Anything welding

Reason I need to be able to weld vertically is I'll be welding sliders to my truck soon that I'll be building. Don't want it to look like complete junk. Normally I'll go out of my way to position my work piece in a horizontal manner.

Ok, I'll have to do some test pieces and see how my machine acts.

 

Dont think so... horizontal, run it hot and burn it in there. Vertical you will blow a hole at the same settings as its slower progression.

 

thanks for the tips. ive been doing side to side Zs i guess. ill try the up down aimed at the joint center

 

I appreciate that. I feel like when you try to go upwards you have gravity fighting against you but when you come downhill you are working with gravity if that makes sense. I am self taught and haven’t taken a course on welding in my life so I wouldn’t ever want to steer someone in the wrong direction as far as what is the “correct” way to do something. I will say however that I have welded on many sets of sliders to trucks and done them vertically from top to bottom and have never (knock on wood) had anyone say that a weld broke or was problematic. I always find that when you run uphill or you weld above your head in any direction you wanna turn up your wire speed. You could try that if you wanna try uphill again.

 

Sounds like I need to just practice on some lap joints in the garage in some different positions and figure out what works best for me. I will definitely give welding downhill a try. Never attempted it that way.

 

Yeah for sure man! No worries. It’s just what has worked for me. What works for me may not work for others but hopefully it gives you another method to add to your bag so you can weld in whatever position you need to and feel comfortable at it

 

In the old days before remotes got popular you learned to adjust your welding with the output you had to any position .

Maybe once your welding thicker then 3/8" I can see a need to go to vertical up

Then some procedures call for vertical up

 

I’ve tried going upward with a faster wire speed and I don’t feel like I produce the same results as just going downward in the same joint

 

Good to hear. My vertical up welds looked like pigeon crap. They were strong, but had way too much crowning. I've got some time to practice before I have do it for real again though.

 

Hahaha! It’s all about practicing and trying new methods and playing with settings and everything. One day you find something that works and you have that aha moment!

 

Guess I should stop building stuff and work on my weld technique for a day or so.

There's just so much to do!

 

Hahaha I hear you dude. I have almost 20 sets of sliders on order right now and I got Christmas shopping to finish up and all kinds of other crap to lol

 

People find out you can build stuff locally and it’s amazing how much business you get without even trying. Like I’m building a set of burglar bars this weekend. Never thought I’d be doing that but whatever. Haha.

 

Haha whatever keeps the cash flowing right?

My neighbors gate rotted out and I built him a new one recently. Always little things rolling in haha

 

So I got some time this evening to play around a bit. I was able to get a good bead first go around with vertical down like you said to try. I then tried vertical up with the same settings, about one voltage setting down and feed speed a bit slower than what I would do in the horizontal. I found better penetration going up in my case. This is what I was able to muster with vertical up on the 4th try.

 

Interesting. You have a picture of the one going down?

This is another one of mine today, not as nice as the other one that I posted but a little thicker material (1/8” to 3/16”) here and same method going from the top to the bottom

 

This is vertical down. Ignore the top half of the weld. Haha.

 

Bottom half looks good. Try it again with the heat up a little. I run a littler hotter

 

I think we’ve got the same welder. Hobart 210? What settings do you run for 3/16 vertically?

 

Yes we do! I run 5 and in between 50 and 60 on the wire speed for 3/16”