Welding Tips and Tricks

First and foremost I’m a TIG welder, but nature of my job I have to do a bunch of Mig as well. Most of the Mig welding I do I can move to make it easier to weld in a flat position but many a time I’ve felt I could save a lot of time welding out of position. Only problem is I can’t figure out vertical up for Mig! I have watched videos on it and people make it look easy but when I do it winds up looking like a turkeys neck. I’m positive it’s a settings/technique thing but my Mig welding is self taught and I’ve never had anyone who can show me what on earth I’m doing wrong.

I usually have good volts maybe 18V for .9mm solid and wind the amps back a bit so it doesnt fill up and out. Verti ups are technique issues if your settings are well set. Alot of turkey necking is from not staying on the sides. Get your settings so that your first/peno run can dig in a bit with the xmas tree motion. Like cha cha cha. 1, 2, 3 and back up to start again.
Cap run is zig zag /side to side one second each(roughly) and count one side 1 then cross smooth but fast hold for 2 then up slightly diagonal cross back over, smooth but quick hold for 3 then cross back over hold for 4 etc spit rinse repeat as needed. Keep torch angle roughly 10 15 degrees tilt up. A good fillet is roughly 3/8 of an inch wide, it will fill slightly wider than where the wire touches adjust for that as you go, after a while you will notice its abit like first run digs in and gets peno, second run fills in sides by running on the shelf the last crossover left etc.
I always 2 run anything over 1/4 inch otherwise just do the cap run style and do one run on anything under 1/4 inch.
Anything under 1/8 inch hot verti down using flat hand settings.
Hope it helps

Gun angle and voltage. Both need special attention for MIG vertical up. The weld is much hotter when climbing, but you really need to pay attention to (as gdarc said) to tying in the sides. I find it can be a situation of my eyesight of the puddle. Maybe tinker with your body position so you can be dead certain of your torch angle and really see the edges as you go.

Awesome. Thanks everyone. It’s the only Mig position that had me stumped.

Re-posting from WW in case others want to see how I've gone about it. I actually posted this pic here helping someone else out some time ago.

100% self taught. It takes quite a bit doing trial-and-error, but going through things 1 step at a time helps out. As you can see, dropping the settings really helps, but one thing that no one has mentioned is that it really helps out if you have the tip at bare minimum flush with the gun if it is a narrow nozzle, but if you have a large nozzle, it really helps if the tip is protruding just a tad so you can get a really short stick out. It helps to get a nice flat weld bead; the little (amount of) filler that is being added is really flattened out by the short arc length which helps bump up the amps. So technically the "amps" that I put in that pic are somewhat misleading. They are what I set the machine to via the synergic settings, but I'm pretty sure the actual amps were higher in the upper beads (than what I set the machine to).

It almost sorta starts to "transform" into TIG welding where by the arc is melting the base metals, and very little filler is being added so that it doesn't drop out of the joint and sorta freezes in place as you progress along. That's the best way I can describe it. In the bottom run at higher (stated) amps, the higher WFS did get the heat in there, but it came with the price of excess filler metal being deposited, and you can see it starts to drop out, just from looking at the shape. The upper ones at lower WFS I had the contact tip as close as I possibly could; I kept the amps up, just like the lower ones, but not using WFS, I used a very short stick out and the puddle was much more controllable because there wasn't an excessive amount of molten metal trying to follow the arc.

I feel your pain William. I’ve been watching a lot of Jody’s videos and reading on this forum about uphill mig. Looking for critiques of these. 1/4” and 1/8” CR material, 18v, 200ipm, 0.035 wire, gun at 90deg to joint (at least I tried), tried my best to hold 1/4” to 3/8” stickout, triangle pattern. Multimatic 215. 75/25 @ 25cfh

Helpful comments please.

Thanks

Hi Sal.
As above you will need to focus on the sides more, you look like your very close.
If you try to hold in sides a full second and then cross to the other side in one smooth quick movement and hold a second on the other side when you get there. The cross over should be quick, if you do it too quick or you are too wide, you will notice but its pretty forgiving, thats the zig zag method.
The xmas tree wont look brillant as a one run job done, the xmas tree is a 'get peno' type technique, zig zag over it smooths it out nicely.
Attention needs to be paid to upward angle, it needs to point upward but not ridiculous . I dont move torch side to side but kinda keep it in centre and more so fan it side to side, I just find it washes nicer but youll find what you like with more practise. You look like your just so close its fine tuning now. Have fun.

Oh if you can play with induction on the machine set it as high as you can, just a nicer day. If you cant on your machine dont stress it. Its a luxury, not essential