Welding Tips and Tricks

This one is about one way to set wire speed and voltage. Also a bit of Joking around on the couch with my lovely wife

best, Jody
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Watched it last night. Pretty good.
They definitely don't teach us stuff like this at school.

Sent from my SM-G900R4 using Tapatalk

Better be careful, last time I started joking around with the wife on the couch we had twins. That was almost 21 years ago and I haven't been alowed on the couch since, just warning ya.

Len

Those thermal arc are what we used at Tafe in au.
But under the cig brand name.
Would love to know your opinion jody on the setting of 8.0-8.5meter per min (display) and 24volts running open root but welds on 10mm cold rolled with 30deg bevil. 2.4mm gap and land.

Great video (and great MIG series). Would you use the same calculations and chart for flux core as you do for solid/gas?

Thanks!

I would like a little more on adjusting with "Taps", My Hobart Handler 150 only has 4 Taps (18/22/25/29V) Is it more important to keep wire speed fixed and adjust taps or test taps at set speed, choose the closest fit, then further adjust wire speed??? Is using .023/.024 wire easier to fine tune having fewer "Tap" settings??

Drifta-X wrote:Those thermal arc are what we used at Tafe in au.
But under the cig brand name.
Would love to know your opinion jody on the setting of 8.0-8.5meter per min (display) and 24volts running open root but welds on 10mm cold rolled with 30deg bevil. 2.4mm gap and land.

Off hand, for a root pass, it sounds a bit high on voltage. But gas mix, size and type of wire used, etc. figure in too.

But if it works, it works.
I guess it takes a lot of voltage to break down that 2.4mm land.


jody

GlenC wrote:I would like a little more on adjusting with "Taps", My Hobart Handler 150 only has 4 Taps (18/22/25/29V) Is it more important to keep wire speed fixed and adjust taps or test taps at set speed, choose the closest fit, then further adjust wire speed??? Is using .023/.024 wire easier to fine tune having fewer "Tap" settings??

I would say adjust wire speed first , then match voltage, then fine tune wire speed again to suit the job at hand.
there is a lot of range where things will work.
I found my hobart 210 to be extremely forgiving with both .024 and .030


jody

I have never liked how my Lincoln welder has wire speed of 1-10 and amps from A-J It's just difficult for me to remember which letter of the alphabet I was using for 1/8" metal, or whatever. Was it E and a half? or H and three quarters. Why does Lincoln make the knob graphics like this? It's just difficult to associate and remember letters instead of numbers, I don't know why.

I should just make a new dial graphic and glue it on there, something that gives me a better indication of where I like it set for 1/16th, 1/8th, 3/16ths and so on.

I have always set my amps first, then adjusted the wire speed. I think I'll give it a try with the wire speed first, next time I need to change metal thickness. I'll do a few wire speed tests, and make some marks on the existing dial that reflect actual measured IPM of wire, not sure why I never thought to do that before. I know that it doesn't need to be 100% precise, there is plenty of wiggle room, but just to give me a point of reference that I can actually remember.

I seen someone take a sharpie and write the different metal thickness on the display and all you had to do was set the knobs to it and go. It was simple and easy.

mcoe wrote:I seen someone take a sharpie and write the different metal thickness on the display and all you had to do was set the knobs to it and go. It was simple and easy.

yea that's kinda what I'm talking about. Take some time to figure out good settings for various thicknesses, then just mark them down on the dial. I think I may do that. I don't usually change metal thicknesses very often, so each time I do I have to try and figure out what I used last time. Why I never write it down, I don't know

Well after watching part 3 I decided to check the wire feed speed and set for a project I was working on. It was interesting to see the speeds when I was actually getting. Apparently the Hobart handler changes the base wire feed speed depending on the tap settings. "0" on tap 1 gave me 115ipm and "0" on tap 2 gave 220ipm.... Strange, specs say 160-954 inches per minute.... Looks like I'll have to chart all 4 Taps for the 0-10 dial settings.

I need to futher learn/understand the correlation between voltage wire setting and material thickness! When settings seem to work, I have made some welds I am proud of.... other times generally too cold...

Going through the wire speed measuring process, I find that the measured speeds are so high that I should not be able to use .035 wire at all (based on the correlation of wire speed and wire size to amps).

My Hobart Handler 150, supposedly, can max out at 175 amps. With the .035 wire factor of 1.6" wire/amp, 175A x 1.6 = 280... so, on the highest voltage setting and wire speed of 280ipm, this should be 175amp.... Am I missing something here???

My wire speed on tap #4, speed=0 measures 400ipm. When I was welding some 3/8" & .288" steel, I seemed to dial it in at speed 2, which is about 520IPM... Does the welder change the wire speed when welding?

Sure a lot I don't know, yet!

In watching the video I am wondering how the wire speed and volts
on aluminum with spool gun differ? I'm pretty new with welding and a spool gun on
Aluminum is most what I want to learn! Also is there any video of how to stop the crater at the end of spool gun
Aluminum ? Thanks

I discovered what I think is my answer to wire feed speeds... My Hobart feed motor voltage is supplied by the tap output. Based upon the tap voltage, welding current changes voltage. For example, tap 3 open voltage is 25v, however the volt - ampere curve indicates 22v @50A, 18v@100A and 16V@150A... the difference in #2 speed, 25v vs 22v is 410ipm to 320ipm ... 18v=230ipm

I'm not sure how the other machines handle wire speed control.

@fishburn,
I'll start with I suck at welding Aluminum with a spoolgun and would rather stick my junk in a vise and have someone steal the handle. To the IPM part, you can go to miller.com and use their calculator and it's pretty close to start. As to the crater question, if you're not already too hot by the time you get to the end of your weld, you can weld back over the weld by about a half inch or so. I'm usually already too hot by the end and have a crater on thin stuff. You have to learn to move as fast as possible while still using a step and pause method.

It's been awhile but Jody has a couple videos using a spoolgun if you care to search the main site.

Len