Welding Tips and Tricks

Hi All:

I'm a new member.

I purchased an ESAB welder 5 months ago. Previous to this purchase I used a Millermatic 180. I was welding fluxcore exclusively with the Miller. I now use 75/25 with the big E. The miller had dial-in preconfigured settings allowing you to simply select the Thickness of the material to be welded, I never bothered with setting the power and wire feed only set the dial to the thickness.

With the big E I use a standard nozzle but after watching a video from this site, ground down the tip so it was flush. ESAB makes a nozzle that gives the tip a slight recess and I will buy one to see how that works.

There are a couple of questions I had about the controls of the ESAB please.

Unlike so many MIG welders from Miller and Lincoln the digital display on the ESAB shows Voltage and Amps. You have to actually start welding before you see what the output is. This being the case, the only referents you have are the dial settings from the last time you were working. There are three control dials. Wire speed, Course-Power Setting (three settings numbered 1-3) and Fine-Power Setting (seven settings numbered 1-7). I am assuming this machine is designed to rely upon the user's experience with the SOUND of the weld as a determining factor. If this is the case (and I'm not sure it is), ESAB makes you develop MEMORY rather than rely upon the machine's display. I don't know if this is the industry convention or not to tell you the truth.

Any tips and tricks for accelerating my learning curve on this device? I typically do equipment repair for my farm as well as projects for my machine/woodworking shop. I am having problems getting the setup just right. So far the only strategy I have is to start welding and adjust the speed AS I WELD. This forces some pretty interesting contortions and isn't the most pleasant experience I've had with the machine. One of the problems is I cannot diagnose the nature of the sound if I'm having a problem. For example, the other day I was getting alot of sputtering. I couldn't identify if this was caused by the wire spooling too fast, too slow, whether the power was too low or too high or a combination. The welder is a strong and effective product but probably designed for a pro with a lot more experience than I. When I get the settings right I can produce really strong and cosmetically correct welds with no slag or waste.

I hope there is some direction you folks can give. Thanks in advance,

Jon

Hi, Jon, and welcome!

That's pretty common, to have to "dial in" on the right settings, and experience will make it easier. However, many of us cheat. When I find voltage/wire speed settings that work well, I'll mark the dials with a Sharpie and label the marks for the thickness. If you don't want to mark the machine directly, a bit of masking tape serves nicely. Once you have a few sets of marks, it's easy to get pretty close to the settings you need every time.

As to the sputtering you mentioned, it can be as simple as a less-than-perfect ground connection. From your experience with the Miller, I'm sure you know how sensitive MIG is to grounding. Jody has a good video on the subject.

Failing that, sputtering usually comes from too much wire speed for the voltage (or, conversely, too little voltage for the wire speed). Too little wire speed usually cooks the tip and the wire will stick in pretty short order.

I like to keep scrap handy to weld directly in front of the machine so I can have my left hand on the dial while welding, so I can get it right before I put metal to finished product. And, yes, I've reached the point where I can do it by sound, so I can watch the readouts rather than the puddle.

Steve

One experience I've had with our look-alike Millermatic 250 machine is that at times, the welder will go quiet and there is no crackle. It is like a hissing sound and the weld bead will not be good. I found the other day, that increasing wire speed slightly seemed to correct it. It is not consistent, so I'm not sure if the increase in speed corrected anything, or it was just the next time I pulled the trigger and it behaved correctly? Also, at some times, you will go to tack something and the wire stubs at the work and pops back. Other times, it works perfectly.
Very strange. Any ideas on what would cause this?
The voltage dial is "tapped" and the wire speed is infinitely adjustable.

Could grounding be causing this? Sometimes I am lazy and ground to the steel work table, rather than to the piece. I am only using Short Circuit Mig with 75/25 gas.

That hissing description sounds like "spray transfer", which surprises me with 75/25. Usually spray can't be achieved without a 90/10 mix, and is often done with 98/2 (with the "2" being 2% oxygen). Turning the wire speed up is the right fix, though.

Sputtering starts are often a grounding problem, though I see it happen occasionally for absolutely no apparent reason. I'll be welding the same part in short, staggered sections, have three good starts in a row, then a stuttering start, when nothing has changed. I wonder if the wire speed controller doesn't start to oscillate when it's trying to center on it's set speed, maybe from starting with too much stick-out. I'll just trim the wire and try again, and it seems fine. Damned if I know what's going on.

Steve

Steve,
I know what you mean about it sounding like "Spray transfer", but I think it is pretty much impossible. I am only using a low voltage setting and with the 75/25, it should not be possible. It definitely is strange!

I'll throw in my $.02. We have a Migmaster 275 and a Millermatic 252 on opposite benches. First thing I'll say is that Migmaster is never going to sound as smooth as that Miller. Most of my operators prefer the Millermatic. Personally, I can switch back and forth with no problem, but when we started the shop, the Migmaster was all I had to work with, so we've kinda grown to understand each other.

Depending on thickness of the metal you are welding, you'll be switching between coarse 1 and coarse 2 settings. Generally, you hit coarse 3 for really thick stuff, or when you are going spray. The digital gauges are nice, I hope to order a set for our machine, but we've been doing trial-and-error, and it does take some getting used to. Here's some of the settings I've come up with for some of our more generic materials, when we have people test, I'll throw them a bone and tell them "this will get you in the ballpark":

All with .035" wire and 75/25

1/4-3/8" - Coarse: 2
Fine:4
Wire:About 4.5

1/8-1/4" - Coarse: 1
Fine: 6-8
Wire: About 2.3-2.7

16ga-1/8" - Coarse 1
Fine: 3-5
Wire: About 1.8-2.1

I don't know if the markings and voltages correlate, but the rep brought one of the 280s over, and we had good luck with using the settings we were used to. Anything thicker than 1/4, we generally go spray transfer, and there's too many variables as to wire, wire diameter, gas, whatever for me to list them all. I hope this gets you close to where you're needing, or at least where you can work with it.

Also, ours has two connections for steep and flat profiles. When you're running spray, it is recommended you switch to the steep profile, I believe. We generally just do handrails and thinner stuff on the bench the Migmaster's at, so we don't often setup to spray there. Don't let my comment about the Migmaster not being as smooth as the Millermatic throw you off at all, though. I love that machine and it's run solid for about three years now with absolutely no problems or parts outside of liners, and possibly a gun a certain rank amateur boss-man might have run over with a forklift... I would buy another one tomorrow without a second thought.

rankamateur wrote: ...possibly a gun a certain rank amateur boss-man might have run over with a forklift... ...

I hope you gave that guy a proper flogging!

Steve

Otto Nobedder wrote:That hissing description sounds like "spray transfer", which surprises me with 75/25.

I think it is possible to acheive spray-transfer with that gas-mix.
On my job, we are running some old Esab LAN 315 - They're like OP's machine, one coarse-powerdial ranging 1-4, and a fine-power dial 1-10. They do run spraytransfer easily with 1,0 and 1,2 mm wire (guess that allmost equals .45?) , and 82/18 Ar/Co2 (it's a "standard" gas in Denmark, just like your 75/25)