Im having some serious issues. Using .030 ER308L wire on T304 stainless pipe.
Seems that the wire is melting too fast and almost puddling instantly before any kind of penetration is happening resulting in sloppy beads. Im also getting a lot of black smoke stains on the material....contamination maybe???
Im not sure what pressure to run the gas at. Ive tried everything from 10 psi up to 35 psi and nothing seems to help.
I went from using steel wire with 75/25 blend and never had any problems welding the 304 that way. I wanted to step up to stainless wire for obvious reasons but its not agreeing with me.

Any pointers?

 

Using argon will leave black smoke on the weld and/or around it on the metal. You should be fine with about 25cfh of gas.

Sounds like you need more wirespeed or less amperage.

Also, if you liked the 75/25, why change?

 

Thanks Engloid....I hoped you were the one to respond.
We ran out of the 75/25 and only had one small bottle. We will hopefully be purchasing a TIG in the near future and will need a bottle for that so we bought a larger bottle and had that one filled with 100% argon for the stainless wire MIG and for future use of the TIG.

 

im using tri-gas for stainlees with my mig, i thought 100 argon is for alluminum, at least thats what my book says. also i'm running a 20 psi flow rate.
JON


Modified by jonman27 at 9:04 PM 2/18/2005

 

I used argon for welding stainless, no problems as described and beads just nicely, alot better than my normal steel wire infact