Just to close the circle on this one, I checked my welder. Sure enough, the polarity was adjusted for MIG not wire feed. I was a bit skeptical it would make a difference, but swapped the leads around anyways. All I can say is; Wow. What a difference. Laying a bead and keeping an arc has never been s...

Newfie?

Me?

nope!

I'm a temporary resident......

So, I did a little searching and pulled one of the panels off the side. It's a Century welder, model 117-047. There was also a wiring diagram inside the box. Turns out the polarity has been wrong all these years. Gun is positive, clamp is negative. I'm going to switch the lugs around and give it a t...

Ah, so there's a part of my problem. My clamp is negative, the gun is positive. At least, the black lead is on the clamp, the white lead is on the gun so I assume that makes the gun positive and thus backwards for flux core wire welding. Why is it important? So the arc starts at the work and not the...

Thanks for the replies. My sheet stock is just raw steel. No coatings other than a light clear coat of protectant (seems oily) that wipes clean with a little solvent. Bar stock or angle is just mild steel. Any other projects are sticking stuff back together that has broken, so who knows? I've never ...

Hi all. I'm just a guy who welds sheet metal and bits of flat/round stock out in the garage for small projects and working on my project cars. I've got an old 110 MIG welder I bought from a friend many years ago and it works fine for what I do. I won't call it welding, there's nothing that looks lik...