Welding Tips and Tricks

Picked up some .045 Esab 7100 Ultra for the PowerMig256 and I think I'm in love. For indoor welding, it's the bee's knees.

Why would I ever go back to solid wire when this lovely stuff exists?

Cole2534 wrote:Picked up some .045 Esab 7100 Ultra for the PowerMig256 and I think I'm in love. For indoor welding, it's the bee's knees.

Why would I ever go back to solid wire when this lovely stuff exists?

No reason for you to go back if that is all you need. 045 dual shield does need to run pretty hot to get it into spray-like transfer (240A+), so if you don't need to weld thinner material, have at it. Others do need to weld thinner parts, so MIG may make more sense in that case. Both have their place.

Ya, the minimum thickness seems to be about 12ga, so no good for thin stuff. But hey, that's what the Invertec is for.

Which characteristics do you like best about it?

Smooth running with great penetration. Granted, only done flat fillets so far.

Fluxcore is a great process, fast deposition, really good penetration and it burns through mill scale.
Downside - fumes are highly toxic and carcinogenic (even outside California). So if you are using it you must deal with the fumes by extraction and or filtration if you don't want to die long before your time.

Personally I stay with solid wire, do the mill scale removal and spend time on joint preparation and good technique to get a reasonable result.

There is also metalcore wire that has better penetration and deposition than fluxcore. You should check that out too.

i think weld.com has a recent utube vid of comparing fluxcore and metal core.

OH yea, metal core runs reallllly nice on 90% up to 95% Argon + balance CO2, or 90/8/2 Ar+ CO2 + O2. If your machine has the ooommmph for it, aluminum-based pulse-spray programs can potentially also run metal-core on pulsed spray. Ask me how I know.

Cole2534 wrote:Smooth running with great penetration. Granted, only done flat fillets so far.

Wait until you start running it out of position!! Metal core, spray transfer, or pulsed spray can't compete with FCAW-G out of position.

Louie1961 wrote:

Cole2534 wrote:Smooth running with great penetration. Granted, only done flat fillets so far.

Wait until you start running it out of position!! Metal core, spray transfer, or pulsed spray can't compete with FCAW-G out of position.

Absolutely agree. The slag system really helps to support the puddle even when running high amps and the wire tip is already "needle'ing".

tweake wrote:i think weld.com has a recent utube vid of comparing fluxcore and metal core.

I was going to mention the same thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VpOIdhTBXA

Really interesting. The discuss deposition rate, wire lost due to fume, cost per llbs etc etc.

bap_ wrote: Really interesting. The discuss deposition rate, wire lost due to fume, cost per llbs etc etc.

Yup.. LIke Jody mentioned in his video's before you see that flux-core wire, because it's basically a hollow metal tube, ends up depositing less metal in the weld for a certain wire feed rate so you need to bump up to thicker types compared to solid wire to compensate.

I like how this video also draws the dicussion wider from a purely 'welding nerd' technical side to include economical effects that can drive the use of a certain wire type and that can probably even change engineering designs about which types of joints and weld positions to use so as little 'expensive' wire has to be used as possible.

Cost of wire and the effective percentage that gets converted into actual 'weldment' can be significant in bigger operations.

Bye, Arno.