4x4cherokeexj

Anybody out there got any good tips for a noob welder? I was going to take welding my soph year but my lame school cut it.
Right now i have some little craftsman wirefeed welder i know it wont do big jobs but i am thinking about using it for my roof rack?
Any tips on how to make good strong welds?
Basically need any tips.

Cnwxj

Clean the crap out of your metal( no oil, rust,paint exc) always bevel your edges, this helps with penetration. , Practice Practice Practice. Btw what are you using for your rack?

4x4cherokeexj

Square tube but not sure on size. and such.

Cnwxj

Try and keep it lite for sure. 3/4 16ga would be a good start.

90XJkid

-do not rush
-PRACTICE, go to a junk yard or some other place you can find for free/cheap metal
-ask someone who knows about welding to look at your practice welds
-Watch Youtube videos on welding
-HAVE A FIRE EXTINGUISHER HANDY

I am a newb welder myself. Practice has been my biggest help, and tips from people who know whats going on. I find many excuses to weld something and its paying off...I am almost starting to know what I am doing. Be safe dude and good luck!

otis

Go to weldingtipsandtricks.com

hawkfn18

Is your welder gas shielded or flux core? Flux core will be a little sloppy with more clean up of your welds, but don't be discouraged by it. You just have to chip the slag and slpatter off. Practice is key. Practice on junk metal as others have said. Take your time, good penetration is the most important thing you're looking for. The better the penetration, the stronger the weld. Once you get the hang of it, you'll be welding all kinds of stuff.

Hoooper

dont go too thin on the metal, you will have trouble welding it with the wirefeed unless its got a lot more power options than mine. Im welding some tube rockers in place of my stock rockers and even on low power, if I didnt have the tube to build the bead and run to the sheetmetal, and just had to weld to the sheetmetal there would be 0 chance, there wouldnt be any sheetmetal left

razor02097

You say wire feed welder I'm assuming it's a MIG.

Do not stitch weld anything that is meant for structure...

Like said above bevel thick metal for better penetration.

Like said above make sure the surface is >>>>>> CLEAN!!! <<<<

If your welder is like mine.... ditch that cruddy ground clamp... it shouldn't even belong on jumper cables... opt instead for a real clamp your can find at a hardware store or welding supply shop.

Use the chart that came with your welder as a base... but use your judgment. All metals are going to be different due to type, alloy, temp, etc... you might need more or less wire speed depending on the situation.

As said above if you can get an experienced welder to take a look at your practice welds it will help. You can take some pics and post them. It may not be the same but a lot can be told from a simple picture.

Bologna

go in circles

Hippeh

NEVER EVER EVER LOOK AT THE FLASH EVEN FOR A SECOND, not even from the corner of your eye. Flash burn to your eyes hurts like you don't want to know, spent three days blind as a bat when I was younger.. and dumber Cover yourself well, those rays will burn you worse than a day walking on the Sun. I'm not talking pink, I've seen people burned purple from it.

As others have said, practice is key. Using scrap, experiment with the wire speed and heat controls. Try them out at extreme hi/low settings so you can see the range your machine can output. Then dial the settings in towards more "middle" settings, finding which combination of wire speed and heat feels natural to you. It's always better to weld a little hotter than to weld too cold.

If you prefer to weld a little hot, picture making J's as you weld. Start your puddle and then make a half-inch weld down one side of the weld joint. Then weld back up the same side, keeping the puddle liquid, and when you reach the top, weld down the other side of the joint. Keep this up making J's back and forth over the weld joint. You'll keep a nice, beefy weld that will still float the slag out to avoid inclusions.

Always tack weld your project together. This will help you avoid warping. All that heat WILL do strange things if you just start slapping parts together. It will also be easier to cut it back apart if you've messed up your weld joint fitting or you see things begin to warp.

Running a MIG machine, invest in some Dynaflux Nozzle Gel. It wil help your tips last longer and help avoid spatter from jamming the feed hole. Just dip the tip in the gel and weld away. Especially important if you use flux core!

Since you're using a Craftsman welder, it will not have a very heavy duty cycle. The duty cycle is the the amount of time you can weld at a specific intensity before overheating (and possible damaging) the internal compenents of the welder. Don't expect to get long stretches of heavy welding done with such a machine. If you have to beef up the welds, do it in multiple passes. After each pass, use a chipping hammer and wire wheel to clean the weld bead. Each pass should stack with an offset on the first weld bead. Picture stacking logs into a corner.

wiggles

I am pretty new to welding too but decided to just go for it and I started working on my floor pans, I'm working with flux so its ugly but it serves the purpose fine

WAGNER92

i'm a welder at Pro Tech ind. cab guards flat beds alot of different things its mostly all aluminum but we do do some steel. im pretty familiar with it all... if you have gas it will help alot!!!! the welds will blend easier and look 100x better and have more penetration... doing a weave pattern like up and down while moving forward will get great penetration and look nice as well as doing a cirular motion while moving forward... but this will heat your metal up and probably burn through on thin steel... if its thinner metal i would recomend doing a strait stringer... just pull the trigger and move forward pushing the puddle not dragging it... you will get more penitration if you push the puddle... on most mig machines set your wire speed at the 10 to 11 o clock position on the dial.. hope this helps

trug

Make sure you practice vertical welds moving upwards, nearly every project requires some vertical welding, and going up is stronger than going down (less chance of slag falling down and creating a weak spot). When you can do vertical up well, everything else seems easy.

Also when you buy your wire don't just buy what is cheap. Different wires are designed for different jobs just like ARC rod. The best way to know what to buy is ask a sales rep at the welding supply store. (Not the person at the counter they have much less training, some are good, most are not.) The sales rep might not want to deal with you because you are not a big account and if you don't know the vocabulary they will not give you the time of day. You will be brushed off more than once but it is worth it keep looking till you find someone who will help you. Because your welder will be an unknown, it may take a few rolls of wire to get things just right.

When someone has taken the time to help you BUY FROM THEM, no shopping around, that person gets paid on commission so if you don't buy from them they will never help you again and may not help the next guy in your position.

If you want to check how good your welds are getting, cut out strips from metal you have welded together (about an inch wide) and bend them around a piece of pipe (the thiner the metal the smaller the pipe). If the weld breaks something is wrong and you need to figure out what it is.

One more thing you may hear someone say "my welds may be ugly but they are just as strong as better looking ones." I acknowledge that there are ways to make a bad weld that looks good but, 99% of the time this is just not true. You make pretty welds be being consistent and ugly ones by being inconsistent. Without going into detail, metal does not like inconsistency and inconsistency results in premature failure.
Some good reading:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/200...-weld-usi.html

xSUx SGT BAKER

look through this
http://www.lincolnelectric.com/asset...ature/C4200.pdf

and this
http://www.millerwelds.com/resources...wire-selection

and i quote from that:
Although more expensive than solid wire, flux cored wire could help you gain productivity. Flux cored wire typically has the ability to handle the welding of dirtier materials that may have higher levels of rust, mill scale, or oil. Although cleaning is always the proper method of preparing the steel, flux cored wires contain de-oxidizing elements that trap these contaminants in the weld pool and hold them in the slag coverage typically preventing the associated weld problems found when welding "dirtier" steels. Flux cored wire also increases penetration on the side walls and offers the advantage of better deposition rates (the amount of weld metal deposited in a given time period, measured in pounds per hour) when compared to solid wire. Although the operator is initially spending more on materials for flux cored wire, the savings are realized in the decreased production time.


Which is better, solid wire or flux cored wire?
Neither wire is superior over the other. They simply have different properties, which work better on certain applications. As far as performance is concerned, both types of wire produce sound welds with good weld bead appearances when applied correctly and used within the proper parameter settings. Solid wire provides deep penetration in the rootand usually has little spatter. Flux cored wire has a larger ball type transfer and produces low spatter levels. In addition, flux cored wire produces a rounder penetration profile with excellent sidewall fusion.