Welding Tips and Tricks

You recommend a short stick out for more penetration. I have a Tweco Min-Mig gun. How do you adjust the stick out on this? Thanks.

Hey,

Welcome . The stick out is simply how far away from the work peice that you hold the gun. The arc length will always be the same because of the feeding wire, so just experiment with where you hold it.

Mick

Spot on!

I think the reason this sometimes confuses people, is we also discuss whether the tip should be recessed in the nozzle, or flush with it, or "stick out" a bit.

In terms of a welding process specification, the term "stick-out" is the distance from the tip to the work, regardless of the nozzle. "Stick-out" also applies with self-shielded flux-core, where there is no gas and no nozzle.

Steve S

Stick out is also a term that was used with some older spoolguns. The stickout distance of the tip from the nozzle could be adjusted and not having the right stickout for aluminum welding could make a really big difference in quality.

I had a spoolgun from the early 1990's that the tip stickout could be adjusted on, but it was a huge pain getting it exactly right every time. I don't think the spoolguns today have that feature. Good thing, it was just one more needless adjustment that could go terribly wrong.

too long of a stick out will increase your splatter and cause your weld profile to be more convex. The reason is the longer the stick out the higher the resistance of the current flowing through the wire thus heating it up. This will affect your voltage and because you are running a CV unit, the machine will compensate to maintain. The amperage gets lower this poorer penetration and weld appearance.

If you look at one of the training pages from Miller, they show too short of a stick out will yield a concave bead, too long of a stick out will yield a convexed bead.