Welding Tips and Tricks

Hello everyone first post glad to be here. Anyway I have a Miller Millermatic 251 and no matter what setting I use I get a lot of spatter. I'm using argon 85 & co2 15 gas, ESAB .035 wire, and a tweco mig gun (I don't think that matters). I have also use argon 75 & co2 25 gas but still lots of spatter and it not just some spatter u can knock off with a wire brush sometime I have to pull the grinder out on it. Also this is just in short circuit. Thanks Justin

Dunno your experience but first thoughts would be too much stick out or wire feed set wrong. Have you tried setting the feed on the fly? Get one hand on the gun and the other on the feed knob and turn it till it looks/sounds right.

I've been welding for over 13 years and I when I worked at our local college I had no problems but my welder I just have trouble does single phase and 3 phase play any roll in it?

If you're using your old three-phase settings, yes, it may make a difference. Usually, too much spatter suggests too much wire speed for the set voltage (available current). Single-phase transformers are less efficient.

I'd suggest several sample plates, backing off the wire speed 10-20 IPM at a time, and make comparisons.

Steve S

I agree on to much wire. Would like to see a picture if possible.
-Jonathan

Is the polarity on the welder set correctly?

Welcome to the forum.

I had same problem lately at my job. Old machine
which had worked fine before me. Any way i was very frustraited whit it.. Just started at new job and my welds looked like fired whit SHOTGUN Nice to complain about welder in new job immediately.. But i was right driwe roll looked like fine but closer investigation showed that it was jammed and dident feed consistently. And afterwards i heard that allso wire knob is twisted ower and can not be trusted. Would be nice to know earlier.. Anyway i cleaned everythin cable,liner,driwe roll whit Acetone and but litle oil in bearings. New cotact tip,gas nozzel. And it weld lot better, but is still very presais at gun angel to get less spatteres weld. But it teached me to trust more on sound,weld appearence then knobs..

I'm not sure if this will help or not, but I recently switched from Praxair's Stargon mig gas blend (Ar/CO2/O2) to the normal 75/25 (Ar/CO2) blend for cost reasons.

Spatter went up quite a bit, and the arc sounded a lot more harsh and aggressive. With the blend, a tap or two on the nozzle dislodged the minimal amount of spatter that adhered. With the 75/25, more spatter stuck to the nozzle, and it was harder to remove.

Just a few observations.

-- Pete

We'll this pass weekend I pulled my welder our cleaned my drive rollers, blew all the dust out, and took my old school clamp and filed all the slag off to new metal. I took y'all's advice and stated low 17v/ 200 wire speed and that was too low of wire speed then I bumped it up to 210 and that was the sweet spot. That was one of the beat looking weld not spatter at all. I never tried going that low before. My old welder instructor said that my welder needed to be set a litter higher than other welders. I'll try to post a pic later on but thanks for all of y'all's advice.

Cool!

There'll be a "sweet spot" like that for every voltage setting (Though the hotter you go, the more spatter you'll get, regardless), and no doubt cleaning the machine up had to help. One of the guys has suggested keeping a notebook on the machine and recording what settings work best for different thicknesses, wires, gasses, and materials. This not only helps you, it adds a bit of resale value to have usefull information that can be used while demonstrating the machine.

Steve S