Welding Tips and Tricks

Hello all.

I'm kind of lost in the sea of FCAW wires so I'm looking for a recommendation. I'm using a Powermig 256 for an upcoming project and it's the heaviest weldment that I'll have attempted with wire before. It's 4x3 and 3x2 .188"wt rectangular tubing being fab'd into a gate. It's going in front of a very nice home and needs good looking welds. Welds will be 70% flat, and 30% vert-up.

Currently I'm pretty handy with NR-211-MP but I thought this project may give justification to try out the FCAW-G process. Outershield 71M in .035" seems like a good candidate but maybe I'm missing something?

Which D/S wire would you guys choose, or do you think I'm wasting my time and should stick the the self shielded stuff?

Thanks, Cole

Which ever you choose, make sure you run a heap of practice beads and dial in your settings. As you may know from the self shielded stuff, you can't really make it pretty with bad settings. As one may be able to with solid wire.

Best of luck.

I'm just a newb with dual-shield, but I have ran some of it on some practice pieces. I've ran Lincoln 71M in 0.045" and it runs great. I've also run Kiswel E71T-1C/1M 0.035", as well as HTP America's line of E71T-1C/1M 0.035" dual shield. Lincoln has a more uniform, homogeneous look to it after the slag comes off compared to the other two, but all of them ran just as well.

A good question is how good are you at running FCAW-S in the vertical-up orientation? It is more than capable of welding up 0.188" wall material with proper technique/procedure but vertical up is sometimes a challenge. Dual-shield is a little easier to run vertical-up, easier to clean up too. But the cost of running self-shielded is a lot lower (usually), but you have to take a wire wheel to the entire length of the toes of the weld bead to clean it up if you don't wanna be hand wire-brushing for hours on end. If this is for a customer that you are charging, there is no room for error. As welding mike said, you need to replicate the parts you are going to weld an do cut-and-etch tests prior to the actual project to verify your technique/procedure is sound. I know I would. That being said, once you dial in your settings, you will be in-and-out a heck of a lot faster with dual-shield as it can really put down a lot of metal fast, and the slag chips off eazy-peazy like 7018; one quick drag of your chipping hammer along the weld toes and it's gone. Light brushing and bam, you're outta there, lol.

Lincoln 71M 0.045" welded with my HTP Pro Pulse 300:



Kiswel E71TM 0.035" welded with my HTP Pro Pulse 200:




HTP America E71T-1M/1C welded with my HTP Pro Pulse 220 MTS:




As you can see, the Lincoln is more "all silvery", where as the Kiswel and HTP wire have some black grainy/veiny smudge left over. Perhaps I knocked the slag off too soon, I dunno. If the welds are going to be painted-over, then the look is a non-issue. Of the three, Kiswel is the cheapest (in 10lb spools), but it also looks the part after you knock off the slag. The HTP wire is a best value IMO; costs less than Lincoln 71M, and a little more than the Kiswel, and looks just a teensy weensy bit cleaner than the Kiswel. Lincoln is about $45 a 10lbs roll online + shipping, Kiswell you can get two 10lbs rolls for about $55 shipped on Ebay, HTP 10lbs roll is $40 shipped.

Here is another big ol' bead of HTP dual-shield on the Pro Pulse 220 MTS. On this one the machine was max'd out at about 220A with a good amount of voltage. I like how it really laid in there, nice and flat, but with just a hint of convexity:

I really like the look of the 71M. This project is getting coated but it seems like a good time to practice.

I'm used to beveling my joints so that should ensure good penetration.

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Can you get Hobart XLR8 in the states? I hear it runs well.

I'm sure that we can. I was sticking with Lincoln because that's what I've always had good luck with, but if there's a compelling reason to try the Hobart I'm all ears.

Local shop has 10# 0.035" Outersheild 71M for $43, certainly cheap enough for a trial.

Here's a post from my Facebook page about it. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_ ... 3301173078

$43 isn't bad at all.