Welding Tips and Tricks

Beginning welder from West Michigan. I am past the half century mark and always wanted to learn how to weld. I completed a semester course at Grand Rapids Community College which was a wonderful experience. I think I made everyone else look good. I recently purchase a Lincoln Electric MP210 and ran my first beads with 6011. Ugh I need help. Slag was almost impossible to clean and it felt like I kept losing my arc too frequently. I will research other posts. I can't wait to learn more. Greg

Welcome!

Welcome. I too just got a MP 210. I have only used it for mig so far. I'll try to run some stick with it over the weekend. What size rod are you running and what kind of joint? Or are you just running some stringers?

Josh, that would be great. I was running Hobart 1/8" 6011 rods. Couple of likely problems. One the steel was not clean. My fault as I always assumed 6010/6011 could run through dirty metal. I have to believe that might have caused the slag to be so so hard to remove. The second thing was the sticks were not heated. I opened the box and it sat in the garage. Out of curiosity what is the result of improperly handled rods? The other issue I can't figure out is why I kept losing my arc so often. I really focused on distance to alleviate that but kept happening. Any insight is awesome. Thanks. Greg

I did see in a review here somewhere that this machine doesn't like 6010. But I'm gona try it any way. If I get a chance I'll stop by the LWS and get some 6011 to try too.

Welcome to the forum Greg.