Welding Tips and Tricks

I had an introductory welding class this past month at my Diesel school and I fell in love with it! I went in with very little welding knowledge at all and with that class and youtube videos (Chuckee2009 and weldingtipsandtricks.com) I feel like I have a good grab on the basics. One thing that lead me to these forums and to make this post is wire speed settings and voltage settings. I know there are videos, but I feel like I can't truly get a good solid setting for vertical ups with MIG know matter what I do. At school we have the Millermatic 252's and they are the digital control interface styles and for 1/8 inch steel I have referenced the Miller app and found that they recommend like 18-19v and 280-300 IPM for .035 wire (wire we use). Well Jodi says 200 IPM for 0.125 or 1/8 inch and I tried that and it worked. Our instructor recommended like 180 and 18volts or so. So, flat and horizontal even vertical downs and overhead 17v-18v and 170-200 IPM all seem to weld fairly decent. I get to vertical ups and it's like I have sag in my weld beads unless I turn the welder way down. The books say some numbers to that seem way to hot. I tried the triangle, Inverted V, crescent moon and even Z weave patterns and only got good beads with the welder at like 16v and like 160-65 IPM WS and at those settings I'm not sure how true my penetration was. Sorry for rambling on and if my grammar isn't perfect I apologize for that to. I know each welder has different setting layouts and some welders I've heard do better at different specs than others, but I'd like to know a good ballpark voltage for vertical ups on 1/8in and 1/4 steel. Heck if any of you guys would like to shout out some ball park settings for those thicknesses and even maybe a 3/16 for each position I'd love to know what you guys run. I have the Miller app like I said and I referenced it for 1/4 steel today in the flat and horizontal positions and ran some nice beads, but I turned it down just a bit and tried a vertical up T joint and got sag and a overall poor weld. I'm new to welding, but I look forward to growing my skills and learning from you guys and Jodi's website and videos. Thanks for your time reading my post.

Idk about vertical up...I haven't done it in quite some time. I don't have my own mig welder just a tig/stick machine. Personally On something like 3/16" I run pretty hot like 22.5V and 396ipm on like a horizontal fillet. When I need to go a little slower like on a lap weld or I like these settings for vertical down...19v and 270ipm. I keep a pretty tight stickout personally. Last time I did an uphill I think it was 19/20v and 220 ipm....I'm no mig expert but they work for me. Maybe someone with a little more know-how add on to my setting preferences

Welcome to the forum.

Welcome to the forums. Have you tried increasing your travel speed with the same settings? If you're getting sag, you may just be staying in one spot too long. Or not. Just a thought...