Anything welding

Just finished welding my frame plates and my raised gas tank crossmember. I had a lot of welds, mostly gross, some nice, and I am proud of these two.

 

IMO Mig welding is meant to be completely smooth, "Dime Stacking" is a TIG welding result. In some of my pictures you will see a partern in my welds but its for the fact I was doing production and had to move fast with lots of heat and wire to get parts done or had lots of different gaps and had to make it look good and get it burned together.. when i see "dime stacks" for mig welding it screams "i don't know what i'm doing"...

 

Very interesting opinion

Whoever welded this definitely doesn’t seem like they know what they’re doing

 

thats pattern welding.. not trigger pulling.. once again the "dime stacking" mig welding its pull the trigger and stop, pull the trigger and stop.. this photo you posted is fast whipping

 

I disagree.

Will comment in detail later. Work now.

 

Oohhhh you’re talking about tack stacking then??

 

yes, this is what im talking about... this says "stop and go" all over it. you can tell it had been wire wheeled to shit since it had a lot of spatter

 

Gotcha my bad. When you said stacking dimes I’ve always considered that to be a good thing haha.

But I understand what you mean if you’re talking about stacking tacks

 

i was just staying in line with the lingo used in a previous post i was tagged.

 

I've seen a lot of pretty "stack of dimes" welds with shitty penetration. MIG should be a nice smooth bead.

 

If you are doing a bend test, you sure as hell should not going to try and “stack dimes” with a mig.
People seem really hung up on making their Mig welds look like tig and i am not sure why.

 

unfortunately fabricators face issues which require mig whipping when welding different gaps and between two different material thickness, so just because you see mig welding with a pattern doesn't mean its not good..

 

There is an offroad company that builds cages for a popular SXS dealership in AZ, a customer walked into the dealer one day and pointed out the cage did not have "stacked dimes" so the dealer ship owner advised fabricator to make the cage welds aesthetically pleasing.. all his cages are mig tack stacked

 

Just so everyone is clear on this, that's not the technique I used to produce the weld in that picture.

It is one continuous weld non-stop, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. This is what produces the stacked dime effect, for me anyway.

 

Sorry, it just doesn't look correct to me.

 

Anything inherently wrong with the “cursive e” pattern for MIG? Because I’ve been laying down a shit ton of weld on my truck with that pattern. I’m not really too worried, but I do want to get better at welding and keep learning.

 

Also that's the weld as-is, zero clean up afterwards.

The technique I use is so clean there might be couple pops (weld splatter balls) during the entire weld. It's very quiet during the weld just the hum of the machine, it's very TIG like.

 

Its all personal preference. Actually, in my structural Tig class I was told that dime stacking yields a weaker weld. Laywire tig with a nice weave motion gives a much flatter, stronger weld.

 

well shit, my observation is way off.