I finally go to do some welding! And plasma cutting...

[realdocBBQ]

Got our welder in tonight and got to play with it a little bit. Amazing! It's so much fun! We did some plasma cutting last night with our new Yeswelder CUT65DS and I was extremely disappointed with the performance cutting 1/4" steel. We were running it on 110V and a 20A breaker and only had it at 41A, I didn't realize I could have run it up to 45A, I thought it was maxed on 40A at 110V. And we kept tripping the 20A breaker. If I'd realized the possibility of upping power to 45A, we might have cut a little better, but we obviously would have been tripping the breaker even more often.

Well, tonight we got a new outlet for our 220V socket and were able to plug it in to 220V - holy MOLY! What a difference! It cut 3/8" steel like it was nothing (at max 65A setting). SOOOOO nice! Of course, I was killing myself trying to cut the same piece about 20 times and couldn't get it to do squat - until I looked and realized I had removed the ground clamp to reposition my scrap piece and forgotten to reapply the ground. LESSON LEARNED! Always double check your ground! Once the ground was applied, I cut through the 3/8" steel like butter. Man, I love this toy! But it definitely works better with higher airflow and 220V power. For thinner sheet metal, the 110V will work fine, but for anything over 1/8", I think 220V is definitely the way to go!

So this evening, we fired up the new Yeswelder MIG 250 Pro (220V only). First we laid down a couple of small beads on our 3/8" scrap with some 1/8" 7018 rod, and it worked fine. I've NEVER welded a single thing before, so it is definitely going to be a learning curve, but it was encouraging.

Then we wired up our 0.035 wire and put in some practice with a tank of C25 gas (we think that is what is in our bottle, 75% argon, 25% CO2) and put down some beads. We had it pretty low the first couple of tries, then I upped the power and once we got to 175A and then to 190A, it went amazingly well. Here's a pic of my 3rd ever MIG bead, and I couldn't be happier! I know there is a long ways to go, but for my first ever attempt, I am ecstatic!



To the right is my 1st or second, with too low power and probably too low gas flow as well. But on the one on the left, I had a little wobble up and down, but it almost looks like you can see some dimes stacked in a few places, and I was much more consistent overall. MIG welding is definitely a lot easier for n00bs (like me) and your basic mouthbreather (also me).

Hopefully we'll get to doing some serious welding soon!

[Jerod Broussard]

Dude, for beginners, MIG is the bomb. Awesome with the plasma!!! You'll only get better welds. 11 gauge/1/8" ain't bad, 14 gauge is a little touchier, then I get to do some 3/16" or 1/4" and I'm like dang, let me do this ALL DAY.

And to think you were worried about a smoke collector cause it had, "more welding."

[Oak Smoke]

Wow the fact you were able to run a bead with 7018 is great. 7018 is low hydrogen rod anything other than absolutely flat takes a pro. As a CWI (certified welding Inspector) I’ve tested thousands of welders. I’ve seen seasoned professionals get pale when they are told the test involves running low hydrogen up hill. Congratulations you are going to love all you can do when you get a little practice under your belt.

[Jerod Broussard]

Just say, "uphill!"

[Donw]

CWI huh, cool. Back 40-50 years ago as a marine engineer we had to keep all our high pressure boiler, vessel and piping certifications current and I remember sweating out all the bend tests we had to do every year or so. Do they still do the 1 inch flat weld test?

[Oak Smoke]

Donw They were still doing them when I retired 5 years ago. Normally there would coupons cut from what ever they were testing on. Some coupons were bent and some were nicked on each end of the weld and pulled until they failed. When it came time to destructively test those coupons every welder wanted to be your best friend.

[realdocBBQ]

Wow the fact you were able to run a bead with 7018 is great. 7018 is low hydrogen rod anything other than absolutely flat takes a pro. As a CWI (certified welding Inspector) I’ve tested thousands of welders. I’ve seen seasoned professionals get pale when they are told the test involves running low hydrogen up hill. Congratulations you are going to love all you can do when you get a little practice under your belt.

See, and here I'd thought 7018 was the kind of catch-all, multi-use for just about everything non-technical. From what I've seen, 6010 (cellulose/sodium) and 6011 (cellulose/potassium) would be the hard ones, nasty, splattery, kind of DIGGING and rough.

The 7018 stick was definitely a little harder than the MIG, but honestly I only did about 2 beads of 2" each on that one. We may use it some, but I have a feeling the MIG is going to be our go-to on 95% of this project.

And yes, Jerod Broussard the less welding the better, we thought at the outset. I'm not sure now, and looking at the prices of curved elbows for 6", we may just cut our exhaust and do a 45. I'm not convinced a collector is any better than anything else, and if it is, it seems it's probably very very minimal. I don't think it's worth the extra work and extra steel at this point - but it's also a very easy thing to add on later if we decide we want to do so.

[Oak Smoke]

realdocBBQ The 6010 and 6011 are your all around rods. If you’re having splatter problems you are most likely running at too many amps or holding the rod too far from the base metal. To be used in the applications I worked in 7018 had to be either from a newly opened can or kept in a rod oven. The flux soaked up moisture from the air and leaves your bead full of porosity. That seriously weakens the weld.

[realdocBBQ]

So last night I did a few more. Lots of fun, learning this new skill. I'm not good, but I think a bunch of these are passable, and a few are decent looking!






I guess these were probably my best ones of the night:




These last were an experiment - Ahumadora keeps telling me to 'weld downhill', so I thought I'd give it a try.




So these last beads were run vertically, from top to bottom. The plate was precariously propped because it was an odd shape, and I was hunched over in a weird position trying to run them. Obviously, I had some wobble side to side and some massive variability in my torch angle, the toes of these welds look like my Frankentoe, that had a safe dropped on it and had to be reattached.

But it was an exercise that helped me learn more about positioning of the torch and such. I practiced a bunch of pushing vs. pulling, and using both left and right hands to hold the torch. I also tried various techniques, like drag and pause, forward and back, a side to side and a "Z", as well as the famous circles or cursive "e". I think each has their place. I'm really interested to see how things progress.

As for the running downhill, I tried to do the "e" or circles, but this morning I woke up and remembered I forgot a technique I had watched a video on (I think it was probably Bob Moffatt at Weld.com) and it was triangles running downhill - start in the center, then go down to the left corner, pause, right corner, pause and back up to the center, slightly below your last center. If I remember it right, I think that might help me be more consistent running downhill. Now, admittedly, I think this was in a corner joint, or maybe a vertical butt joint that was beveled - that would definitely help with the linearity and wobble.

Anyways, I thought it was a hell of a lot of fun, and I'm excited to get to real work now!

[Jerod Broussard]

You good. Running a blind line on a plate is tougher than following a joint seam.