I'm making a manifold for my A6 out of 40sch steel pipe fittings from McMaster(1.5in) and I was wondering what settings I should be running our Lincoln SP-175 MIG welder. I don't want this thing to crack so I want to make sure that I get good penetration (lol) heres a pic of the welder

 

BTW I want to make a clone of this, minus the WG flange

 

i'm not a professional welder by any means, but practice, practice, practice. do a bunch of practice welds, and either cut the pc in half to check your weld, or try and break your weld. if it breaks easy or you dont think you have enough penetration, turn the heat up a bit. best thing to do imo is play with your new toy!

 

oh man i wish it's was mine! my friend owns a local shop and he bought this welder, funny thing is he dosent know how to set it

 

The first thing you want to do...is get a ton of scrap metal.

Play around with thicknesses, welding 2 peices together, different angles, piping, and flat peices of scrap.

Once your getting the hang of it...get a spare peice of piping that matches what you want to weld...and just weld the crap out of it. Then your good to go.

The settings will be different for everyone, and how they like to weld (how fast they drag the bead/exactly what wire your using/current of your welder..ect) so the only way to find out...is to play around.

 

ok i'll do that this weekend, thanks for the tips
edit: BTW bryson your motor is ******* sweet, i was browsing and saw some pics of it

 

Hahaha...thanks a lot man!

 

Try looking under the cover where you would replace the spool of wire. it should have a chart of what setting of heat and wire speed recomended for thickness's of the metal your working with.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by FastEK9 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Try looking under the cover where you would replace the spool of wire. it should have a chart of what setting of heat and wire speed recomended for thickness's of the metal your working with.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Yup...

Its a good starting place, but try'll and error is the only way to develop your skills.

 

go to home depot and grab some 1/8" steel to practice on. cut them up and do some butt welds(edge to edge) and some T welds...those are the 2 you will mostly use with this project. I can tell you right now that a nice setting would be high heat low wire

 

thanks for all the replys guys i'll look at the chart and I was planning on getting some 1/8in from home depot anyway so I can use that

 

Yup, lots of heat and a low to moderate wire speed.

Do some test welds and watch the penetration.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Paul_Vang &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">go to home depot and grab some 1/8" steel to practice on. cut them up and do some butt welds(edge to edge) and some T welds...those are the 2 you will mostly use with this project. I can tell you right now that a nice setting would be high heat low wire</TD></TR></TABLE>

Wire speed controls amperage when MIG welding, amperage controls penetration. The general rule of thumb is 1 amp welding current for every .001" of material. Schedule 40 is around .145" i think, that means you need the wire speed high enough to get 145 amps out of your welder. Voltage or "heat" is turned up to support the wire speed. It may be easier to weld the other way around cause you can take your time but it is not the correct way to get proper penetration. Home Depot is kind of a rip off as far as metal prices, scrap yards are way better. Paul is right about the type of welds to practice though.

 

i have one of those, best investment so far

 

I would suggest getting your hands on a TIG, not a MIG. You won't get enough penetration....and also not doing a crappy *** log style. It will take the same amount of time and parts to make one that doesn't suck. I know because I just spent last weekend making a mani from the same stuff from McMaster. I may stop being lazy and get some pics up...

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by calmweed &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

1) If he wants to do that manifold as seemingly his first manifold, let him be. Everyone is comfortable doing different tasks at different times

2) a Gas MIG can easily weld, especially that paticular brand/model so you are wrong. Damn turboD16.com kids thinking they actually know something....</TD></TR></TABLE>

1) There's no point taking the same amount of time to do something far inferior

2) I'm not wrong, that advice isn't coming from me, it's coming from a professional machinist/welder's advice on my project. P.S. I'm not a turboD16.com kid, I have no idea what the **** that is, and the only thing i do with D-series motors is blow them up to make room for other motors.

Here's some pics from the day






I'm trying to help, so that in the end you will be happy with what you have for a long time and not just because you made it, but because it works well.
HTH,
~james

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by SleepyEG &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

1) There's no point taking the same amount of time to do something far inferior

2) I'm not wrong, that advice isn't coming from me, it's coming from a professional machinist/welder's advice on my project.

I'm trying to help, so that in the end you will be happy with what you have -for a long time and not just because you made it, but because it works well.
HTH,
~james</TD></TR></TABLE>

sorry man, it's cool you want to give him good advice, but your not.

-Log manifolds take WAY less time to make than any type of tubular style regardless of function (which isn't as big a deal as your making it out to be on a mild setup). You can not say it's equal time for unequal results.


-Your welding buddy is wrong then because you CAN get enough penetration, period. I weld those same weld-els with a MIG. No problem with penetration and my welds aren't ugly and are getting even better with practice so I see no real advantage in this case.

thats how I see it.

Sideout- I built on of those semi-logs a couple weeks ago. It's a great one to try. Build the 1 and 4 'runners' first then fit the small tubes for 2 and 3. Fitting those little tubes takes the most time and the rest is pretty easy and goes together fast. Good luck!

 

if that welder is the same as mine....which it looks like it..

open up the side of it...should swing up like a door. there are setting listed on the inside. depending on piping gauge it will tell you what settings it recommends...these arent prefect...but it helps to get it started.

for normal to thicker gauge piping i use either E 4, or F 5.5, if you see the ***** on the front you will know what i mean.

and if your welding upside down...then the wirespeed has to be incresed a bit

it takes practice

 

yeah, i have the same one. there's a reference chart inside the lid that you can use as starter.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Bailhatch &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

sorry man, it's cool you want to give him good advice, but your not.

-Log manifolds take WAY less time to make than any type of tubular style regardless of function (which isn't as big a deal as your making it out to be on a mild setup). You can not say it's equal time for unequal results.
</TD></TR></TABLE>

Once again, I am trying to give him advice to help him out, period. We built that whole manifold, including the cutting the flanges from scratch in a friday night and a saturday, friday and sat. morning was just the flanges. If he doesn't have one day to dedicate to a manifold, then he shouldn't be making one from scratch. They may not be the "same" amount of time, but a few hours difference is certainly worth it.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Sideout &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">BTW I want to make a clone of this, minus the WG flange
</TD></TR></TABLE>


HA HA Nice Mani That my old one that legendboy made. It actully flows good, almost as good as my current equal length

 

my advice is tack as much as you can all the way around....then go over the whole thing again... that was the way i learned how to set my settings since you will be able to see if you penatraded well enough and you will see how the speed of your hand should be