Thread: MIG Welding...time to give it a go

Hey guys,

Whilst waiting for the ArgoSheild to arrive I decided to try preparing some materials I was intending on practicing on.

Here’s a RHS off cut from a scrap yard and s 6mm steel plate I salvaged from the shed.



Read a few posts positive about using the flapper disc’s for steel prep->


Have to say they worked a treat! The regular grinding discs would take chunks out but the flapper seemed to grind the steel smooth and evenly.

Now that the steels nice and clean i started to think about rust prevention etc. This is where I'm a bit stuck. I’ve read alot on the use of degreasers and rust preventers but there seems to be alot of variation. To clean and protect the steel, I’ve used some ‘INOX’, after reading some nasty posts on nasty fumes created by some degreasers, i went for something relatively low in toxicity. It also prevents rust etc so I’ve also sprayed this on after grinding as well.

Here’s the material after grinding and spaying - >


Was wondering how you guys prep your steel? What sort of degreasers/ rust preventers do you use and would you recommend any products? I’m sure I’ve seen people spray on rust preventers after welding as well, if anyone could enlighten me on the use of these products, I’d be very grateful.

Cheers

UglyDan

I dont go to the trouble of doing weld preps and then treating them in anyway before they are welded.

All the weld preps I do are done prior to welding.

I may be doing a reasonable amount of welding and prep time maybe any where from 5 mins to 5hrs,ive never had any problem with contamination with the type of welding I mainly do,either stick or mig.

After welding if you want to use a protective coating I would say use an undercoat prior to painting or if its stainless treat it with a pickling product.

Generally just attach a wire buff (have one grinder that's always setup with one). Only prob of course is the wire bits that can spin off at high speed.

Have used the flap discs before, no issues there.

Found from experience that mig seems to be a bit more suseptable to contaminates (paint, minor rust etc..) than arc, especially when first stiking an arc.

Of course good weld prep is important regardless of the method used.

Recon u will find it invaluable for welding thin section stuff. Mine is used in 90% of my welding.

If u dont have one already, an arc welder as a future purchase would compliment your mig setup nicely. Keep the arc handly for the heavier stuff, especially short runs in heavy stuff (stub axles come to mind). Still trying to master mine, but its hard to beat when those short runs in heavy stuff need to be done.

Hi uglydan,
A bit more info on the machine.
I have the same welder, had it for about 10 years but mine has a remote wire feeder. They sold the kit back in the day, which was the sheet metal box with an opening side to house the wire feeder motor and a open spool holder on the back, the kit comes with different length leads of your choice. With the kit you took the origonal wire feed motor out of the machine and put it into the remote housing, If you ever want to change it over to one latter it would not be hard and it saves moving the machine around everywhere you need to weld. Mine has 7 mtr leads if you want a picture of it let me know.
I have never had a problem with mine at all and have welded steel, gal, aluminium and stainless with it. I bought mine for $600 which I thought was a bargain.
Dave

Hey guys,

Pipeclay - Thats good to know, just like yourself im pretty pedantic about preping, so should be ok. Will be using mild steel, will try stainless in the future after i can pull off some decent runs So you say just apply an undercoat? Gez thats pretty straight forward

Jatt - You reminded me i got some wire discs not for an angle grinder but for a drill, same discs though. Might put it in a vice and see how it goes. The wire discs, i would assume, woule be a bit more forgiving then the flapper discs, im thinking this will be good for the finer touches Definatley will give the Arc a go....think i have to get my money's worth out of this first though or the mrs will be...unimpressed

Dave J - I keep hearing more great things about this machine all the time! Thats fantasic it can be converted to a remove feeder so easily, damn heavy machine and your right, its a pain in the butt to move around! A pic woul be great, that 7 metre lead must be a dream! Maybe attach a thumbnail here

Cheers

UglyDan

In regards to protecting the weld area when finished ,I generally use Red Oxide as an undercoat primer before painting ,I would think any undercoat or primer suitable to your final paint colour would do.

I recon that red oxide is the stuff I'm after, cheers pipeclay

Gday again,
With the gas on the way, I figured I better just check the wire, rollers and gun, so glad I did! First thing that happened was a HUGE bird’s nest. When I bought it, it was working fine! I had not changed anything but I did ‘assume’ that it was set up correctly...i was so wrong!

When I checked the roller I noticed it had grooves in it, it was a roller for flux core wire....considering the guy told me it could not run flux core (even thought we know this is incorrect), I thought it was rather ironic he had it set up for it:P My supplier didn’t have and rollers for 0.9 wire but recommened I just use my spare 0.8 roller and reduce the wire tension.
Pic of the rollers – R) side is normal V groove. L) side is for the flux core


Next thing I noticed was the tip, it was for 0.6 wire! The insulator was also worn out so picked up a new one for $2 and tips were only 99c each. You guys were right parts are cheap as chips. Got home replaced parts and the wire came through very smooth indeed, no more birds nests so I'm happy. The 0.8 roller seems to be working a treat! Gauges needed a new O ring but my supplier threw it in for free

So I finally get my gas...

Attach gauge and hear a huge leak...buggar!


But as you could see in the first pic of the gas, was nothing a bit of electrical tape couldn’t fix

Finally everything is fixed and correctly installed, time to do some welding!

Here is my very first welds, on the steel brackets I cleaned up earlier. Played around with the wire speed settings but didn’t really play around with voltage to much. Waited till I got a nice crackling sound and a nice smooth even bead. I don’t think I'm getting much penetration but hey, it was my first go:P

Ended up welding them together after practicing 4 short runs and have to say I'm on top of the world I can see ive got ALOT of practice to do but overall I'm happy with the end result for my first crack

Tryed a short run on 2 pieces of RHS

Pretty happy with this aswell but haven’t given it the hammer test yet:P Thanks for all the advice everyone, seems to have payed off

Cheers

UglyDan

Hi,
Another little snippet of info you can add to the knowledge base is the drag setting,if I have not mentioned it yet somewhere. Its the spring/tension nut affair within the center of the the axle that the spool rotates on. If the spool tension is too loose it over rolls and the wire bird nests. With your wire entering into your wire drive, if it is too slack and it jumps the tracks ,so to speak.

Another important point is the wire drive rolls tension, Too loose the wire slips and too tight,when you get an impediment to the free travel of the wire ( like some big footed bastard stands on the cable) the wire needs to slip otherwise a birds nest is imminent.
To set the correct tension, pinch the wire( between thumb and forefinger) as its travelling into the drive as if trying to stop it. Set the drive wheel tension so it just starts to slip. A piece of cake!

On your pics the two beads closest the camera are essentially good but can be improved by either backing off the wire feed a tad (to reduce the volume of metal and flatten the humpy profile a bit- or bung the voltage up a step or two which will put more heat in and flatten the bead.

The idea being to flatten the bead and reduce the sharp Angle where it transitions to the parent plate. Looked at in cross section the bead/plate angle intersection is too sharp.That's were a crack can start from.

The idea is to place enough bead volume to do the job. Most of us tend to put too much in where less is often better.
Properly done 25 mm of bead can sustain the weight of a family sedan-A ton or so.

Ahh,if only some of my students could take the time to tune their mig as you guys do.Some them must believe there is an electronic brain residing inside each machine and it will magically correct all faults as the trigger is pulled.

You are doing good old mate!

Cheers
Grahame

The rollers were quite tight really, i remember thinking wether i should loosen it up a bit, but after it came through smooth i decided not to tempt fate.

I did have a play with the wire tension as i had to loosen it up a bit due to using a 0.8 roller for 0.9 wire, im assuming that if its to tight it'll jam inside the V groove. Would fine tuning the wire tension this way, increase the risk of a Jam because of the roller? Maybe i should just get the right one

Those 2 beads were done with minimal side to side movement, almost came straight down. I noticed that my gas flow was very high, i turned it down to about 20 and tryed some other welds with the same settings with got better looking beads with more penetration. I was thinking more gas would be a good thing but alas it seems its yet another variable
Increasing the voltage and backing off the wire speed helped alot, being such a thick peice of steel the lower voltage settings didnt give it enough time to heat up and i just got alot of build up. Slowing things down a bit helped alot

Cheers for the tips Graham, has helped me out greatly. Would prefer to do a coarse but im already in training for other things....so much to learn, so little time

Cheers

UglyDan

If you're welding indoors with no breeze, 14lpm is all you need

Originally Posted by UglyDan

The rollers were quite tight really, i remember thinking wether i should loosen it up a bit, but after it came through smooth i decided not to tempt fate.
When the drives are over tight there is no slippage,so if theres a jam somewhere in front,thats what causes the birdsnest.

I did have a play with the wire tension as i had to loosen it up a bit due to using a 0.8 roller for 0.9 wire, im assuming that if its to tight it'll jam inside the V groove. Would fine tuning the wire tension this way, increase the risk of a Jam because of the roller? Maybe i should just get the right oneIt can't hurt to experiment

Those 2 beads were done with minimal side to side movement, almost came straight down. I noticed that my gas flow was very high, i turned it down to about 20 and tryed some other welds with the same settings with got better looking beads with more penetration. I was thinking more gas would be a good thing but alas it seems its yet another variable Too much of anything can be a bad thing
Increasing the voltage and backing off the wire speed helped a lot, being such a thick peice of steel the lower voltage settings didnt give it enough time to heat up and i just got alot of build up. Slowing things down a bit helped alot

Cheers for the tips Graham, has helped me out greatly. Would prefer to do a coarse but im already in training for other things....so much to learn, so little time

Cheers

UglyDan

No worries, I am very happy that I could help and its working well for you.

Dan once you get the knack of tuning the machine to each job as in different volumes and thicknesses its a breeze .From here on in its just experience. Take notes if you don't weld too often. Its often helpful to write up a small record of each job such as wire speed ,voltage steps and record the metal type ,weld position, metal thickness etc.

Months later when you have forgotten the bloody settings,a look in the note book save mobs of time retuning if the job is similar.
Cheers
Grahame

Hi Dan,
Here are the pictures of my remote wire feeder you asked for.
I threw in a picture of the front of the machine to show you the empty holes left after the convertion.
The boss (Paul) at Warners Bay BOC told me they sold and instailed the kit there, if the customer wanted it. The company would just send the sheet metal box, base, reel holder and leads. Every thing else is taken out of the origonal machine.
Dave

Dutifully read all posts and will add my bit.
Play with the feed rate - don't be satisfyed with less than a fine weld.
Lead angle should be about 15 degrees - play with that too.
Above all - keep your visor lens really clean inside and out so you can really see well.
If you wear boots, don't tuck your pants into them!

Hey guys,

Dave J - Thanks for the pics, i can see excacly what your talking about now. I do admit the mig unit + wire and the gas bottle weighs alot! Even with the wheels its still difficult to move around. The remote feed would make life alot easier. Definatley something to consider so cheers for that

rightendup - thanks for the responce. Working out wire feed is becoming a little easier each time. I cant hear it when its perfect now, that cracking sound just hits this 'sweet spot' and the welds turn out great! The Angle however is prooving to be a bit more difficult. Trying to maintain the right angle and travel speed is taking some practice

Spot on about the tucking in of jeans, im a bit paranoid about getting burnt. I did buy a proper leather aprin and sleeves but i found my full length dryazabone is doing the trick nicely...except when its 40degrees

Have just started building my first accual project, a small steel table, which is good practice and hopefully wont turn out too bad. Will post some pics once its looking semi decent.

Thanks again for the responces.

UglyDan