Technical Welding with CO2

I saw this video (restolad: Welding with Soda gas) on Youtube. The fellow uses CO2 mini bottles used for pop machines as his shielding gas. Apparently it is very reasonable to re-fill the bottles. Any thoughts on using CO2 for thin gauge welding projects?

 

It will work but the 75/25 tends to work better.

 

refilling soda machine bottles wouldn't be any cheaper then refilling a regular CO2 bottle. And you won't have to adapt your regulator with a regular CO2 bottle.

CO2 is good for steel but some say it spatters more. I never really noticed

 

CO2 could be cheaper if you can bring some home from work. That's why the small bottles.

 

CO2 makes the arc "dig" a bit more than 75-25 with a bit more spatter. All I use is CO2. I get the biggest bottle I can, it doesn't run out on Saturdays as often that way. $30 worth of it lasts me a long time, 'cause I keep the regulator turned down. (no wind in the garage)

 

LOL that is how I earned my argon bottle. My work had a little one on a portable welder that they had in the mechanic shop. they closed the mechanic shop and they were the only shop that used the little bottles. my boss said hey do you use argon (75/25) at home and I said when I have it. He said well take this bottle home I hate to return it to the welding supply with gas in it.

So I took it home and used it on some welding on a sectioned '53 f 100 I was working on. When it was empty I brought it back and he said, "Oh my mistake it was not a leased bottle after all." Then suggested that I keep it.

 

The CO2 bottles are real cheap if you catch the soda truck driver that leaves his truck door open.

 

LOL welding gas bottle are cheap too of you are fast enough.

 

I have been using co2 gas for 30yrs on my deccamig 310 it is a 110v mig being only 100amp I was told that the argon mix would run colder and running co2 would make it run a little hotter thus weld better.
Doug

 

Can you weld already? If so you can manage with CO2 but if you can't weld and want to learn to weld your gonna learn a lot quicker and its gonna be a lot nicer and a lot less frustrating to weld with a blend.

 

I only use Argon/CO2 mix.

 

in the early days of MIG welding Co2 was the preferred shielding gas up till about the mid '70's. about that time mix gasses started to appear and a lot of folks shied away from it because of the price. when I was welding for the navy as a journeyman welder, we started experimenting with mixed gasses. the engineers and the metallurgist had some of the welders do test plates with various joints and they were xrayed and ran through a spectrograph and were streached and bent and went through destructive and non destructive testing. the navy developed some of the mixed indrustrial gasses that are out there today. we had an early plasma cutting machine that used oxygen hydrogen and Co2 as a mix and it was passed through a special torch that created a pressure through the nozzle at a supersonic speed for the purpose of cutting very thick material.

when gasses are mixed for certain applications they are done for a reason. for example; welding technology has developed to a point that the power source is generated from a printed circuit board, instead of big copper wound transformers.

choosing the proper mix gas is very important. in todays welding technology there are various ratios of gasses. as far as someone that has purchased a 110volt M.I.G welding machine for their hobby shop

 

this is my suggestion. use the 75% argone, 25%Co2 mix with a filler wire of 70S6 and use the smaller diameter wire .023 or .025. the smaller diameter wire requires less heat and when everything is set up correctly there is less chance of burning holes on thinner material such as automatic sheet metal

 

Interesting comments. I have a ArCo2 bottle but I saw the video and thought it was worth discussion.

 

Over in the UK it's known as "Pub Gas" because people get the large CO2 bottles used to pressurise beer. Cheap and easily available, you can usually pick up bottles for free and don't have to get into lease deals. Welding results are not as good as ArgoShield or similar mixed gas in my experience.

 

i always wondered about co2. my buddys dad was a welder buy trade. He was 82 still welding every day till his passing. He always used co2, he was in army said that that was what he learned with so he kept using it.

 

I worked in a madhouse called a factory where CO2 was used on four welding tables. During production it sounded like the Battle of the Bulge, with the popping and sputtering. To counter the noise a Boom Box cranked full blast played Hard Rock non-stop as the bands screeched and wailed like electric Banshees. The contrast was perfectly wonderful, if you have a developed taste for self-induced insanity. And, the boss was insensitive to music, noise and smoke because the boys in the back did turn out some headers. All he lacked was a stage villian's mustache and a whip and one of those brass plagues that says: The Perfect Boss. CO2 my ass.

 

What I've seen CO2 welds tend to be more porous than and argon mix. A problem if you don't want the weld to leak.

 

The most used gas over here for sheet metal welding, is CO2, because it's cheap and it welds good in old/dirty sheet metal.

Atal (R) 5, 10 and 15, is co2 with 5%, 10%, 15% argon. It lowers the temp, lowers spatter and makes it more sensitive to dirt/old/crappy steel, and that makes it best to weld new material.

I still wonder a little about how come you weld so much with MIG on steel?
I tried it but it looks like crap, it was lying on top of the material, I need much more power to weld something that could hold anything.
The surface looked like crap compared to CO2.
I wonder if you use the same wire, or it has to be special.

 

when I started in the apprentiship program in 1975 the navy was using Co2 as the primary shielding gas for M.I.G. welding. the welding machines were the size of a standard home referigator and weighed about 3,000 pounds. the gun that was on the machines was a spool gun that used a two pound roll of wire. these machines were manufactured by LINDE MFG. these machines had individual settings for voltage, amperage, slope, and on the gun was your wire speed. now the shielding gas was straight Co2. the reason for the Co2 was for penetration. to keep the splatter from sticking as a bead was run we had cans of anti spatter spray to spray in the nozzles and on the work surface. if that was not sprayed to keep the nozzle and work surface there was one miserable mess to clean up.

in about 1978 we started mixing our own argone and Co2 there was a lot of experimentation until the mixes of today were finally created. someone came up with a mix of hydrogen and argone. I believe it might still be available in a 90/10 mix. all the hydrogen did was generate heat, but on the same note it would and could cause hydrogen inclusion which causes inbritlement and in the base material and the weld would stay together but the metal would fracture and break away and that is a catastrophic failure. with the 75/25 mix the argone is the cleansing agent and removes ambient air from the semi molten puddle and the Co2 created the penetration.

 

If you want real information on the Gas Metal Arc Welding process..... or should I say accurate information that makes sense and is not full of inaccuracies and mistakes please research the subject on some of the reputable websites like Miller, Lincoln or even the AWS.
In the interest of not learning things that just aren't correct, please ignore Bernie's misleading ramblings.

 

Argon is a chemical element, referred to as a noble gas, and can be found on The Periodic Table of the Elements under the symbol Ar, with an Atomic Number of 18.

The letter E is not found in the word Argon.

 

so what is the problem I spelled something wrong. no one ever said this was an English class and that we are being graded for spelling, punctuation, grammar, and the proper use of verbs, nouns, constants, and any thing else you want to critique.

besides what is your back ground in metallurgy and welding?

 

Accuracy is an excellent indicator of credibility.

Nuclear pressure vessels are my background. Well that, and Los Angeles Class nuclear submarine ballast tanks.

How about you?

 

Being that I taught English for a number of years I may have to have a couple of you boys in for detention if you don't play nice! LOL

 

x-ray welding certification to nuclear specifications as per navships at seal beach naval weapons station and prior to that long beach naval ship yard being a graduate apprentice and carrying P-1 pipe for 1200psi 2 1/4 % chromoly for 12 inch main steam lines on naval ships. also welding on cryogentc vessels at the O2 N2 plant at nas cubi point Philippines. also teaching for la unified school distric and certifying welders to AWS-D1.1 to meet the earth quake code for structural steel fabrication. ok so you worked at mare island naval ship yard

 

Nope, other end of the country. Groton, Connecticut, on the Groton/New London harbor.

My last structural job was One Rincon Hill. I worked on the steel portion of the pile-raft foundation, and the buckling restrained braces.

You can Google it.

 

CO2 or mixed gas is an active gas, so that makes it MAG. Welding. Not MIG

I'm a certified welder in MAG welding 135 three positions in plate (solid wire), MAG welding 135 all positions in pipe PED, for welding equipment that get presurized.

I used to be certified in MAG welding 136 (fluxed wire with shielded gas) in pipe and plate all positions. And welding under flux, for big machinery/ships/heavy plate sizes (1/2-2 1/4 inch standard steel)

But I would love to know more about this MIG welding, and I do my best to find some material about MAG welding so we can exchange data.

 

The problem with Bernie is not spelling, punctuation or grammar.
It is that he posts information that is inaccurate or just flat out wrong.
He posts this nonsense as if it is fact and then rambles on about how much he knows and how much he has done.
And all of his "qualifications".
Someone said that accuracy is a good indicator of credibility.
I agree.
I pity anyone past or present who has tried to learn anything from Bernie.

If you want a really entertaining look at our "friend" Bernie, take a look back at the threads where he claimed to have the original mold that the Dan Woods Milk Truck body came out of.
That will give you a great deal of insight into his "character".

 

Because there are some reading this discucssion who may not be familiar with the terms, and due to the fact there are differing opinions expressed in relation to certain aspects of the subject, and even though I have already posted a semi-autobiographical opinion on one aspect of the subject, rather than muddy the waters further, I borrowed the following from wikipedia to make what is being argued more understandable, and not to give weight to anyone's statements. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. READ A BOOK. MAKE THE LIBRARY PART OF YOUR MAN CAVE CONCEPT.

Gas metal arc welding (GMAW), sometimes referred to by its subtypes metal inert gas (MIG) welding or metal active gas (MAG) welding, is a welding process in which an electric arc forms between a consumable wire electrode and the workpiece metal(s), which heats the workpiece metal(s), causing them to melt, and join. Along with the wire electrode, a shielding gas feeds through the welding gun, which shields the process from contaminants in the air. The process can be semi-automatic or automatic. A constant voltage, direct current power source is most commonly used with GMAW, but constant current systems, as well as alternating current, can be used. There are four primary methods of metal transfer in GMAW, called globular, short-circuiting, spray, and pulsed-spray, each of which has distinct properties and corresponding advantages and limitations.

Originally developed for welding aluminum and other non-ferrous materials in the 1940s, GMAW was soon applied to steels because it provided faster welding time compared to other welding processes. The cost of inert gas limited its use in steels until several years later, when the use of semi-inert gases such as carbon dioxide became common. Further developments during the 1950s and 1960s gave the process more versatility and as a result, it became a highly used industrial process. Today, GMAW is the most common industrial welding process, preferred for its versatility, speed and the relative ease of adapting the process to robotic automation. Unlike welding processes that do not employ a shielding gas, such as shielded metal arc welding, it is rarely used outdoors or in other areas of air volatility. A related process, flux cored arc welding, often does not use a shielding gas, but instead employs an electrode wire that is hollow and filled with flux.