

 

I finally got a functioning regulator for it so I'm starting to practice again, Miguel gave me that 60cf tank of Argon so I've been using it as shielding gas. Works just as good as C25.

Also, how do you determine what flow rate to set the regulator to? I have it set to 25 CFH. The is pretty good, it's the one I've been running.

 

Welding indoors= 15ish cfm
Welding outside or near a breezy door= Crank it up, then get frustrated and move indoors.

 

Good advice, thank you. My welds are relatively thick, and those are the ones that broke off. They're not nice and flat.

 

For breezy conditions I figured you'd just use flux core.

I don't miss the flux core, it's so damn messy with so much spatter. I'm getting zero spatter with the solid wire.

 

How low can you go?

That's not a pun, I swear.

 

Heres some welds on my bumper. 1/4" plate fillet welds. Nice and flat with a slight high point at the begining and end.

And the shackle I tig welded on. This weld is actually concave, as I was welding way hotter than needed.

 

Why not TIG the whole thing?

 

Same

 

Time. I did one shackle and cut the pieces at home then burned the rest together on 2 30 minute lunch breaks at work. I tig welded some sliders once. Took forever, was burning 7018 rods towards the end of it.

 

Why is TIG slower than other processes?

 

Only Argon, or do you use C25?

 

You TIG?

 

Youre manually adding the filler wire. I suppose some could go fast, but it takes me a few minutes to weld a 6" bead and have it look like I was being paid to do it. A lot of finess, and you can get out of practice real quick.

 

I dont do the foot pedal thing. Scratch tig is what they taught at my school. Just set the desired amperage and roll with it. I tried the footpedal once (at a job interview nontheless) and failed miserably at it.

 

Never learned aluminum. Any aluminum that needs welded at work, which is hardly ever, gets sent out.