Thread: Welding Critique

nice looking project... at the end of the day you can just give the welds a tickle with the grinder to make them prettier.

In my experience nice looking welds is mostly about the right joint prep and then steady hands. I always find it a bit harder with the flux cored wire though due the the spatter and slag. It looks to me like you've done pretty well.

Hi monkeyrelish,
Flux core can be difficult to "tune in". The voltage settings ,ie coarse and fine, need to be very close to achieve optimum performance and visually appealing appearance.

The problem is quantifying what just is the "correct" settings.This can only be really ascertained on the spot by the operator, but I will give it a go.Overall your beads are good for a beginner, but since you asked for a critique I would opine that the presence of spatter and some undercut, indicate that the voltage adjustment is set at a fraction high.

Perhaps your wire "stickout",the distance that the wire projects out past the contact tip could do with a bit more extension.

The way to go for improvement is to play round with the scrap, trying what will work and what doesn't.

What may help to improve appearances may be to place tacks at either end of the beads for the brackets and weld from tack to tack.Then halt on a tack and then a pause for a second before releasing the trigger helps stop the drop off look at the end of a bead.

Other than that its difficult to substantially improve appearance as the fluxcore itself is not designed as a thin wall filler wire substitute.

It was made for big diameter wire use and I am talking 3.2mm for running a 20mm wide beads and big fast fills.

It is a substitute process for GMAW (mig) and it must be accepted that there are substantial limitations on what can be expected from it. The painful truth is that smaller machines struggle with fluxcore but I would say that your WIA is much better machine suited to the task than some of the others.
I do understand that budget is a finite thing and gas an cylinder rental is very expensive.

I hope this helps you

cheers Grahame

Nothing a grinder and a smear of bog won't sort out quick!

Hi Guy's

Thanks for the responses.

Graham I appreciate you not holding back. After considering your comments and looking over the rest of the project you are right on the money. Until you mentioned it I didn't even know what undercut was (something new every day ).

Your advice regarding welding tack to tack has been taken on board and I will give it a go this weekend. So simple an idea I don't know why I didn't think of it before

I am now trying to be a little more conscious of stickout etc.. but found by winding back the volts a bit, the arc tended to stutter. I guess I can't expect too much with the limited step adjustment of my machine. I am looking at buying a new MIG maybe the Lincoln 180C which has infinitely adjustable Amps & Voltage control, so I wonder if that will help me to produce better quality welds? I hope so..

Steady hands is something i'll also have to work on improving.

At the end of the day I think I just need to follow your advice and practice practice practice....

It is great to have people around such as yourself with great knowledge that are willing to pass it on, thanks.

Ohh and don't worry BenM78 there will be plenty of bog employed when I get it back from the sand blasters...

Cheers Guy's


Byron