Welding Tips and Tricks

Good evening to you all and hope you're all well.

I recently purchased the following MIG welder...

https://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/prod ... mig-welder

...and have around about 3 hours' practise under my belt.

Looking at making some items like a workbench before moving on to car body repair.

Having bit of a problem at the mo. I'm only getting 3 to 4LPM of gas flow and am indoors. New / decent regulator?

Cheers

Welcome, Bear,

You should be closer to 7 LPM for good coverage in MIG/MAG, as I recall, and if your regulator/flowmeter won't allow it, you must have an obstruction somewhere. It may or may not be the regulator itself. Have you tried the regulator with it disconnected from the machine, just blowing to the air? If you can get 7 or better LPM with the hose free, the problem is not the regulator. The next thing I'd look at is the "whip"... your welding lead, where it plugs in to the machine. It must be seated properly for gas to flow correctly into your welding lead.

Several of us can walk you through a troubleshoot of the gas path.

Steve S

Otto, thanks so much for the reply. I will do exactly as you say and report back.... great idea to isolate the regulator or a blockage further up the path!

Really appreciate your help, thank you:)

Welcome to the forum.

Thanks Mike

Hi guys,

Otto, I did what you said and removed the gas bottle and tried to hook my gas flow meter up to it but the connection wasn't great and I couldn't get a reading.

I may plump for a new regulator because I've heard the ones with my welding are poor and see how I go

Welcome to the forum. Did you get your gas flow troubles sorted?

Thanks Xwrench.

Not yet. i'm a bit broke until payday (18th) so as soon as that day arrives going to get a new regulator that actually works lol

Welding Bear wrote:Good evening to you all and hope you're all well.

I recently purchased the following MIG welder...

https://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/prod ... mig-welder

...and have around about 3 hours' practise under my belt.

Looking at making some items like a workbench before moving on to car body repair.

Having bit of a problem at the mo. I'm only getting 3 to 4LPM of gas flow and am indoors. New / decent regulator?

Cheers

I took a quick peek at the manual that is for that welder and the regulator appears to be like that of a gas grill and is numbered from 0 to 6, where they state that a setting of 3-4 should be sufficient for welding indoors on mild steel. Make sure to look at that manual and get the welding leads connected correctly (polarity) for the type of welding wire that you are trying to run. This would effect the penetration that you spoke about in the other thread.
https://www.machinemart.co.uk/documents ... -160EN.pdf

Sorry mate only just seen your reply lol

Yeah, as per my reply in the main thread im going to check the polarity. I haven't touched it since I got it though so hopefully that's all good.