Welding Tips and Tricks

Up until now, the only steel I'd welded with my new Miller 212 was a lap joint with a pretty good sized gap to fill. The welder did a great job. Today I was doing some modifications to my welding table and needed to weld a butt joint. Pushing or pulling, the thing spit wire badly. I futzed with wire speed for a while and then I thought of Jody's tip about trimming back the nozzel. Sure enough, my tip was buried about 3/8" below the face of the nozzel. I ran down to AirGas to see what they had for this torch with the slip on nozzel. There weren't any longer tips or shorter nozzels. Tweko had them but not for the Miller. Even the floor model looked just like mine. The Lincoln's knock off Tweko looked fine and my last MIG was a Lincoln so that's my guess as to why I never had the problem before.

I bought some new tips and I bought two new nozzels just incase I messed up. I cut 3/8" off of one of the new ones and dressed it with a fine file and tried it. Wah flipppin Lah... I'm stackin dimes again!

Thanks Jody for a great tip.

Yeah the mig welding contact tip - tip was a good one.

I just don't screw the contact tip in all the way and allow it to extend just a bit past the nozzle. That seemed to work too.

When I first learned to mig, If I had the contact tip screwed in all the way, the tip was about 1/8 inch recessed inside the nozzle, the welder would splatter and make the weld look really crappy. My welding instructor at Lincoln told me that I could do one of two things. Either cut back the nozzle or just don't screw the contact tip in all the way. Once I learned that, my mig welds looked like they were tigged. I do like the idea of cutting the nozzle back as I always every once in a while have to check to make sure the tip has not loosened up too much.

It's the little things with welding that make it either a fun thing with great results or a pain in the butt.

Those videos on tips and tricks are great!