This thread seems to be closed... http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/...95&page=2&highlight=mig+burn+hole+sheet+metal but see post 28 on page 2.... Yesterday making MIG butt welds I was blowing holes in sheet metal, using my .025 wire ... today (literally one day to the next !!) I am making good MIG dot welds, just by tipping the torch about 45 degrees from vertical... THANKS 36 vette
Thanks for the tip. My first project with my mig was welding 16g exhaust. I started off with .030 wire because thats what I had. I couldn't believe how big of a differance is was when switching to 0.025 wire, much easier to control.
Funny, I did a lot of work on the firewall of my truck with .o23, wasnt real happy with penetration or results. Ran out of wire and put in some .o30 and get better penetration and better beads. A lot of it comes down to personal preference. what works for you is the best setting
There must be something else at play here , what you've experienced first hand really doesn't make sense. The 0.023 has a much lower minim than 0.030. And the 0.023 has a higher maximum than the minimum of 0.030 so there's quite a bit of overlap between the two before you max Perhaps your machine doesn't like to run correctly in the 0.023 range. You should have had to turn the machine up to run/melt 0.030 and turn the wire speed down. With 0.023 You should also have been able to turn the heat up and wire speed up a tad so the pounds ( not feet) of wire per min were equal. ( math required for that lol)
.023 is good for 30 to 90 amps. .030 40 -145 .035 75-250 Any where in the "over laps" works, and comes down to personal preference. I try to match my wire size so I'm in the middle of the wires range. For instance, with my miller, if I'm in the 125 amp range, I can weld it with .030, but it welds much nicer with .035. I don't use MIG for sheet metal, other than plug welding in floors and such, so I don't keep any .023 It takes about an amp per .001 18 ga is about .047 so 47 amps to weld it.
Altho I never do beads on sheetmetal,I do all my spotwelding on [typically 18 ga]sheet with my 210 Hobart set on #2 or 3 heat/ #3 wire speed- depending on the guage....Im running .030 wire exclusively.
I was the OP in the post cited at the very beginning of this post. I'm having a better time of it now. I went through my welder and helmet and replaced all of the parts I could replace. It helped a lot. I also got a lot of good tips from my original posts once I waded through all the crap. Some very helpful people here, some not so much, would rather beat their chests than help. But overall it was very helpful. BTW, I'm running .o30, I tried .024 but my welder is too big and doesn't like the smaller wire.
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