Super new to the welding game but I have a kind of weird scenario that might be a good teaching moment. I bought a Titanium 170 from harbor freight to play around with to get my feet wet. I was using the flux wire that came with it but wanted to upgrade so I bought some KT industries .030 from my farm supply store (only one I could find after 5 stores) and started having a lot of weird issues. 1. The wire would stick to the weld after maybe an inch of bead and I’d lose my arc and have to Jimmy the wire free, I haven’t seen anyone have these issues with a mig gun. 2. the wire would continue to feed after letting off the trigger and would cause arc strikes and lose a good 7-8 inches before it stopped and 3. The welds were godawful, porous as hell, no slag, with weird puddle properties. The first step in trouble shooting I switched back to the generic wire that came with the welder and haven’t had any of these issues. Can anyone think of how or if these issues would be caused by a bad wire? Mind you I didn’t change any of the settings or anything just the wire. Thanks for the help.
Welcome. Cored wire that contains flux can absorb moisture if it is "aged", and especially if it is not sealed up properly with desiccant packets. It could very well be that the wire you bought had the outer layers of wire compromised. Sometimes just getting rid of those outer layers reveals perfectly good wire underneath, sometimes not. It's up to you if you want to try that.sbayer91 wrote:Super new to the welding game but I have a kind of weird scenario that might be a good teaching moment. I bought a Titanium 170 from harbor freight to play around with to get my feet wet. I was using the flux wire that came with it but wanted to upgrade so I bought some KT industries .030 from my farm supply store (only one I could find after 5 stores) and started having a lot of weird issues. 1. The wire would stick to the weld after maybe an inch of bead and I’d lose my arc and have to Jimmy the wire free, I haven’t seen anyone have these issues with a mig gun. 2. the wire would continue to feed after letting off the trigger and would cause arc strikes and lose a good 7-8 inches before it stopped and 3. The welds were godawful, porous as hell, no slag, with weird puddle properties. The first step in trouble shooting I switched back to the generic wire that came with the welder and haven’t had any of these issues. Can anyone think of how or if these issues would be caused by a bad wire? Mind you I didn’t change any of the settings or anything just the wire. Thanks for the help.
As for the wire feeding by itself, it should not do that unless the trigger switch is compromised. Seeing as how it didn't do that when you switch back to the other wire, perhaps you simply had your finger on the trigger ever so slightly that it was making contact when you thought it wasn't. Try it again with out the work clamp connected to the material. Hit the trigger, watch the wire feed out, then let go of the trigger to see if it does it again. Since your work clamp is not connected you won't have to worry about it arc'ing out, so long as your work clamp is far far away.
When you say it continues to feed, is the drive roll motor engaged or is it just spooling out by itself? It sounds like the trigger is engaged if you're getting arc strikes, but it might just be residual capacitor charge and improper drive roll tension.
I've ran a box of KT 7018... I wasn't impressed to put it mildly and I've found often filler from smaller farm/ag stores can often be an unfortunate combination of being as old as the store itself and in less than ideal conditions for that entire time. Do you have a Lowes, Home Depot or Tractor Supply near you? Lincoln and Hobart wire is good quality.
I've ran a box of KT 7018... I wasn't impressed to put it mildly and I've found often filler from smaller farm/ag stores can often be an unfortunate combination of being as old as the store itself and in less than ideal conditions for that entire time. Do you have a Lowes, Home Depot or Tractor Supply near you? Lincoln and Hobart wire is good quality.
- bplayer405
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Joined:Tue Feb 18, 2020 8:57 pm
Hopefully the wire was E71T-GS and not ER70S6. The latter wouldn't produce any flux and would give "god awful" welds without gas for sure. I haven't tried the KT Industries wire myself, neither self shielded or gas shielded. I have the Titanium flux 125 and have used Hobart and Lincoln wires with good success from both. Hopefully it was just bad wire.
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Thanks for the replies everyone. For the wire feed issue I still cannot figure what happened. With the KT wire it would cause feeding after the trigger was let up and only when it was arcing. It was very bizarre but I put a couple feet of wire through the gun without welding to see if the trigger was sticking and it was working fine then I’d put down a little tack and the feed issues continued. The motor was definitely engaged and even sounded like it revved up. It would be feeding long enough for me to realize there was an issue lift my hood and watch it come out for a couple seconds before the motor stopped. The weirder part though is this problem stopped after I switched wires. So idk what’s going on. Thanks for the tips about aging wires, I’ll grab a roll of Lincoln from Home Depot. I think everyone bought flux core welders during covid because they’re constantly sold out.