[hcb]

Hello all. I've been welding about 12 years with most of it being solid MIG with shield gas. I've gotten set up to do flux with gas on a couple of machines (MM 252) using Lincoln wire for 75/25 per reading their Web site.

I'm pretty happy with the process but I get worm trails in some of my welds randomly. I need to learn more about how to use this process. I didn't find a section on it at WTT.com. tried searching here but got overloaded with posts regarding plain flux core welding. Can someone point me in the right direction for some beginners information regarding this process, please?

Thank you.

--HC

[AKweldshop]

Welcome to the forum mate!!

Well I think your problem is running Lincoln wire on a Miller machine.

Seriously, Are you pulling or pushing???

Could you get a pic??

~John

[Superiorwelding]

HC,
Welcome to the forum.
There are a few things that can contribute to your "worm track" problem. Some of them are to much voltage and moisture either in your wire or plate/air. Personal experience has been to much gas flow, therefore the puddle will solidify before the gas can escape. I was building a platform and was getting worm tracks, lowered my cfh and fixed my problem.
For your reading pleasure...
http://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us/su ... welds.aspx
-Jonathan

[Otto Nobedder]

Jonathan makes great points.

Also, search the site again with the keywords "dual shield" or "dual-shield".

These are more specific to your process than "flux-core".

Steve S

[paul_s]

Welcome to the forum, hcb.

[hcb]

Welcome to the forum mate!!

Well I think your problem is running Lincoln wire on a Miller machine.

Seriously, Are you pulling or pushing???

Could you get a pic??

~John

Thank you.

Pushing (standard 15' gun on the 252, 0.045 wire, and I changed the liner to the 0.035/0.045). Not able to provide a picture at this time; I'm not at my shop and I've moved (sold) or repaired all my problem parts at this time. :-/

I don't like buying anything red but I don't know of any better brand of filler metal. I'm all ears but I'm pretty sure there's only a handful of factories that actually make this stuff so I'm not confident that one brand would be any better than another; they may be the same with no way for me to know.

--HC

[Superiorwelding]

Welcome to the forum mate!!

Well I think your problem is running Lincoln wire on a Miller machine.

Seriously, Are you pulling or pushing???

Could you get a pic??

~John

Thank you.

Pushing (standard 15' gun on the 252, 0.045 wire, and I changed the liner to the 0.035/0.045). Not able to provide a picture at this time; I'm not at my shop and I've moved (sold) or repaired all my problem parts at this time. :-/

I don't like buying anything red but I don't know of any better brand of filler metal. I'm all ears but I'm pretty sure there's only a handful of factories that actually make this stuff so I'm not confident that one brand would be any better than another; they may be the same with no way for me to know.

--HC

HC,
Switch to dragging and you should be golden.
Personally I prefer Lincoln wires for mig and Hobart (Maxal) for TIG. As you progress and get more familiar with flux core, you will be able to tell a huge difference in quality. Some here have been talking about Forney being a good flux core, but I think it was gasless. Get us pictures when you get the opportunity.
-Jonathan

[hcb]

HC,
Welcome to the forum.
There are a few things that can contribute to your "worm track" problem. Some of them are to much voltage and moisture either in your wire or plate/air. Personal experience has been to much gas flow, therefore the puddle will solidify before the gas can escape. I was building a platform and was getting worm tracks, lowered my cfh and fixed my problem.
For your reading pleasure...
http://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us/su ... welds.aspx
-Jonathan

Thank you for the reply.

I'm using the weld chart on the MM 252 for the voltage and wire feed speed for the given thickness of base material; not saying it's not a voltage problem, just saying what I'm doing. I use a twist of old welding lead under the ground clamp to improve my ground (a tip from WTT.com), FWIW, so I'm confident I'm getting good ground (current and voltage being related).

I started this thread mostly with the idea that this all may have been covered elsewhere and a desire not to be rude and duplicate effort. To that end I limited my information. Let me flesh it out a bit:

I converted my MM 252 from solid 0.035 to flux/gas 0.045 (including the drive wheels to groove and the liner to the 0.035/0.045). New wire, right out of the box, selected for the shield gas I had, per the Lincoln website. Welding on mild steel from 10 ga to 1/4" so far. I'm using the weld chart on the machine to select the settings for voltage and wire feed speed. I started out with the Weld Aid lube pads and the welding was great for the first few small welds then went to crap (worm tracks and porosity). I took the lube pad off and, after burning through some wire a bit, the welds came out great like at first (same scrap metal, same condition). I figured the lube was a problem so I took it that I could not use the lube (new lube pad, and I did not add any additional lube to it).

I bought a second MM 252 because I wanted two machines set up for this process for larger projects where having a machine on each side would allow me to save time (I've gotten spoiled on building smoker trailers with two machines). Brand new machine (my first MM 252 is about a year old), brand new wire right out of the box, drive rollers, new liner (to replace the factory one with the larger diameter liner). Still got some voids on my first weld.

I've tried the Radnor anti-spatter spray (the BB's from the flux/gas shielding are industrial when they stick; larger and harder to remove than solid wire with 75/25). I've tried the Weld-Aid spray anti-spatter (some red liquid in a gallon jug sprayed with a common spray bottle), and I've tried no anti-spatter. The metal is clean with a small amount of what I call flash rust; it's not flakey or crusty. I've tried power wire brushing the metal before welding.

Today, after writing my initial post, I was doing some flux/gas on some smoker trailers I'm building and decided to turn the wire speed down because I was getting a lot of BB's. That seems to have greatly reduced my worm tracks. I only saw about 2 to 3 defects on four pieces with two weld areas on each totaling 16.5 inches each. It was improved.

But I'd still like to learn more about the process. MIG can be finicky. Too much rust, paint, oil, things I can stick with a 6010 5P+ with no problems can look like Fido's butt (to borrow a term from WTT.com). But what I'm welding with here I've had no problems with, using the standard ER70S-6 (if I'm recalling the letters correctly), 0.035 and 75/25. I've learned over more than a decade of doing this (as a hobby business, to be honest; it's not like I weld every day). I'm hoping there's something simple or stupid or both I'm doing wrong.

I will try to lower the CFH (I'm indoors but I usually have the doors open, closing one or more doors if the wind is too bad). I seem to recall that I set that, too, by the chart. But I'll not ignore a possible solution. And there is the consideration that the weld chart may be for the "standard" flux/gas wire which uses 100% CO, I think I recall. I will check this, too.

And I'll go read that link.

Thank you again.

--HC

[hcb]

Jonathan makes great points.

Also, search the site again with the keywords "dual shield" or "dual-shield".

These are more specific to your process than "flux-core".

Steve S

Thank you for the reply. Not be a snot, but I had considered the dual shield search terms but I seem to recall that's a company-specific term (like calling all paper tissues Kleenex) and was afraid I'd miss good information posted by someone who made the distinction and posted sans "dual shield". :-/ I'll try again but I'm getting some good information and the link to Lincoln provided above.

--HC

[hcb]

Welcome to the forum mate!!

Well I think your problem is running Lincoln wire on a Miller machine.

Seriously, Are you pulling or pushing???

Could you get a pic??

~John

Thank you.

Pushing (standard 15' gun on the 252, 0.045 wire, and I changed the liner to the 0.035/0.045). Not able to provide a picture at this time; I'm not at my shop and I've moved (sold) or repaired all my problem parts at this time. :-/

I don't like buying anything red but I don't know of any better brand of filler metal. I'm all ears but I'm pretty sure there's only a handful of factories that actually make this stuff so I'm not confident that one brand would be any better than another; they may be the same with no way for me to know.

--HC

HC,
Switch to dragging and you should be golden.
Personally I prefer Lincoln wires for mig and Hobart (Maxal) for TIG. As you progress and get more familiar with flux core, you will be able to tell a huge difference in quality. Some here have been talking about Forney being a good flux core, but I think it was gasless. Get us pictures when you get the opportunity.
-Jonathan

Jonathan, thank you. I will try it dragging. I should get to do some more welding tomorrow on these things (I also free-lance for a large oil and gas production company and they call me whenever they feel like it so my plans for a day are not always reality).

I will get some pictures of the problems. That link to Lincoln is being a good read and giving me some ideas but I can certainly set up some scrap and set everything like it was and screw up some welds.

--HC

--HC

[AKweldshop]

Flux -Cored wirwe, or duel shield, should be dragged in my opinion, you have to keep the slag out of the puddle.

Try pulling and get us a pic,

Good luck,

~John

[Mike]

Welcome to the forum HC.

[hcb]

Welcome to the forum HC.

Hello. Thank you.

--HC

[hcb]

Flux -Cored wirwe, or duel shield, should be dragged in my opinion, you have to keep the slag out of the puddle.

Try pulling and get us a pic,

Good luck,

~John

I'm done taking pictures. I welded numerous parts together yesterday and got pics and didn't have time last night to submit them. Now all I have to do is get figured out.

First, I welded a number of items from mildly rusted to pretty bad (not flakey). I pushed and pulled. I used Radnor ant-spatter spray in the white cans (not the green cans which is water based), and I used WeldAid 350, I think it's called which may be water based. I applied light and heavy. I did the same type of parts (smokers and some stands I built to set them on) with each of the variations. I turned the gas down. I adjusted stickout.

Here's the bottom line: the greatest thing I did to reduce and almost eliminate worms and pitting was to pull back and increase stick out (per the helpful link to Lincoln's site on the topic). The WeldAid anti spatter is a no-no. Bad pitting. Presumably water based. Pulling seemed to be a good thing to do until it occurred to me that I was doing it as the second pass on a part after the first pass was done on the other side of a 3/16" piece of metal (fillet). I got worms and pitting on the first, forehand pass, and no worms or pitting on the backhand pass. However, when I changed to doing the backhand pass as the first pass and the second pass forehand then I got bad worms in each of my backhand passes, four in total in a row. Both passes were done at, essentially, the same time; weld one side (3" bead) then immediately switch to the other side and do it. I think the first pass cooked off moisture and other contaminants so the defect-free backhand welding was misleading.

A bad backhand first pass:

Bad Backhand first pass.jpg (39.21 KiB) Viewed 1022 times

A pretty good forehand first pass (longer stick out with slightly lowered gas CFH):

Forehand minor defect.jpg (38.33 KiB) Viewed 1022 times

One bad one when I thought I had this figured out. All agree the metal is nasty; this is part of an old plow disc welded to some 2x2x11ga I had laying on my rack for years...covered, but rusted nonetheless:

Bad weld.jpg (38.22 KiB) Viewed 1022 times

Nuts, I was going to upload a picture of the stands but three images is the max. Next post.

--HC

[hcb]

I am building some smoker trailers, as I've mentioned, and leveling them for the build has always been a PITA. So I finally had a vision of what to do: make some slip-lock stands to support them. Level them with some cheesy travel trailer levelers then place these quick-set puppies under there. I had a stack of old plow discs laying around and a plasma table with plenty of Z axis travel and THC. Viola! Pretty darned good, if I do say so myself.

Oh, I used the plow discs because they're curved. I knew if I welded a piece of tubing to the center of a flat disc the weld warp would pull it up and it'd be like a mushroom upside down. Just in case you're wondering why I used what I used.

Homemade adjustable stand.jpg (85.16 KiB) Viewed 1022 times

--HC

[Superiorwelding]

I like your adjustable stand! I think Sumner makes one like that
What was your CFH before and now?
You already mentioned it, but I believe you need to be cleaning that rust off of your welding surfaces. The rust is not helping you at all. Same with the Anti-Spatter. I use Eagle Anti-spatter and it seems to work well, it is soybean based if I recall.
-Jonathan

[hcb]

I like your adjustable stand! I think Sumner makes one like that
What was your CFH before and now?
You already mentioned it, but I believe you need to be cleaning that rust off of your welding surfaces. The rust is not helping you at all. Same with the Anti-Spatter. I use Eagle Anti-spatter and it seems to work well, it is soybean based if I recall.
-Jonathan

According to the chart on the unit the CFH is supposed to be 25 for either 100% CO2 or 75/25 mix. I was using 25 CFH. Now I'm near 20 CFH.

I know that the rust isn't helping me (text does not convey emotion so let me say that I don't mean that in a snotty way), but as long as I'm searching for points of failure with this process I thought I'd leave it there. I'd like to know the boundaries of the envelope, if you will. Usually I work with much cleaner materials; no paint and much more minor rust, if any. Some mill scale. I've seen the worm tracks on the cleanest stuff I've tried. I'll know more in the next few days when I start assembling some clean parts on the smokers.

The anti-spatter spray I'm using is oil-based, I believe. I say that because 1) the same brand offers a product which explicitly says it's water-based whereas this product does not, 2) it says on the can "for industrial use only" (more on that in a minute), and 3) it smells like a fish-fry when I weld (burnt oil). Now, back to #2: You don't see that warning on WD-40 cans or motor oil, et cetera. I believe this is a type of, normally, food-grade cooking oil. Considering that soybean oil would be a possible food-grade product, it's possible that this is soybean-based as well. No guarantees. I'll see if I can get some Eagle brand, as well. I'm not afraid to try new stuff to see what works best. Radnor-brand stuff just happens to be what I first got. Imagine, I spent about 8 years of wire welding without knowing there was such a thing. The BB's I cleaned off (or left)!!! Jeez. Learning things the hard way is, well, hard!

--HC

[hcb]

I like your adjustable stand! I think Sumner makes one like that
What was your CFH before and now?
You already mentioned it, but I believe you need to be cleaning that rust off of your welding surfaces. The rust is not helping you at all. Same with the Anti-Spatter. I use Eagle Anti-spatter and it seems to work well, it is soybean based if I recall.
-Jonathan

According to the chart on the unit the CFH is supposed to be 25 for either 100% CO2 or 75/25 mix. I was using 25 CFH. Now I'm near 20 CFH.

I know that the rust isn't helping me (text does not convey emotion so let me say that I don't mean that in a snotty way), but as long as I'm searching for points of failure with this process I thought I'd leave it there. I'd like to know the boundaries of the envelope, if you will. Usually I work with much cleaner materials; no paint and much more minor rust, if any. Some mill scale. I've seen the worm tracks on the cleanest stuff I've tried. I'll know more in the next few days when I start assembling some clean parts on the smokers.

The anti-spatter spray I'm using is oil-based, I believe. I say that because 1) the same brand offers a product which explicitly says it's water-based whereas this product does not, 2) it says on the can "for industrial use only" (more on that in a minute), and 3) it smells like a fish-fry when I weld (burnt oil). Now, back to #2: You don't see that warning on WD-40 cans or motor oil, et cetera. I believe this is a type of, normally, food-grade cooking oil. Considering that soybean oil would be a possible food-grade product, it's possible that this is soybean-based as well. No guarantees. I'll see if I can get some Eagle brand, as well. I'm not afraid to try new stuff to see what works best. Radnor-brand stuff just happens to be what I first got. Imagine, I spent about 8 years of wire welding without knowing there was such a thing. The BB's I cleaned off (or left)!!! Jeez. Learning things the hard way is, well, hard!

--HC

For anyone who might ever come along and read this while searching for information regarding the dual-shield process (yes, I know that's a trademark name (like Kleenex and Coke), I don't care, I've all but abandoned this process. I hoped it would be a 1 to 1 replacement for my solid-core MIG welding. It is not. I can't weld a cap on a smoker, starting at the top, and welding to the bottom. It does not down-hill well. You who have been professionally trained or with more experience may scoff at my lack of knowledge. I, however, am not professionally trained and have no way to know something before I learn it, so don't give me any crap. I had bought a second MM 252 to allow me to have two machines to do this process on a large project, with a MM 212 left at the solid-core process. I have now converted my two MM 252's to solid core 0.035 wire and converted my MM 212 to dual-shield for the rare occasions where I want/need the process. I got my MM 212, BRAND NEW for $500 from my local AirGas dealer. Yes, it was a steal (the store manager was later fired, reportedly, in part, for doing that (and selling me a Lincoln 215 wire welder for $350)). Regardless, I have almost no money in the MM 212, and about $2,200 in each of the MM 252's so, I want twin MIG rigs for working on large projects, and I want to have the dual-shield process available, but it it is not (for me) a direct replacement for the solid-core process, so, it's a secondary process for me now. I now have twin MM 252's for the solid-core 0.035 process and one oddball MM 212 for dual-shield for when I need it.

Just FYI in case anybody in the future happens to come along in the same boat I was in; will the dual-shield process replace my solid-core process and yield better-looking welds? I was not happy. I went back. Life lessons are sometimes hard. I have a second MM 252 I paid $2,200 for which was a costly lesson. It's okay, I can afford it, and in the end, it yields me a set of twin units to work larger projects and another unit to do one process when I need it. But, still, a painful lesson.

I will, add that the stock MM machines (212 and 252) come with a liner in the gun for 0.023 or so up to 0.035 and there is a liner available for 0.035-0.045. I was running (and now am on my 212) 0.045 wire. It fit and worked for a short while but then failed. If you decide to run the 0.045 wire on your MM stock setup, REPLACE THE LINER with the 0.035-0.045 liner. Again, maybe you with more experience knew this already. I'm not spending this time to teach the old hands, I'm spending this time to help those who are not already aware of these details.

No offense intended, no hard feelings, just trying to pass along details which may help future folks who stumble across this. Don't flame me. Die, trolls, die!



--HC

--HC

[Otto Nobedder]

No trolls here. No flames. That's the beauty of this place.

That said, I never realized you were using dual-shield "like" solid wire MIG. I guess I didn't read closely enough.

Dual-shield cannot be run downhill. It compares far better to stick-welding with 7018 than MIG welding with e70s-6.

Steve S