Jamez

Because I'm having the hardest of times to do any nice welds with my "MIG" (actually its a Lincoln "MIG PAK 100" running on flux core). I've had this thing for a while now but I still can't manage to do any nice welds with it.

Back in school I was taught to weld with an oxy-acetylene torche and a rod and I got the hang of it pretty quick and could do decent welds. But with my "MIG" I can't seem to do nice welds at all ; I'll start a puddle and it might go well for like half an inch but generally all hell soon breaks loose, the arc will start to go off and on and mess up my weld. Even when I do manage to do a longuer weld it will look ****, nowhere near the nice bead with the regular waves that I could do with torches. I regularly end up filing the weld down, making another pass on top and slightly besides it to be sure everything is strong and filing that second weld down because I'm ashamed of how it looks.

The only thing I see that could be against me here is that I weld outside where the wind could blow off the shielding gas from the innercore. Could it be as simple as this? Or is it just that I need more practice because "MIG" welding is harder to do? Could it be that my welder is having problems?

omahaturbocivic

If you are using flux core its not going to come out that great, use a true mig with gas and it will be 10 times easier to get a clean consistent bead flowing. I have been using a cheap campbell hausfeld flux/mig, with the small spool of flux wire they through in I could not run a consistent bead or get consisten penetration and would grind and go back over just like you are doing. Hook up the gas and got normal wire and its easy as hell, you can see what you are doing a lot better to because the flux puts off a lot of smoke I did even noticed through the mask but everthing was a lot clearer when welding with gas.