Welding Tips and Tricks

Hi everyone. Newbie here. I was taught minimal basics on stick welding and with a little practice, made some good welds (flux curling up on the end) with a 6013 3/32 rod, using a Lincoln 220 AC/DC Buzzbox. I am welding on DC negative polarity around 90 amps. When I switch to a 7018 1/8 inch, the weld seems to go out the window. I do turn up to around 120 amps, same polarity. I am just practicing on a piece of 1/4 inch steel. Is a bigger rod usually harder to use at first? Any thoughts welcome.

I am assuming you mean reverse polarity. They changed this because so many people get it confused and went with DCEP, DC current Electrode Positive, check and make sure. Odder things do happen, try both polarity, moving work clamp around, etc. But 98% of the time DCEP.

Don't manipulate the Lo-Hy at all at first, tight arc length and drag, 120 amps it should weld fine.

Yeah, I'm still not fully up to date on all the acronyms, but I have been using DCEN. I did follow your advice and switch to DCEP and the weld seemed a lot easier to work. Thank you. Would the same senario be the case on a 6011 rod? (I know, I need a reference book). I have been doing well with the CLAMS that Jodi talked about, and keeping the arc hot enough that it won't stick, and then hold a tight arc.

Right, so you wanna run those 7018s on dcep, and try the 6011s on ac, thatll run the best. Also, those 6013s will run well on ac. AC is overlooked by most.

Ok. I was under the impression that a rod had to have ac after the number like 7018ac to run alternating current. Like I said earlier, I learned bare basics when i got the machine (which i love). This is why I joined this forum, to learn more.

7018AC is a special example. I do not believe any other rods are labeled that way.

This AWS chart may help you out in the future:

Michaelg111088 wrote:Ok. I was under the impression that a rod had to have ac after the number like 7018ac to run alternating current. Like I said earlier, I learned bare basics when i got the machine (which i love). This is why I joined this forum, to learn more.

http://www.jflf.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=L

this book is cheap, and has alot of things to get you started for most welding processes, including recommended angle, travel speed, polarity, amperage,voltage,stickout (you get the point)

i got it and it was a good bit of help, its fairly old, so some things are out of date, i.e the reccomended CFH for mig/fluxcore, but other than that, it gives you a good idea where to start and how to tell if a bead is too cold/hot fast/slow stickout to much or if your too close. etc etc, its a great read, id recommend it.

noah

Michaelg111088 wrote:Ok. I was under the impression that a rod had to have ac after the number like 7018ac to run alternating current. Like I said earlier, I learned bare basics when i got the machine (which i love). This is why I joined this forum, to learn more.

also, there are some good and bad about each polarity, but if you want a basic idea of what electrode can run on what polarity, heres a good page you can skim over for reference.

http://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-ca/su ... -smaw.aspx


regards,

noah