I’ve finally finished tack welding my chassis and have just started fully welding it.

When tacking I was using 0.8mm wire (because I had it) at around 125 amps and with a fairly high wire feed. I’ve got an ESAB Mig welder and this is a higher setting than recommended on their data sheet but it gave good results and made filling up any gaps quite easy.

Now I’ve started fully welding the results are strong with good penetration but I’m getting a very large weld bead which looks poor and requires a lot of dressing.

I tried reducing the weld current and wire feed to the figures given by ESAB which reduces the bead size but makes the weld look less tidy than at the higher figures with occasional holes and I’m also concerned over strength.

Do I need to use the higher current and feed but go faster (being a novice I find this quite difficult), reduce the current and feed and try to improve the visual quality by practice or reduce the wire size to 0.6mm? Out of interest I’m using Cougar gas from Air Products.

Any advice would be very gratefully received.

John.

Try looking at this website.

www.mig-welding.co.uk

HTH

Mal

Can you turn the wire feed down independently of the amps? If so, just turn the feed down a bit. Those amps are a bit high, so it could be that if you turn the amps and feed down, and slow down a bit, you should be about right.

Can you get someone round to look at the job with you and offer some advice. I always use .8 wire it is easier to control than .6. Keep the gun moving away from you at a set distance from the metal using two hands if you have to. Is the bead sitting on top of the metal like a caterpillar or is it flat and wide?

I'm in Maidstone in Kent.

The bead looks good (ie relatively flat) but is just rather large. It's the sourt of size I've seen on say 6mm plate rather than joining 1.6mm RHS.

I suspect I'm holding the gun too far from the job. Would this have an adverse effect?

Do you have any scrap material to test your setup on?


when you say large, do you mean width of the weld?

have you tried moving your hand a little quicker along the run to make the weld skinnier? if you have your gun too far away, then you will get a poor weld. if you hold it too close your risking dragging your shroud through the weld

[Edited on 12/10/07 by Davey D]