Anything welding

Here is one from last night. I welded four 16 ga coupons on 1/8" steel with 0.023, just to have an apples-to-apples comparison with the four coupons done with 0.030 flux core. What you see are the third (right) and fourth (left) coupons.

This one is from this morning, where I welded a 16 ga coupon on a sheet of 16 ga (forefront weld has some grinding applied as well). No real difference from the ones I did last night; I was expecting it to flow better not having to penetrate the 1/8" steel. I turned the setting back to match 16 ga, then tried speeding up the wire feed a little. I'll try upping the voltage next to make it hotter and not run "cold."

If I can't get it right, I may swap in 0.030 (fortunately I bought a roll of that too) and try that next.

 

Hard to tell but it looks porous, so make sure you're getting enough gas flow. Start with 20 CFH and make sure there's no fans or anything to blow it away. Make sure you have a good ground too, i.e. the ground clamp clamped directly onto the 1/8".

I know why you're practicing with pieces like this but I would recommend welding 1/8" to 1/8" in various joints to get a feel for the welder first and get it dialed in, and then you can try moving to the thinner stuff.

 

Agree on the gas, it looks like it's not on at all.

Couple ideas, can you hear the gas when you pull the trigger? Turn the welder on, squeeze the trigger. Note the noise of just the wire spooling. Then turn on the gas and compare. I can hear a audible woosh with the gas on.

Did you swap nozzles? Gas requires a different nozzle/tip. Pics of the setup?

 

Rock slider space ship

 

A bad ground can cause that too. A couple things to consider... be sure your ground is making color contact with your material, gas flow as @EatSleepTacos suggested, and also environmental conditions too. If your garage door is open and you’re getting a lot of wind, block the wind with something if you can. A bunch of gas means nothing if the wind is blowing it all away from your work.

For your stage of learning, I wouldn’t bother welding material together yet. You’re just wasting metal. Get your flat 1/8” stock and just try to run straight beads on it. Make your welds look consistent and straight without porosity. Once you can get that, then try to glue pieces together.

 

I can hear the woosh and also see the regulator dial spin when I press the trigger. But I realized I had the regulator set to 20 L/min, which translates to 40 CFH. I backed it down to 20 CFH (damn metric system). It seemed to help a little, but wasn't the smoking gun I was hoping it would be. Here is a pic of the one I just did (guess I'm done with my day job for the week!), last weld is on the bottom; I tried to slow myself down a little, think I'm going too fast and also tried aiming for the edge of the coupon on the last weld instead of next to it, which seemed to align it better:

Here is a pic of the setup. I'm embarrassed to post these as it's pretty bush league, but I guess we all have to start somewhere. I'll probably buy a HF welding table in the near future just to get off the counter top. Regarding the nozzle, I changed the tip (the brass/copper screwed fitting with a hole for the wire) from 0.030 to 0.025. The nozzle itself (the shiny metal piece on the outside) I didn't change. I didn't see anything in the manual about that; but based on your comment above, it sounds like I should have changed it. There is a smaller black nozzle that came with the welder.

I hope I'm not hijacking this thread; if you all think it would be better for me to start a new thread, let me know. I really do appreciate everyone's advice and input.

 

The area where your torch lead plugs into your machine where the gas feeds in, make sure that is pushed in really well so when the gas flows into the unit it’s actually pushing the valve in the torch and coming into your gun at the proper flow rate that your regulator says it’s coming in at. My first welder gave me this problem. I just didn’t have the torch lead pushed in far enough

 

Not sure if this has been addressed, but did you switch the polarity of the welder when you switched from flux core to gas?

 

The connection of the gas hose is a quick connect. I actually unplugged it and plugged it back in last night when I set it up and could hear it click, so I don't think that is the problem.

FYI, here is a pic of the black nozzle I referenced. Should I be using this one?

 

That's the correct nozzle that is on the gun right now for gas shielded mig. The black one was for flux core. Also +1 to @svdude mentioned, just try to get beads going, don't try to stick metal together yet.

 

I wasn't fast enough lol, that's the flux core tip, refer to my previous post on the tip you had on there before was correct.

 

I did switch the polarity. Per the manual, it's setup for Direct Current Electrode Positive (DCEP) where the wire feed connector is plugged into the positive terminal

 

What I meant in my previous post was to make sure that this part of your torch was properly seated into the machine. With my first welder, I had the gas all set up and didn’t have this pushed into the machine far enough so it wasn’t receiving the gas into the torch properly

 

I also had this issue with my welder when I first switched to gas

 

That would be an easy thing to miss at first.

 

Oh sorry, thought you meant inside the cabinet. I checked the plug and it seemed like it was all the way in. I took it out and plugged it back in to make sure the two gaskets aren't visible. I'll try running some beads on bare 1/8" and see if I can get something decent before going back to gluing pieces again. My son goes back to college in a couple weeks so hoping to get this figured out so I can start on the side skirt project.

Going to smoke some salmon for dinner, then hopefully take a few passes after dinner and post the results.

 

How far away from the metal are you holding the tip of the gun? Can you post a pic of where you generally run the torch?

 

Are you pushing or pulling the torch. I have better luck with pushing the weld.

 

I've been pulling it, but will try pushing it. I try to to keep the tip about 1/2" away from the work piece, but I think sometimes I wander away from it cuz when I finish I'll end up with a long piece of wire hanging out (either that or I'm fat fingering the trigger after I finish)

 

It’s very common to start pulling away as you go. Rather than move your hand along the weld to keep a consistent stick out, new welders tend to rotate their hand at the wrist, which makes the end of the weld have a long stickout.