Welding Tips and Tricks

I have scoured the internet and can not find any videos that give any tips and tricks for welding thin to medium walled tubing. I am making roof racks for Jeeps and using 1' .120 wall tubing and some of my welds look too cold on parts of the tube and it seems using the auto settings on my Millermatic 211 for 1/8" material is way too much wire speed as it deposits a lot of wire. I am going to do a bunch of test pieces and cut and etch them but like I mentioned I haven't seen a more experienced welder do this. This is all building up to building tube framed off road buggies.

Thanks

Steve Sykes

1" 0.120 wall for a roof rack is ENORMOUSLY thick. What are you carrying, an elephant?

You don't indicate what wire diameter you are using? For 1" tubing, I prefer 0.024 wire. It allows me better control over deposition as you move rapidly around the tubing. I also find it easier to get the volts hot with slower wire speed to put in a very strong weld.

As to Miller's and their "autoset" for MIG, I find the volts to be about .5 lower than I prefer and the wire speed to be about 5-10% faster. So if AutoSet selects 17.0v and 295, I tend to run about 17.5v and as low as 270IPM. Your mileage may vary.