Welding Tips and Tricks

Good Sunday morning everyone,

I am new to welding and need to weld a fair amount of square tubing. I gave practiced a fair bit in the last weeks but I need a few more years under my belt

The tube is A500 .120 mostly. I am cleaning everything well and filing the edges as I will be grinding the weld area smooth.

My Hobart 140 charts sat 40 on the wire speed and 4 on the heat for 0.35 using Ar/CO2. I have used this setting but I feel my travel speed can be a little slow. I gave blown through corner just uphill with this.

I used 35 and 3 on the heat today and the welds all came out well. But I wonder if this is enough heat. While I did have some small gaps (Maybe 1/16 at most) I did not see a lot of weld protruding inside the tube.

Any advice on this matching is greatly appreciated.

Stephen

i don't do much mig and not on such a simple machine. so can't help with settings.

however uphill welding wants slightly cooler settings. drop it back a size or two.

you can check your welds by cut and etch. jody has heaps of video's on this.
or poor mans way is to break the weld and see where it fails.

don't forget with mig, manipulation is important.

Thank you so much for the input.

I have cut and etched some of the my welds and they look sound. I will try one of these too.

Luckily, I am able to weld most everything without vertical welding which helps at this point.

Much appreciated