Welding Tips and Tricks

Hello all!

New to the forum, I've been a fan of welding tips and tricks for a long time. I've been welding for a few years now. Primarily self taught (I've learned the very hard way haha) and I thoroughly enjoy the art of welding. I feel like I'm fairly decent with the mig, and I've dabbled with Tig over the years, but I'm by no means proficient with Tig. After getting some glasses and a decent welding hood, I'm completely amazed and shocked with how much my welding has improved in a short period of time. I feel like I can read a puddle fairly alright. I know what a cold weld looks like and I know what undercut looks like. I've been trying to practice uphill 3g plate test, 3/8" plate, beveled, with a 3/8 backer, 1/4" gap, tacked with the plates as flat as possible to each other. And to say the least, I have no idea what I'm doing in the vertical position. I have the photos that I'd like every one to look at. I had tried the same settings on two different machines with similar results. Miller dialarc at 115-125 amps, and tooliom 200m set to 125. 1/8" 7018, shooting for as straight to 90° as I can knowing that I'm going to develop a slight push. I have a clamp I use that I can get pretty comfy on. I try to hold as tight of an arc as I can. These welds are coming out super lumpy/ropey and uneven, and definitely cold. I feel like I must be changing my arc length or maybe I'm not waiting long enough on my toes for it to really sink in and sit nicely. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Travel speed looks off to me. And I’d try to move a bit side-to-side to tie in the toes better ( makes a wider, less ropey bead).

Your amps seem a bit high too. Try lowering to 95 and use some movement and see if a lower heat and wider travel don’t help you get what you want. You can always bump up by 3amps as you experiment.

Wow!!! Words cannot express how happy I am right now with your reply! I gave it another go this afternoon. Started at 95 amps and ended up at 108 amps with 30% dig, still running 1/8" 7018 on a 3/8" fillet. It's looking way better in opinion already. Looks like I still need to slow down a touch more? I really felt like it was painfully slow, but the results are already speaking for themselves, I feel.

Just a thought I had now, if by turning up the dig function from 0-30%, would that tell me I should be running a little higher amps with it turned off? Or that my arc length isn't as consistent as I think it is?

I run about the same DIG and the amps are pretty close (every machine, every person welds just a bit differently). It looks better, but your covering beads still look narrow on the manipulation to me.

The root pass looks a bit slow in travel, but the tie-ins look way better to me. Remember, vertical up takes less heat than flat because the heat is running ahead of you. So you need to move a bit wider, slightly lower amps, but keep your speed up. Sounds easy enough, huh?

Fantastic! I will give it another go today! I'm very excited about my progress already. Vertical up has always been a challenge for me and I feel like once I get it, I'll be much happier with my skills as a welder. Gonna go get some parts for my homemade plasma table today and get those welded in and then I'll give it another go!

Woof, didn't get to run any beads yesterday, tried to run a few today after work and no real progress from what I had the other day. I'll give it another go tomorrow and see how that goes!