So I spent about 3 hours today with my welder, the first time I've seriously tried welding, and have made progress, but I'm still trying to get it right. I was hoping that you guys could look at some samples of my work, and give me some pointers.

My welder only has a Low and High heat selector, and adjustable wire control. I bought a "how to weld" tape off ebay, and that did give me some help.

I'm trying to weld 20 gauge to another larger peice of 20 gauge, and I just tear up the smaller peice without really penetrating the larger one.

my welder:


front


and back


What do you guys think I'm doing wrong?

The piece on the left doesn't have as good as penatration to the piece on the right. When you can heavily see what you welded on the other side of the piece of metal, then that means it has fused together good enough, but in some cases too much heat can cause you to burn a hole through your metal, which is not good. Keep in mind, if thats galvanized metal, its tought to weld. My 2 cents


ps. find some one who knows how to weld and have them show you a few tricks.

If you look at the front of the L shaped peice (hard to tell from the photos), there are big bites taken out of the smaller peice of metal whereever I try to weld. Is that simply because I'm using a pretty thin metal?

I guess I'm wondering if those are normal looking welds, and if the smaller piece of metal should look so chewed up where my welds are.

Thanks for the input.

Using flux core wire? Problem #1. On galvanized? Problem #2.

But it looks like you do have some pen on the larger piece, try grinding off the galvanizing, and play a bit with the wire speed. Also, try adjusting you torch angle. You'll prolly find that one position works better than others.

It doesn't matter what gauge the metal is, that welder i am sure can handle almost anything you plan on doing. The welder needs to be set where it doesn't spit and spatter as you weld. You can adjust it by setting the wire speed. Try working at different wire speeds till it doesn't spit and spatter everywhere.

If that is in fact galvanized metal, you should be wearing an appropriate respirator...

not galvanized, just straight up weldable sheet metal from home depot. After welding for a while the metal got that yellowish, chalky appearance.

So wire speed does have alot to do with the splattering? I tried it very slow, then increased the speed some, and it did seem to help. I have a feeling this is just one of those things where I need to log more practice time.

Is flux core bad? My welder doesn't have a tank, so I thought that was my only option.

Thanks for the torch angle tip, I hadn't thought about that.

another question:
Should the tip of my gun touch the metal I'm welding? My video made a passing reference to having it touch while doing smaller jobs, and holding it back on larger ones. I did not have it touch the metal at all while practicing. It seemed like everytime I'd look down, I'd be welding with about an inch of stick out.

no, that tip should never be touching the metal. that causes the tip to get really dirty from the flux core getting stuck inside. Then cleaning it out can be a pain in the ass. I would say a good distance from the metal and the tip should be about a 1/4 of an inch.

The torch shouldn't touch, just the wire. If the wire is too long, it will simply break off and leave bits of itself stuck to the piece.

Not having gas and not having more than two heat settings makes work harder, but not impossible. Play around with wire speed, how fast you move the torch, and (with welding gloves) use both hands on the torch. Place one had right up by the tip to steady it. Try to get a long, steady bead. You can do this with just one test piece. Just try to lay a smooth bead that shows obvious signs of penetration on the back side.

A lot of the spitting and spattering is the lack of gas. You'll just have to live with some unless you can afford to get yourself an actual MIG (Lincoln SP135 is under $400, btw).

Two things beginners often do, is make big blobs of molten wire that don't actually stick to anything, and burn holes in the parts. I'm still doing both, and working on this myself.

I am no expert but it makes a huge difference using a cover gas. Night and day. The second I run out of gas my welds begin to spatter and spit along with not penetrating a lick.

You can definately get good structural welds with flux core wire, its not that hard. They will just have some extra spatter. I do think that only 2 heat settings is what is killing you.

You also want to have the tip about a 1/2inch or so away from the metal, but an inch isn't nearly enough distance to have a greatly negative impact on your welding.

I think you should do as James suggested above and try running some beads. Doing the rosetting spot stuff like that is much harder. At first you don't want to join metal, you just want to test on a single sheet and see how much heat it takes to burn through and work from that. To get good penetration the weld temperature has to be relatively close to the burn through heat.

Never try to weld over a weld, unless you clean all slag off. This is where the shielding gas helps, as well as improving other factors. With gas you don't leave slag on the welds.

Did you clean the metal really good? Any oil on the metal can cause problems.

Due to the nature of your equipment, you may not ever be able to get a good quality weld on thinner metal without lots of practice and skill. From what I could see in the photo of your welder, you don't have much in the way of adjustments, which is going to seriously limit the material you can weld, as well as the margin for error. I just don't think you are going to get the quality of welds you'd like with that welder. More practice will help though.

My advice would be to off the welder you've got and get a set up with gas, and a unit with adjustable heat and wire speed. You won't believe the difference. The other option would be to hire a pro to come and see if it's possible to make quality welds with your equipment.

Whatever you do, don't touch the thing to the car until you get nice pretty welds, with good penetration.

There's some great mig welding info here. They also have a good beginner's mig forum.