Welding Tips and Tricks

I was welding up some wheel centers for our truck and while using my push pull technique every time i left the puddle to come back the machine would change sounds and the end of the wire would turn a pink/purplish color and the weld would emit a TON of white smoke and also spatter. Welds look great tho... just want to make sure its not something going bad in the machine and its actually suppose to do that... Ive heard tales the Miller 251 torch can kill the machine at higher voltages.

Running 22V 358WS on 1/2 to 1/4 corner joints on a MM251 with 75/25 gas.




Once in awhile it would also produce pin holes as seen above.




I thought it had to do with metal prep.. So I got it to all bare metal and prepped it great, I did everything but wipe it down with acetone.

I also spray my mig nozzle with wet anti slag spray but i dont think this is the cause.

**The images usually show more, for some reason they are cut off with no scroll bars.

That color and smoke says you're hitting high levels of zinc and/or magnesium in the alloy. Those look like cast wheels.

I don't want to ride.

Welcome to the forum!

Steve S

I thought they were steel wheels with a coating on them.

I'd wager some sort of corrosive protection too. I notice porosity holes probably produced by escaping gas in the 2nd photo

Does a magnet hang on hard when applied to the rim?

I'd wager that the machine is fine.
The big bbs are probably junk that got spat out by the deoxidizers, and not the result of globular transfer.
Globular transfer the bbs tend to dance on the surface for a bit before freezing to clean metal.
Junky, nasty steel with paint and crud tends to make "balls" of crud that does no seem to do that.