I have a miller 110 handy mig with gas. My question is why don't my weld hold. I,m welding 1/8" from home depot to my stock seat rails. It seems like when the wire feed is set to the correct settings its slows down when I weld and sputters. When I speed up the feed it lays a fat bead, but its not penetrating the seat rail metal. The seat slider rails seem to be less than
1/8" thick metal. I,m using a 13/2 gauge 20' extension cord, its probably a bad idea.

 

if you can try plugging in directly to the wall. with oh so many feet of extension cord you lose amps. did you clean the seat rail with a grinder or wire brush?

 

what are your volts at? are you pushing or pulling?

 

Are you preping the material? You should have a bevel on that thick of material.

 

what gas?

 

As said above, I'd start by ditching the extension cord.

 

turn up the volts lol

 

I had the same problem before, and it turned out the my welder needed to be pluged into a dedicated line. The outlet that I was using had to many loads on it, so I ran a 10/2 line with a 40amp breaker and used it only for the welder.

 

from an electricians stand point, 40 amps on a 10 guage extension cord is a bad idea. When we wire homes the 40 amp circuits are atleast a 8 guage wire.

From another point of view, no 110 volt mig welder needs more than 30 amps of power max. My brothers snap on muscle mig 140 which is a 100% duty cycle(yes 100%) 110 volt welder only needs 30 amps.

A little miller should only need a 20 amp cicuit. I run my lincold weldpak 3200 on a 15 fot 12 guage cord on a dedicated 20 amp circuit and have no problems. Ive done numerous back to back welds and have no issues with weld penetration or any other issues. My welds come out nice and clean and strong. The racks i built for my brothers work hang off the side of their trucks and they hit another truck with it while in theyre yard(he works for a wrecking yard) and it didnt even phase it so i know the welds are fine.


sorry for the babble but just saying my experiences.

I think he needs to bevel a little bit, turn the power up back the speed down just a little bit and play with it from there. Try all of this on a scrap peice and not on the seat rails that way none of your welds on the seat turn out weak.

If you cant get it to weld right, chances are that your technique might be wrong or the welder itself has issues. At thatpoint i would take them to someone else to get them welded as they are a safety item and need to be strong.


hope this helped and sorry for the long reply

 

If it was set up for flux, and your using gas...did you reverse the polarity? My hobart came setup for flux and wouldn't penetrate for ****...I forgot to switch it. Once I did, she does the job.

 

turn up the volts. make sure you work surface is clean from oil/paint etc. and what wire are you running? are you running solid mig wire, or flux core wire. also dont run an extension cord. thats fail. unless its no longer then 10 feet long

 

what size wire?

 

make sure it's all nice and clean. Check your wire tension. If it's loose it won't push correctly. Is there a rats nest of wire?

What size wire? Smaller wire may work better with a smaller machine. You may have to turn the wire speed down or voltage up

 

Hey thanks for all the help. I,m using .30 wire. I think my nozzle is dirty and the arc is jumping to the slag on the nozzle. I need to play with some scraps. Thanks