Welding Tips and Tricks

Hey,

Any one care to put forward their max number of Mig rolls in a day, or how many the think are possible.

A guy on face book said he did 6 rolls of 1.2mm(.045) @18kg (36 lbs) each. On a 500amp machine.

This was back in the 80s though. Folks knew how to work harder back then .( this guy got really angry when everyone called bullshizzle. )

Mick

Well truthfully I thought I was going some to use 1 roll per day - I don't remember ever doing more than say 1- 1/2 rolls - but you have to put it in context - I was doing all my own positioning & tacking on large steel tubular structures - it takes time to move them around - the overhead hoist was man powered - some stuff was outside so I'd have to fetch it with the forklift - I've never had a job like those pipeline guys where all they do is weld.

If I can find a number for him I had a (semi)mate that worked a local shop that built bridge components I'll ask him - now all those parts came in & were assembled & heavily tacked then checked for correct dimensions by a supervising engineer - checked by the client's insurance engineer - then the welders went to work - 1.2 > 1.6 mm wire on big machines with remote feeders strung up on cranes - once they started they really went at it - huge length runs & alot of passes - they were on a bonus for the completions dates which were always tight - he'd know if 6rolls was achievable - I'm tempted to say it sounds more than instinct says is possible - but given long enough runs the size of wire & if the torches could handle the heat then maybe it's possible - either way it's a great fishing story !

Anything is possible . Remember truth is stranger than fiction. This guy could be telling gods honest truth , but when over 100 people on Facebook, some boilies of big years, call BS, he's gunna have a bad time. LOL. Im like you never seen more than 1 1/2 rolls.

Mick

The guy is full of sh1t. I did burn 2 rolls of 1/16" 100S wire (35lb. each) spray arcing HY-80 in one 8 hour shift.
Burned up 6 sets of gloves and shriveled one sleeve of my leathers. 6 rolls? NO EFFING WAY! It's time to
play the BS card.

Well I was'nt going to call BS on it as it's outside my experience.
Say this guy was'nt off the crab boat Maveric on Deadliest catch ( a few seasons back ) by any chance ( think he was called Hiram ) - had a mate a bit like him - absolute classic - whatever you said to him he'd start a good yarn with something like " that's nothing boy - I remember the time ..............." - wish they still followed that boat - series is'nt what it used to be - especially since Phil Harris passed.

It occurs to me with all these "weld calculator" sites etc it should be possible to get a pretty good estimate of inches / minute feed speed if we enter the maximum voltage that suits 1.2mm wire - then divide this into an average stated length of wire on those 6spools - so then we'd have a minimum time required to run that amount in minutes - not counting time out for prep / moving around / tacking / tea breaks / call of nature etc - now I'm not a betting man - but I'm guessing that's going to be a longer shift than most of us put in !

Most I ever burned in an 8-hr shift was a full 40Kg (88#) roll of .045 dual-shield. The 88# is "give-or-take"... Never started my shift on a fresh roll, but always changed once and ended with approximately as much as I began with. Since I'd sometimes start with a nearly finished roll, depending on how much day-shift tossed off, it's fairly close, though.

I was welding longnecks in the rail yard at the time, and the welds were continuous for 5-7 feet depending on the location on the part (4 per, in all), 3/4" a36, backing bar with 1/4" gap, knife edge, and 37* bevels, done flat in one pass, with the 500A Miller/remote feeder running WFO, and when I'd finish one, I'd immediately start another.

I think this guy is either full of it, or remembers it wrong. I'll forgive "remembers it wrong", as the older I get, the better I was...

Steve S

@ Otto

Now that sounds quite feasible & you do push way higher feed speeds with flux core - but what % of that roll is flux / slag - he was talking solid wire so the entire weight ( minus some BB's ) would have been deposited weld - that's really quite some weld in a shift - unless it was an immigrant / Mexican that was living on the job & no one told him it was end of shift - maybe when the next shift came in they just thought he'd started early !

So how about a bit of math ? - was'nt good at this at school - but here goes.

You start with an18kg roll = 39.6 lbs
now 6 rolls equals 237.6 lbs
we see from http://weldingweb.com/archive/index.php/t-8546.html that 1lb of 0.45" wire equates to about 188.4 feet
so we have 188.4 * 237.6 equals 44763.84 feet of wire

So what was the machine setting ? we don't know so look at the Miller calculator and it tops out at a setting on .045" of around 30volts / 315 amps and 390 inches per minute - this seems quite a realistic parameter - even 500 amp industrial plants are not 100% duty - we buy them to achieve reliable operation without frying the power source around the 300 > 350 amp range and the torch has to contend with this heat as well - water cooled is better but still not immune to heat soak during prolonged welds.

now divide 390 by 12 to get to feet per minute equals 32.5
now divide our total 44763.84 by 32.5 equals 1377 minutes
now divide 1377 minutes by 60 to get to hours equals 22.95

So as good as 23 hours as makes no odds - and that is continuous weld - without moving the machine around the job - changing spools - not stopping to smoke / eat / drink / toilet - list goes on - plus people have a duty cycle as well & your not welding for 100% of any given shift even if your boss would like that ! - you can make statistics tell you anything ( ask a marketing guy ) but seriously - maybe he was running hotter than those settings - I don't know where to look up an absolute maximum on that wire size - but even if it was all 1G position it's not going to be double now is it.

So if the guy is still insisting on his version please ask him what his machine settings were I'd love to know - or if I flunked the math bit tell me - but it came out at a number I would have guessed was realistic.

Hey,

I can understand people saying how much work they can do, but this is really taking it too far, Brian, your maths, even if it is like you say, a little off, still blows it out of the water. Why would somebody write this on a facebook page with 15k members , all of whom have some welding experience . Some people really do believe there own crap. BTW, he cracked the sads and quit our page..... ha ha.

Mick

Mick,

If the lie won't fly,
It's time to say goodbye,

Eh?

@ Brian, I've not "checked your work", but it looks (and from experience, seems) solid to me. Assuming my recollection isn't exaggerated, assuming also (erroniously... sake of argument) my .045 flux-core was 50% flux, he could AT BEST burn 176# of wire in a shift, in ideal conditions.

These are some crazy assumtions. I'm even beginning to question my own experience... We commonly used 40Kg spools, but I'm no longer certain I wasn't doing the longnecks on 20Kg (44#) spools. It would meet the math better, and make sense in context since I would move the feeder to the next longneck, rather than wait for the next to come to me. (It was 20+ years ago, after all.)

Steve S

All good for a laugh .

When I was doing production stuff at the shop I would go through 2 rolls of 40kg 035 in 3 days. That was nonstop cursive e weave pattern. Pushing anymore would just rusult in oversided convex welds.

They told me to slow down and that I was going faster than anyone had before. I told him if I slowed down I would go stir crazy.....

I am in no way a seasoned pro however but I can't imagine burning that much wire

let's round it off to 238 pounds of wire using noddy's calculations. divide that into 8 (for an eight hour day) and you get 29 3/4 pounds of wire an hour. average. figuring down time for bathroom at least once and lunch, actual arc time is less than 8 hrs which would drive the pound of wire per hour higher. not likely irregardless of what diameter wire he was using. if i remember correctly i had a hard time using up a 50 pound spool of 3/32 innershield wire welding pre-tacked "H" beam pile points. 16 passes per point. this was for an 8 hour day with lunch, pee and 1 coffee break.

most I've ever done was about 1 35lbs spool in a day and a quarter to day and a half. had a long production of 1600 solar panel feet. each foot had 4 3" welds. I believe i went through 4 spools over the whole project. that was cursive e's and there were significant delays as well. was welding galvy uni-strut to mild steels plate so there was a lot of porosity since the galvy wasn't cleaned off first, the local welding supplier had me running flux core with Mison gas at one point. after that I haven't trusted anyone who comes to your door or place of business to sell me something.

So I am the worst at math especially when comparing it to my own memory. but i guess i'd double weld length for the cursive e's and such. I think i ended up using 120lbs of wire over the project.