OK, so my horizontal welds look great, have full penetration. Life is good! Problem starts with a vertical surface. Working on the bench the welds work out just fine, but in real life, (hanging over the chassis, tight space, etc, the verticals start turning to crap. I am pushing with my Miller 180 MIG. Played with voltage and wire speeds to no avail. Seems to me that I should leave the settings as they were on my bench welding. The weld is all crappy looking, barely penetrating, dripping shit all over. Eventually, with enough grinding and re-welding it gets better, but that is taking way to long and why can't I just get it right the first time? Upside down welds that I have attempted look like some of the 'worst I've ever seen crap' thread candidates. How can I get the weld material to stay on the metal and not drip off in a great glob, (sometimes painfully), on a non horizontal surface? Maybe I'm not moving fast enough?
slow down your speed and move a little faster. the weld puddle is just that, a puddle, so gravity is against you when your welding up side down.
I have played with the heat and speed (slightly up on heat, and slower speed) also I do spot type welds. I'm on and off the trigger.....tack, tack, tack...slightly overlapping the last tack.
Good advice The thicker the material the slow you can go with over lapping C movement or D movement. Real thick you can weld all the way, medium material short runs about 3/4 long. Set your welder up with a short bench pass get it sit for the size material your welding on the car. Make sure the weld surface is very clean and your have a good ground. Make sure your not to far away from the puddle and stay in it, you'll know when it's right by the sizzling sound it makes. CRUISER
how thick of steel you playing with? i have the same welder. i run 023 wire, on 18ga steel i have mine set on 2 and 50, if i weld on 1/8" its on 3 and 60 and so on.
Usually 3/16" steel using gas with .30 wire. Don't remember the settings off the top of my head, but I'll take notes next time I'm out there
On thicker steel, say 3 to 5 mm, i usully set it to 4, or 5 even 6 on the thicker material (on a 180 digiwelder) and wirespeed from 6 to 7. over head if youre too slow it will drip back into the gun in no time. or at least its me. No issues .like no penetration yet. For vertical it takes a bit of practice, and its a lot easier than overhead. Anyway i found out a wave type movement makes it easier on the vertical beads.
Don't think I'd call my self a welder but I've used one for close to 60 years. I learned more from a book call Welding Secrets by Hal Wilson than any other sorce.
That is why when you are building a bridge or a building the fellas that are certified to weld verticle up and overhead get paid more. Welding up and or overhead is easier with core wire or stick than using a gas shield. But you can learn to do it. One trick is to weave , build a little bridge of wweld then leep adding to that bridge, in essence what you have is a series of horizontal welds that are real short. Something that you should be aware of is that if you are welding in the uphand position even though it looks like you are not getting much penetration and it is all lumpy and gobby you are still normally getting plenty of penetration. I had a rod jocky working with me once and learning as he went. I had showed him how to weld up hand on some scrap over a break once. He tried it on some 1/4" that we had butted up and it was the most gawdawfull looking mess you can imagine. On the back side it had the most beautiful bead you ever wanted to see. We laughed all afternoon about it.
If he is using typical ER70S6 wire, it is not designed to run up. Any vertical welds done with this wire should be run down, with the gun pointing slightly up. Before anyone screams "no penetration", the root gap can be opened slightly and it's not an issue.
Bullshit. We weld uphand all the time with that wire in fact we train our welding apprentices to be capable of welding with ER70S6 in all positions during their first and second year apprenticeship training sessions. ER70S6 is an All Position wire , read the specifications. http://www.weldingmaterialsales.com/Product_pages/er70s6_productpage.htm
Still doesn't weld as well uphand as other wire types. E-6011 rod was billed as an all position rod as well but never welded as well uphand as say E-7018.
Yep... Technically, B1 is correct, but that wire gives much better results for beginners when run downhill.
70S6 is all position but it's a hell of a lot easier to run it downhill. And can still get good penetration even on thicker material.
Actually in the hands of a Journeyman welder it will perform as good as 7018 stick rod. I can make really nice uphand welds with it as can all our apprenticeship graduates. I'll give you that one, we do teach downhand initially as a way to start our beginners. One must be very careful with that, a beginning welder can make a downhand bead that looks beautiful but has no fusion and is nothing but cold lap all the way. By running the wire (arc) too much on the puddle itself (instead of at the leading edge of the puddle where it should be) You can leave a weld that will look nice but in reality has barely burned through the oxides on the material and has no fusion at all. In the early history of the GMAW wire process it was not readily accepted because of the ease of leaving fusion faults in the weld. The welder must be up on his skills to avoid this. To this day Welding quality control codes such as CSA Structural Steel code W59 (AWS as well) have no prequalified welding procedures for short circuit transfer GMAW welding. And short circuit transfer GMAW (MIG) is what we all use for our projects.
i just did a few overhead(45 degree,actually) and the welds looked great on the right angled surfaces,but the wide gap,1/2"plate |\ to a 45 plate was a real biotch to fill with arc or mig.downhill was ok,but hard to see,uphill and the puddles keep blowing out.reversed polarity on the dc arc and took my time.had to lower the amps almost to the point where rods stick,but base materials got way hotter compared to the mig,so filled bottom of v with stick,then puttied it over with the mig to fill the gap. took around an hour for 2 piece 8 inches long.
Trailing angle along with down slope would equal a far weaker weld than an up hill leading angle weld... Down hill welds are mostly for sheet metal and purely cosmetic welds and should not be used with a structural weld... AWS certified 3G and 4G certified "bridge" welder since 2007 (mig tig and stick)
Ok, let's not turn this into another "who's got more welding certs on the wall" thread. The poor guy is having a problem, and telling him to perform a more difficult procedure isn't likely to help... Which is why I suggested downhill AND more root gap, which does solve the penetration problem. We teach it all the time on 1/8 and 3/16 and it works fine. A very simple method is to tack the pieces tight, and then go back with a cutoff tool and cut the root open to give a sufficient gap. As B1 stated, the OP needs to get the electrode out to the leading edge of the puddle. We teach a "continuous stitch" motion, where the wire is jumped to the leading edge repeatedly without letting go of the trigger.
Sorry for that... Just didnt want people to think im pulling it out of my a$$. But i would not do that technique to anything structural such as suspension componets or frames...
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