Welding Tips and Tricks

Hello. I'm a beginner and Id appreciate any feedback to help me out. This is a picture of my beads with my Miller 211. It's on a 1/4 inch plate that has been prepped pretty well. I'm getting alot of spatter and theirs a grey film that chips off in pieces as the plate cools. I'd like to see my beads so any help would be appreciated.

Welcome aboard!

First, let me say that for a beginner, that looks really good. The last bead in particular shows a consistent travel speed and a steady hand.

That's not really "a lot" of spatter, either, though more than one might like when it's time to clean a part up. I've noticed, though, that the charts Miller puts in their machines tend to recommend more current than I like. The settings perform fine in the flat position, but are a little hot for other positions. They are, however intended as starting points to get you in the ball park.

Generally, excess spatter means too much wire speed for the voltage setting (or too low a voltage for the wire speed). I'd suggest dialing back the wire speed 5 or ten IPM at a time and observe the results. When you've gone too far, the bead will begin to get narrow and tall, so work back the other way until the bead appears normal again, and this will be your best compromise between heat input and spatter.

Another great tip, used by many people here, is to keep a notebook with your machine. When you've gone through the effort of dialing in the machine on some sample pieces before making a finished part, jot down the settings, the material & thickness, and the position of the weld. It's a big time-saver when a similar weld comes up in the future.

Steve S

The "grey film that chips off in pieces" sounds like you are using flux core wire. What wire is in the machine and are you using gas, if so, what gas?

I forgot to touch on that "grey film" in my reply, and have to admit flux-core never occurred to me. (I don't see any slag in the toes, but that might have been brushed off.) I was thinking more of silicon in a 70s-6 wire, some of which pops off when a weld cools.

Maybe Powerstroke73 can give us more information when he replies.

Steve S

I recently worked in a fab shop for a couple of weeks and Doug says to me,
Ray, your beads look really good but you're getting too much spatter because you're not holding the nozzle close enough to the weld.
As soon as I tried it Doug's way, I stopped getting BBs and was only left with micro spatter. Of course Doug already knew where to dial the machine in so I didn't have to deal with that aspect of it.

Thanks everyone I figured out my argon was WAY to low. I now get a shiny stack of dimes look or what ever its called. Thank you for all the input I'll post some more pics.