I'm not looking for the cleanest welds out there, but my main concern is if the flux core will burn through the metal rather than forming a nice puddle. I've been practicing enough on thicker mild steel (old 300zx flywheels, 1/4" straight pieces) to lay a consistant bead that's nice and flat and has a uniform heat rainbow forming outside of the weld. I've never worked with anything as thin as 16ga, though.

The machine I have is a Lincoln Electric HD100 with 0.035" wire. I have a voltage setting of A-D and a wirefeed setting of 1-10.

Does anybody have any pictures of a cleaner-looking flux-core welds on anything?

Thanks for the help

 

I found on my little lincon that light gage stuff works well at "B" voltage with a wire speed of about 2 to 2.5. There is a guide line on the inside of the flip up door on those machines they give a good guide line.
Give your self a 1/32" gap on your butt, give it 4 even tacks. and go to town on it. give it a buff with a wire wheel on a grinder and see how it looks then take a file and file the edge of the weld with the corner of the file on both sides should help it look strait.

I don't have any photo's of my stuff.

 

man, I wouldnt gap that at all, especially with fluxcore.

Is that the smallest wire you can get? if not get it.

 

I'll go look around for some 0.030" wire. Think that will be small enough? I think the machine can feed a 0.025" wire ... but I don't think I've seen flux core that small.

edit: Lincoln offers a 0.030" self-shielded wire in a 1lb spool. However, after perusing their website, I found that it can do 18ga steel with the 0.035" wire. I'm thinking that I'll have to move fairly quickly to keep from burning through, but slowly enough to maintain a good puddle.

Also, I have had good luck with a 45* pull, but sometimes the welds looked better when I had the gun closer to perpendicular to the surface. Is the push vs. pull method and the gun angle make for a stronger weld or is it just for the aesthetics of the weld?

Thanks again for the help


Modified by garados at 2:38 PM 6/22/2007

 

You might want to try the .030 flux core. Im sure you can do thinner stuff with the .035" but it might not be the best. In my experience with MIG you have more control on thin material with thin wire. For example I would/do use an .025" as the biggest size for migging 16g. But there's something to be said for working with what you have i guess.

Try doing your welds in quarters or thirds if you can manage. Go down hill to limit the penetration, should yield a flatter bead too. Just experiment, with stuff like this just go with whatever looks the best since you really can't make it weak unless you close your eyes for the whole thing

also if you are doing samples to set up the welder make sure they are cooled off when you test on them. Welding hot hot metal will be totally different than welding a 3 foot long piece of room temp pipe.

 

I think I was using .030 shielded wire for exhaust piping. just a 30 degree difference in outside temp made a huge difference in how it welds. I would butt the pipes as close as possible and be prepared to go fast. run the weld in a straight line and let it cool. use the lowest setting and find the wire speed that lays em down nice and smooth.

 

Right on. I'll probably be working the piping at night because it's 100*F during the day Alright, I'll try running it down hill and play with the wire feed speed to get a nice bead. Thanks again for the help

 

You'll want the .030", as you have 3 problems compounding the difficulty: flux core, 18ga, and tubing (curved weld surface). No offense, but a blind ape can lay a beed on straight steel - its a far cry from curved surfaces. You'll have to do a lot of testing do get it right, and definately make a log of the settings each time. I've use the cheap Lincoln fluxcore w/.035" wire to fix a propane grill handle (16ga SS), and it worked perfect. But I also had an idea of the settings, was doing it on stainless steel, and otherwise just got lucky.