The Welding Thread

[marshallnoise]

Piggy backing off the other welding thread around here, I was thinking having a general Welding Thread would be a good idea. This way we can all discuss the art of welding, techniques, gear and all that jazz.

Which gets to my question:

Those who have used a Flux Core welder compared to a Stick welder; which one is easier to use? I know MIG is the easiest of all, but I am going to be welding outside so gas is out of the question.

[Steven]

You can weld MIG with a flux core, so no gas.

[mrsleeve]

well there is a reason 98% of all PRODUCTION welding done out side is done with SMAW (stick) and not GMAW (mig) and you have answered your own question for the most part already.

That said there are getting to be better flux core wires out there, BUT they are kinda hard to get in small quantities (less than several 1000 inches) and for specialized equipment, and rather expensive. In general Flux core wire looks like shit, and still is not good in windy environments and will leave a TON of SLAG inclusions if you dont have the heat right.


GMAW is easier for a beginner to get the hang of and make a decent weld with in a shorter amount time do to it being more user friendly and less technical to some degree than SMAW. This is why everyone has a Mig machine (myself included) as a monkey can do it, but even now the old school SMAW is still the more all purpose method for anything other than inside a shop or building.

[marshallnoise]

well there is a reason 98% of all PRODUCTION welding done out side is done with SMAW (stick) and not GMAW (mig) and you have answered your own question for the most part already.

That said there are getting to be better flux core wires out there, BUT they are kinda hard to get in small quantities (less than several 1000 inches) and for specialized equipment, and rather expensive. In general Flux core wire looks like shit, and still is not good in windy environments and will leave a TON of SLAG inclusions if you dont have the heat right.


GMAW is easier for a beginner to get the hang of and make a decent weld with in a shorter amount time do to it being more user friendly and less technical to some degree than SMAW. This is why everyone has a Mig machine (myself included) as a monkey can do it, but even now the old school SMAW is still the more all purpose method for anything other than inside a shop or building.

I was just looking at Oxy/Acetylene setups because I specifically remember my grandfather using one outdoors with success. For sheet metal, I guess Oxy/Acetylene works great. But it is still cost prohibitive for me at this point. Gas is gas and that's the expensive part of the process.

I have an Everlast 140ST which is dual voltage, SMAW and GTAW capable and really basic. I have been pretty successful with starting arcs with SMAW down to about 22 amps and 6013 5/64 rods. I was even able to get consistent with not blowing holes. I can just tell its going to be a slow, tedious process of "death by a thousand welds." My whole goal is to do the sheet metal repair work on my car. I would love to do TIG but being outside kills that idea.

[mrsleeve]

Oxy is more of a brazing thing and on thin sheet is not that bad of way to go, though very tedious and requiring lots of practice to get good at .

Yeah if your welding thin thin stuff as a general rule you want to do almost ALL spot welds basically in a random pattern far apart from each other, until you have your weld made no matter what process your doing (other than TIG and there is some other shit that goes with that exception) other wise your going to WARP the shit out of your work and parent metal.

E30's have a fairly heavy skin so you can push the heating to a little more than a spot weld point maybe 1/4 -1/2 inch of weld at a time with several minuets between then and tieing in your next area to the 1st allowing lots of cooling time . That said with SMAW its going to be very tricky on a car body parts. I think I would go buy a few 2x4s and a couple of tarps and make your self a tent around the area your going to weld on to keep 9X% of the wind out and GMAW it all. Hell even out side during production welding when there is a lot of wind a tent or wind block is put up around the work area even for SMAW

[marshallnoise]

Thanks for the info sleeve. Some of the more structural sheet metal I am working with seems thicker than the 20 gauge sheet I bought so hopefully it can take more heat and there will be less blow through.

[Northern]

This guy on youtube (link) is a good source of information.

He has a whole mini-series on MIG welding/welder setup that helps a lot with figuring out settings and technique.

[itskingsteelo]

this is a great idea especially if someone needs welding work done, we can just refer to this thread and see if anyone would be interested in making some extra cash in exchange for some welding.

[IronFreak]

Well....looky here.

first on fluxcore wire its garbage.....UNLESS, you're running dual-shield fluxcore. Its a combination of gas and flux. We use it on very heavy structural steel. you use straight co2 as a shielding gas, the wire is very large, running a clean pass with no cold roll or undercut under a 1/4" is fairly tough.

Lets incorporate pictures as well, here is my contribution.

Collector for a manifold I'm building for FLG and a custom rear sump oil pan for a KA swap into a Datsun 510. Process, tig welding.

[itskingsteelo]

That oil pan is much sexy

[nomansland92]

That collector looks amazing!

[haggardfab]

so much bad info here, most "production" welding switched over to MIG using dual shield (flux core with gas) even outside and on the road work.. im an ironworker and 99.9% of the structural and ornamental work we do (most of which is outside) is done with a MIG..
that being said you should probably never stick weld anything on a vehicle, ever..

You should be using a MIG with gas, and somewhere around .030-.035 solid core wire, gasless flux core is garbage and shouldnt be used either.. a properly regulated gas setup will have no problems welding outside without any kind of tent setup unless your trying to weld thru a hurricane..
other then that a TIG would be ideal but if your starting a thread like this, TIG probably isnt an option for you..

[marshallnoise]

other then that a TIG would be ideal but if your starting a thread like this, TIG probably isnt an option for you..

Pot shot duly noted. You may exit the thread at your ealiest convenience.

[mrsleeve]

so much bad info here, most "production" welding switched over to MIG using dual shield (flux core with gas) even outside and on the road work.. im an ironworker and 99.9% of the structural and ornamental work we do (most of which is outside) is done with a MIG..
that being said you should probably never stick weld anything on a vehicle, ever..

You should be using a MIG with gas, and somewhere around .030-.035 solid core wire, gasless flux core is garbage and shouldnt be used either.. a properly regulated gas setup will have no problems welding outside without any kind of tent setup unless your trying to weld thru a hurricane..
other then that a TIG would be ideal but if your starting a thread like this, TIG probably isnt an option for you..

I assume your calling me out................ I are X-RAY hand, I run the welder unemployment truck, and hold LvL II certs in more shit than I care to think about. I know what I am talking about I follow you guys around for a living and look THROUGH what you do, a pretty cap does not fool me.

Yup gas shielding with little to no wind protection when out in the elements will make a weld, but will bust almost any type of code work I have ever dealt with..... Yes there is a lot of outdoor MIG in production work with boilermakers and girder jockeys normally its when there is a lot of structure up to protect them from the elements. To be fair I dont do all that much B&T work, though I have done work for everything from water towers to shit going to nuke plants for outages, and over the road high pressure transport tanks for caustic gases on the roads of the EU built in SE PA.

I generally chase the oil and gas guys, but even their automatic GMAW set ups are in shacks or they are so full of Porosity that they will barley hold shelled corn. Not to mention those rigs have had to have their own adapted code written for Auto GMAW because it leaves so much IFD (Inner pass Lack of fusion due to cold lap) and UT lights up big time on that. Ornamental work is one thing where make it stick will work who gives a fuck about what else might be in there but not anything I do.

I have busted out 38 of 56 main line welds made with SMAW when the wind was about 12-15mph and the welders were to lazy to put up a wind break for Porosity. Which sucks for me becuase I have to go back and check repairs too. Code says 1/8th inch or 25% of wall thickness..... on .375 wall you get just shy of a 3/32ds to play with.. So dont tell me your just fine welding with gas unless its gale force. Me thinks you have not had to work to a code with a lot of oversight, if at all its about 5 % spot checks and have NDE go around till they get what is need to pass the job over all and toss the rest

I agree SMAW for a new guy on a car sheet metal is going to be disastrous. Yeah a little slag or a bug hole here and there for the average hobbyists and home repair is not going to be that big of a deal, that said, those things will have a affect on both the strength and overall quality of the weldment made. If its at all anything structural like say a frame repair or anything of that sort that fails and causes an accident..............

[nando]

I want to know more about welds - not necessarily for welding stuff together, but because it would help me be better at my job. I have the feeling that my peers mostly just call out standard fillet welds without really understanding what it means. I haven't welded since high school - I don't think they even taught welding symbols or techniques, they just gave us equipment and scrap steel and we did trial and error.

sleeve, I'm guessing haggardfab is dealing with a lot smaller stuff than you or I would and probably not industrial welding. I mean, small to me is 3/8" plate. it's just a different world. We don't know what he works on either so maybe they don't do NDE. Everything I do is highly seismic so NDE is absolutely required.. I think we have 100% UT on the most significant structures.

I have an opportunity to visit a shop that can roll 10' wide plates - they're fabricating a large part of our structure. I don't know how thick they can go up to, but ours go up to 3". That should be cool. Hopefully they let me take pictures. Some of those welds are going to be insane. They will have to stand inside the tubes to weld parts of it together, fortunately they're 5' diameter. Oh yeah, it's like 2 million pounds of steel. :)

we have Piles being fabricated in China. Nobody is very comfortable with it, except the client because they are cheap. They sent us weld certs for review, but it's from fucking China.. how do we know any of it is real? We also don't know how they can get the steel quality to where we need since they don't recycle steel in China like we do (recycled steel is stronger than steel made from raw materials). They're going to have to pay somebody to go there and monitor fabrication. I don't know how much cheaper it is but the industry here is complaining about dumping and I bet they're right.