Welding Tips and Tricks

Hi,

I've been very lucky to inherit a Lincoln Redi-Mig 255s Plus.

My good friend now passed had left it to me set up for welding aluminium and he was a career welder so knew his stuff but I never got a chance for him to teach me how to use this machine.

I have no experience with mig but plenty of hobby hours with stick and tig and go ok in both. So this machine and the process is totally new.

I asked and was also lucky enough to have a friend pop round this morning and get the wire feed sorted and so we decided to give it a go on a very limited time budget. I just had some 3mm angle lying around.

It was a total disaster as you can see. My main concern is the way it instantly turned into a plasma cutter as soon as the trigger was pulled, as you can see from the few streaks. It was set at what we think was mid range on voltage and wire speed so we dropped both. I also flipped the angle to weld on the thickest part, ie corner, in case it was just too thin to have a go at. The result is so bad that I'm thinking it's something way more than just tweaking the dials and keep trialling and erroring until it works. I feel like I'm not even ready for that yet with the way it cut so cleanly - more like I've set it up completely backward / wrong to what it should be, like if I was on a tig and trying to weld with the gas turned off or something.

Gas supply on this mig seems fine, straight argon near new tank recently swapped - flick the gas purge switch and it's a loud hiss.

Also in the machine photo there is an unlabelled dial under the WFS dial. We couldn't work out what this is for?

Sorry I really need help.

Voltage way too low, what is the gas flow rate on your regulator? Should be above 25cfh.

Those piles of dog barf are evidence that the base metal is not getting hot enough, and the incoming wire is not carrying enough current to melt. You’ll have to play with your settings to dial in on the performance, but crank it up to see how it behaves.

One knob is volts and the other is wire speed. If you have a machine that allows for wirefeeder volt adjustment. It wil be something like a switch that says local/remote. In remote the wire feeder controls volts as well, saves trips to welder to adjust.
Wire brushing helps too.
I avoid mig ally as tig has better control but cant weld dinghies with tig as it just not worth the coin, if you have a mig sitting there.

Thanks for the replies,

Another go tonight and no success (even worse). It's just the whole instant plasma cutter action I can't get my head around. The wire just wants to cut. Gas was set at 25cfh on the gauge at the regulator. Switched the volt knob on the machine to 5 (half way) and no difference in performance. I'm sure if you guys were physically here it would be sorted quick smart.

Does the machine have a remote switch. If it does and its switched to on, then the volts set at the wire feeder. If its off then volt are at machine, Its a good guess based on other machine I use, not familar with your model.