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

good buy Dan ,
just a tip about the spool of wire that the reg is sitting on,
before it gets surface rust on it chuck it in a garbage bag with some moisture tabs -the stuff that comes with boood pressure tabs etc..It will keep the spool from getting rusty and making it really difficult to use..

Grahame

It machine was fortunate enough to come with a huge roll of .9mm steel, down side is it wasnt stored the best so the first few layers are rusted already. Im assuming i can just remove the first few rusted layers and the underlying steel should be fine.

Thanks for the tip, ill definaltey be storing the rolls of wire that way as the stuff certainly aint cheap!

Good on you Ugly Dan, you will wonder how you ever did without it once you get it all running.

One thing that I find always helped me when I was learning was to mig weld in a weaving pattern with the welder set to a slightly lower setting than you might expect to use for the job. This slows everything down a little and gives you a chance to see more clearly that you are achieving full penetration. Seems like many beginners just blast along too fast hoping that they have penetration and also that the weld is going where they hope it is going.

So all you do is move the gun up and down (tiny movements) along the weld area as you move along, I thing the small movement of your wrist as you go helps "steer" as well. I always support the gun in front of the trigger area with my other hand unless I'm hanging off something.

And also don't forget to breathe! Sounds silly but it's very easy to hold your breath and that doesn't help you relax and achieve good welds! And of course practice, practice, practice.

Agree with Grahame, rusty mig wire will drive you mad

Hi Dan,

When you say it will not do gasless, you may be wrong.
Clearly the front of the unit provides for quick reversing of polarity (required with gasless flux-core). The only other requirement as I understand it is the change to knurled feed rollers.
I have not used gasless, but have heard it is rather messy compared to a proper gas setup. (and the smoke factor)

Get yourself one of these Elliott Australia your head will love you for it.

You'll be able to weld flux core with that welder no worries you just don't turn the gas on use the right wire. If you wanted to for some reason in the future that is!

Other thing is do a tafe course in welding. Anyone can stick two bits of metal together but until you see what's happening inside the weld you won't have full confidence in your welds.

To get started though, your machine will be around 195 amps, so to weld 6mm steel (for example) set the wire feed to around 4-5/10 and then adjust the voltage steps until the sound the welding makes is a kind of crackling hiss.

If you have a look at the Miller and Lincoln websites they have heaps of articles on how to set up and improve technique that are well worth the read.

Dan,
You can use fluxcore on that that machine, as you can reverse polarity on that rural pack.

As for lessons check the out mig welding lessons in the sticky at the top of this welding forum welding page.
Bob L has kindly arranged them up there.

With the rusty wire ,stick the spool on an axle and roll of the rusty crap until you see a clean layer,
It is layer wound so keep the tension on it. Bag it up and it will keep for ages.

Cheers
grahame

Thanks for the advice and responses

JonathanC - tnks for all the tips, i think slowing down and taking time is great advice, will give me time to learn patterns etc as well as give me a change to play with the settings.

BenM78 - Cheers for the link and advice. I think a tafe coarse would be fantastic, if it wernt for time constrants id be in one already! Funny you should mention the 6mm, thats the first thing i was planning to try on , will be interesting to see how it handles. The plug on it is a 10amp, im pretty sure its been changed from the original 15amp plug. Im assuming this will reduce the amps i can utilise. So i guess we'll see how much juice its got soon (once i got gas that is).

Single-phase - It appears i stand corrected good spotting. Its great to hear i can use gasless flux-core if needed. When i accually get a handle on things it'll be great to try, plus ive got a few outdoor projects that may need attending anyhow

Grahame - Those lessons are fantastic and are a great resource, considering im unable to do a coarse yet, it provides a much needed knowledge base, tnks for putting it all together In regards to the flux-core, single-phase mentioned the rollers need changing, would this be an expensive undertaking? Being a not so new machine im concerned they may not make the parts anymore.

Nope that machine is a classic and will be supported for a while yet.Boc or Cigweld will have the rollers just take in the model no. etc!

I doubt you have any trouble with it as they are well made.
hppay welding.

Grahame

Originally Posted by Grahame Collins

good buy Dan ,
just a tip about the spool of wire that the reg is sitting on,
before it gets surface rust on it chuck it in a garbage bag with some moisture tabs -the stuff that comes with boood pressure tabs etc..It will keep the spool from getting rusty and making it really difficult to use..

Grahame

Graham...would it be OK to smear some litium grease over the wire on the spool to keep it from rusting?

Only kidding

That machine looks like it means business. How come 4 knobs for adjusting. 2 for the Volts, one for the amps...?

2 dials ,1 each for Coarse and Fine Voltage settings,

1 for wire speed (amps)

The other one may well be, a burn back control, or a pre and post gas purge timer.

Grahame

Heres a pic of the adjustment dials...



Like Grahame mentioned the bottom adjustment dials are your voltage and wire speed, the top dials are weld time and dwell time.

Its my understanding (which is limited) that the The weld time determines the duration of each weld, the dwell time determines how long the machine switches 'OFF' between welds.

So im guessing this function would be for spot welding mainly but im sure there would be other welding techniques you could use these functions for.....

Cheers

UglyDan

Dan

I had one of those welders when I lived up in the Pilbara, u can use gasless with it but I never bothered. Bought the machine off CIG in Karratha and got a terrific little cardboard gauge on the correct gas to use with the type of metal I would be working with. Gauge has been lost in moving to Perth. I learned on that machine to Mig weld, I also asked heaps of questions to the the tradies working in the boiler shops on the mine site, borrowed training videos that they used to teach the apprentices with.

I sold it to a Boilermaker after ten years of ownership and he said it was a good unit to use himself, was amazed what he could do with it being single faze. Parts are still stocked by BOC.

A good buy there bloke.

DD

That right, I remember the gauge.It was a sliding board arrangement through an outer envelope with cut out windows in the envelope.
You read the material and thickness on one side and it displayed the wire diameter and shielding gas required, on the other side.
Whats buggered it up is that Boc had changed the shielding gas numerical descriptions.
The basic argon /co2 /oxygen mix was Argo shield 51.

I don't know what they call it now.

I know what it contains but duuno what to call it.

Turn the weld timer & dwell off unless you want to play nasty tricks on your mates. The timer dial at the end of its rotation has an off /on switch at the LH end of the rotation.

You leave it off when you weld,but when you give your mate a go, rotate the dial on, and click the swtich on.

When old mate tries to weld after a second or two the machine stops.

When he tries again it welds a bit and stops again. It drives em na nas. I used to do it to the kids who "knew how to weld with the mig and did not have to be shown how"

As a teacher I had to had to take my fun where ever I could find it

For every day operation turn of the dwell and timer and leave them off. for industry it simply was never used to any great extent and was an acessory like a hip pocket in a singelet in usefulness.

Grahame

By now most of you will have looked at the close up picture posted By Dingo Dog and be saying 'just what is he talking about.
I refer of course to the layout of the dials.
I recall the the 195 we had at (my old ) school had two volatage dials, a fine and course wheres as the mig above has only one.
If I recall the dwell and weld timer,on my school model was were different as well.

Obviously the machine above has One voltage dial-( do get it right Grahame),one wire speed dial and a weld timer and a Dwell time dial.

Dwell time before any one asks, is the amount of time that the machine stops feeding wire between welds.The weld timer does as its name suggests allows the weld to be deposited for the set time. The dwell turns it off for the set time. If the trigger latch ws employed it was possible set it up on a feed tractor and basically run auto stich welds.

It was intended for ease of set to do switch or intermittment welds.

I am trying to get this right between bouts of the router/modem thingy switching off in the middle of mid posts.



Cheers
Grahame

Sorry about that,blame it own advancing decrepitude and stressed created by other people,s demon children