Welding Tips and Tricks

I am new to welding and just bought a 115 volt Campbell Hausfeld flux cored welder (is this any good?). I am trying to weld a BBQ from a compressor tank. Never welded. Ran a few beads and they are looking almost acceptable for what I want. Few questions.
I have some stainless steel rod that is slightly magnetic. Can I weld it with any flux cored stainless steel wire (i.e.304 or 309) or will that not work (that’s about all the wire I could find on the web). (It is for the grill so just a couple of spot welds per bar). Flux wire for stainless if difficult to find and very expensive. What if I just used non flux with no gas on the spot welds. What would happen? It’s just a gril with no real stress happening to it except during cleaning.

2. Can I buy a large roll of wire and just roll my own 2 lb spools? Any specific care needed?

And lastly, about how fast do I move the gun if I'm welding a butt joint about 1/8 inch thick? 1 Inch in 5 seconds? Using .035 wire.
Thanks!

Hi there again.

You have alot of questions so Ill try not to confuse you.. First off, if you try to weld with solid steel wire with out gas your weld will just be a glob of mess with lots of holes in it. The flux core or the gas protect the molten metal from the air.

I think you should be right with any stainless wire. The have to be matched when you need to make sure of corrosion resistance and that kind of thing.

I have never tried to wind my own spools but you might have trouble getting the tension required. There was a post on here about it but that guy was a pro. You might be able to get away with it, but hold on tight or the whole lot will just go sprrrroooonggg!!!!!

About your travel speed, it should be a bit faster than 1'' in five seconds. More like 6" in five seconds give or take. The speed has to be fast enough to stop you burning through the material, but not so fast that your weld is stringy and skinny. A small butt weld should be about 5mm wide and about 2mm high.

Good luck I hope thats not to much to take in.

Mick

If you've never welded before, you certainly don't want to start with stainless! Why are you using stainless to begin with? I'll assume it's for the grating? If so, my only advice would be not to use it. It's too much trouble for what you want. Go to your local steel supplier and ask for "expanded metal/steel" and have them cut it to the size that you need. Expanded steel is used for grating in millions of barbeque grills around the world. It welds and cuts easy and it cleans easy with a wire brush, too. It's available in a wide variety of hole sizes and thicknesses. If you can't get it where you live, let me know the size and I'll send you some.

Secondly, it's not a good idea to re -roll wire onto a smaller spool. Like Mick says it will go SPROINNNNNGGGG and you'll wind up with a birdsnest of wire. The smaller spools aren't that much more expensive over the larger spools that it would be worth doing.

Thanks for the replies. using Stainless because I hate all the rust on the grills...didn't think it would be good to eat. I found some great stainless rounds about 1/4 inch thick. I think it will be a great grate, but....it might be a pain to get it done...I'm going to try. Thanks and I'll buy some fluxcore for the stainless. I'll move faster for the wire speed and hopefully the BBQ will be done by spring...(bit cold in the garage in the winter up here in Michigan!!).

If you are just welding a grill, you can use a common ER70S-6 mild steel wire or if your machine came with a small roll use that. It will work just fine. I have done it a hundred times. The only area that may rust will be the tack welds, and after you use it for a while, it won't rust anymore. Rust won't hurt you. Just use a stainless steel wire brush to clean your grating. No need to go through all that for a grill.