I am not what you would call the greatest welder/fabricator by no standards,but i have been teaching my self to the best of my ability using a small lincoln mig welder for the past couple years.I have never used a cracker jax box to date but i am going to be welding so 80 gauge steel that i know my small mig will not penetrate in the next few days. Please school me on a few pointers on what to expect in the difference of the two. Thanks for any help
Uhh 80 ga? 10 guage is about 1/8 inch, 20 guage is flimsy, 80 guage should be nearly see through. I ain't good enough to offer any help on this. IF you mean 8 guage then I would reccomend a 200 amp machine.
Need more info about what it is you're going to be welding...what is it part of? what does the joint look like? Can you change the position it's in? what machine do you have available? etc
Chamfer cut the joint and build passes into it with your mig machine. While you may not get a specification type quality joint you still should have a decent quality joint if you're a good welder. What the heck you doin that you are messin with 1/2" plate?
Grind everything nice and clean and try to get the parts to at least touch when you fit the joints. Don't try to get it done in one pass. Do a root pass then clean out the joint with a brush and chipping hammer and make the next pass. If it's regular mild steel try a 1/8" 6011 rod running AC. The 6011 will penetrate well but it leaves a little spatter that will grind off when you finish. Start about 130 AMPS, when the joint starts heating up you can drop the AMPS a little.
1/2" plate is seldom used unless strengh is critical. A small capacity MIG can make a joint that looks good but it WILL be a cold joint with little strengh. Unless it was tailored for heavy metal this is not MIG machine territory. Wire electrodes normaly don't have enough electrical resistance to produce enough heat to properly penetrate a heat sink a half inch thick. The reason pro's use DC stick welders on heavy metal is because it is the right tool for the job.
Don't even bother - when i narrow a rear housing that steel is less than half of what you are talking about and i am well over 200 amps. My machine is 460a on dc with a 60% duty cycle, i have never turned it up full - not enough power coming to it. 1/2" steel plate will take a lot of power to penetrate and i wouldn't even try it.
I will be using a 200 amp Lincoln that is on the back of my buddies truck. I am building a large box to store mt spare steel scraps so the f@#$ing vultures will quit coming behind my shop and stop stealing my stuff.I am going to have it on a steel pallet so i can load it on a trailer to get it to the recycle shop when needed
Material thickness really doesn't matter regarding the amperage or heat generated if you understand these basics. The mig, since thats the welder in question, creates enough amperage to handle (melt) a certain diameter of wire specific to its size. The base material size isn't revelant. The base metal temperature is what is important to create good penetration not the welder amperage. The reason most people get confused on this is because they rely on the mig to create enough heat to melt both the electrode (wire) and the base metal. Typically that is normally enough unless ( the welder is too small or the material is too thick) to do this job. I was a certified welder for Babcock and Wilcox. They practically invented most types of welding over the last century. Learned alot from the old skilled welders. We welded nuclear and high pressure pipes that you could stand inside. The wall thickness was from 2 inches to 20 inches. We used both 7018 electrodes and flux core mig welders on this stuff. Yes flux core! Now this is how it was done.... We welded stringers and small weaved passes. Thousands of them on one joint. The material was preheated to 350 degrees. We passed xray tests on all joints. Think about it... If your welding material that size, your welder regardless how big cannot preheat the material enough to be effective. They don't make welders that big. Ha! So the moral of this story is use small multiple passes and preheat your material if you are welding heavy material and/ or with a low amperage welder.
This is rediculous... All you need is the welder generator you are planning on borrowing on your buddys welding truck and some 1/8 7018 dc rods, run the machine 130 amps dc+and burn it together. This is the common practice for structural steel welding. If you have some gaps use a 6010, not a 6011. Aslong as you have clean material, a decent fit up, the right amp and some good rods, just strike a arc, get a nice 1/4-5/16 puddle and let the rod melt itself in. If you need any advice over the phone, just pm me for a phone number
PETEJOE is correct!!!----I'm also an old pipe welder, wall thickness from 1/8th to 5 inches on main steam valves, & pre heating is a must on chrome moly & welding out pass after pass, then X-Rayed for acceptance. Back to you original question----On 1/2 material, the MIG will work on that ----But, it must be pre heated for best results (.035 wire). Now, if you are stick welding, the 200 Lincoln will handle 1/2 plate all day long, using 1/8 ac OR dc----Again, preheating at first, once you have built up enough heat from previous passes, & cleaning each pass, you should be able to finish the weld out to top, 7018 lo hydrogen makes a nice smooth last pass too when the material is nice & hot!--------Don
Pre-heating will help but this doesn't sound like a super critical weld. With what you have available, I'd use 1/8" 7018 at 130 amps. With stick, a wide arc gap produces more heat and a smaller gap, less heat. I like to weave side to side in a figure 8 pattern which helps put more heat in the joint and even that heat out. My choice to weld that would be MIG with 1/16" flux core wire running at 34 volts and about 310 amps. Much faster but not many of us have access to that size welder.
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