Welding Tips and Tricks

I am GOING to learn to weld come spring. I will borrow my in-laws flux core welder and teach myself in the back yard. Reading EVERYTHING that I can find about welding and have learned a LOT from the tipsandtricks videos but I came accross something that just plain stumped me. Is welding machine output steady DC or AC ?? I was reading a forum and came accross something that TOTALLY confused me...

Guy says he has a "HF 90A flux core welder" which I gather is a low end welder.
He states "not being satisfied with my welder's performance as an AC machine using DC wire, I've started the conversion to a full mig unit."

Up until I read that statement I thought that MIG welding was DC and that you used Electrode Negative for flux core and Electrode Positive for solid w/shield gas. This guy goes on to describe and provide several links to other "tutorials" on upgrading AC flux core welder to DC with some rectifier diodes and a choke and that this significantly improved the control of the arc and amount of wire used and splatter. Do most of the "cheapie" hobby welders use AC? and if so do these bridge rectifiers really help that much?

I believe that machine I will borrow is a Lincoln 140 so I shouldn't have to worry about AC flux core welding ( I hope ) and I am already saving up to buy a bottle of shield gas and solid wire. Can't wait till it gets warm enough to stay outside for a while.

dmac257

A few others perspectives:

http://forum.atomiczombie.com/archive/i ... -6736.html

http://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?t=61856

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/shop-too ... -good.html

Hey there,

Welcome to the forum, good to have you.

To this day I had never heard of the welders you speak of, so off to google I went.

I came up with this,

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/show ... hp?t=12307

Which I think explains a sane persons reasoning of the issue. Its seems AC wire feed welders do exist but are rubbish so I wouldnt bother with the, or how to convert one to anything. Why try and make a duck bark like a dog when you can just go and buy a dog. Reasonable quality MIG/wire feed welders are readily for a modest outlay. Just stick to leaning how to weld with the Lincoln (a great machine) and leave the tinkering and inventing to the boffins, and the arc time to the welders.

Good luck, remember to dont think to hard about things, Just weld stuff, belt the heck out of it with a hammer and move on.

Mick