Welding Tips and Tricks

So I just got a flux core welder, for basic stuff and to learn to weld and when I try to weld all it does it spatter all over the place and doesn’t actually create a weld can someone help me figure out what to do and all it has is a min max and wire speed up to ten and thickest steel to weld is 3/16 which is all I will ever be working with so it’s good for me


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IS your polarity correct? Most self shielded flux core wires require DCEN where as most solid wire requires DCEP.

it pays to post what machine you have. so we can see what specs the machine has.
also what wire are you using?
a lot of those cheap ones have fixed wires so you can't get polarity mixed.

tweake wrote:it pays to post what machine you have. so we can see what specs the machine has.
also what wire are you using?
a lot of those cheap ones have fixed wires so you can't get polarity mixed.

it’s a flux core one 125 amps and I don’t know much about welders so I got one that was cheap to start off with and I’m using the wire that comes with the welder it only has a min and max and then wire speed up to ten


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Post a picture of your machine and the weld if you would so we can try to diagnose your problem.

i'm only a beginner myself so i can't really help much at all.
hopefully someone else will pitch in.

just check in the manual or inside where the wire goes, if there is a link for swapping polarity.

make sure you clean the steel well, grind it off until its shiny steel, especially the earth connection.
cheap machines have crap earth connections so you really need to make sure its got a good connection to your steel. you need a good copper to bright steel connection.
thats tripped me up a few times.

i think the bit of steel is way to big to be welded, but you can still run some beads on it.
i would guess run voltage on the high setting and put wire speed about middle. its not going to run for long sitting on max.

check the wire is feeding out ok, that the tension on the wire feeder is enough, but not to much.

keep the contact tip to steel distance short, ie under 1/2"

i hope that helps.
if not see if you can post some pics of the machine and the results.

In addition to Tweake's suggestions about clamping your ground to shiny bright steel, and welding on shiny bright steel, here's a video that may be helpful. Notice how close the welding gun is to the steel, and how Jody maintains that distance.

http://welding-tv.com/2013/08/20/115v-flux-core-tips/

How did you set the tension on the spool of wire? The actual action of [the machine] feeding the wire is very important. If improperly set, it may seem like something else is wrong.