Welding Tips and Tricks

Hi all

I got my everlast pp256 on tuesday and have been playing with it.

I took some pics so Ill show them. The welds are not very pretty.

here is the beast


My practice welds with the machine. I find it hard to make a nice bead and can't seem to get the stack of dimes look.
I also touch the tungsten alot!!!!




I got my first job for it this week even before I recieved the welder. A couple guys at work wanted some things made.
We have a tig welder at work but the guy who uses it is a dick and takes the torch home with him (bosses son) He told me to buy My own welder so I did lol.

This is a tray to hold a gas can on a 4 wheeler.

The sides are low but hey its what he wanted.



This Is a stainless tank for My other bosses son. He is building a hydrogen generator for his honda civic.

He cut all the pieces and they were cut to big to weld corner to corner. So instead of using filler rod I fused the two pieces together.

I think I was using too much heat on a few areas as some of the welds looks dark and not shiny.




So far Im happy with the welder.

I hope with practice I can get better looking beads. Im very critical of my work so I hope to make myself happy someday hahaha.

Ive been building a buggy type thing too if yo uwant to see pics of it I can link to the album.
Its all welded with a little Lincoln sp175 with 030 wire.
http://s123.photobucket.com/albums/o293 ... joop%20dj/


here is another project I did a couple months ago.




Hope to here some feadback

Based on your first paragraph, I was expecting a lot worse! The beads look decent to me. Thanks for sharing

Good start Keven,
On the practice welds for aluminum cut your ac balance back a bit , I found that with my 256 I usually have it almost all the way to the left or you get a real wide cleaning band , Are you working in pulse mode? It takes a little getting used to , when I started playing with pulse settings I was set to about 1 pulse per second at about 50% on time.But if you ware going to practice beads on aluminum just use regular 2t or 4t mode without pulse that will give you more practice with the welder, once you get the beads down then start with pulse, pulsiing takes a little practice getting you timing down to feed rod.
I am glad you like the 256 and keep up the seat time withscrap and your other stainles project looks good without the filler , did you purge he can with argon or just straight weld the stainless.I havent done any stainless in a while and had a lot of sugaring problems with it.Did not purge the backside with argon.
Everything is looking good and hope you enjoy the welder , its a great machine. I just spent mos of the day saturday cutting parts for a new welding cart for mine I have a cooler coming tommorrow and also I have a guy coming over monday or tuesday to look at my 256, He might buy mine or I will order him one if he wants a new one.( hope I just have to order him one ) I dont want to wait a week to get a replacement .
Thanks for the pics kepp up the good work.
Gary

I was practicing with all the settings. lol

I did find the timing hard with the filler and the pulses.

I also found it didn't blend in enough when I was feeding at roughly the right time. I was using 1/8 rods with 1/8 plate and found it was too much filler per drop. I found it worked the best when I would move the torch in circles or in half circles to get my pool big enough to absorb the filler enough, is that normal or should I be able to get a good sized pool going just by going in a line?


With the stainless I didnt use a purge on the back side I have heard that it makes a difference though.

Another thing I was wondering about with all the pieces that Ive welded and the practice piece that I pictured I used around 1000psi out of my medium sized tank. Is that excessive? The flow is set around 7 l/ph? If its normal Id better think about getting a bigger bottle.

get a bigger bottle and check for leaks.
your first picture was like wooo but after that pretty darn good. what are you building in the last photo?

The last pic is of a air over hydraulic tube bender.

Can you share some info on the tube bender (is asking for plans too much)?

I bought my plans from this guy.

http://www.gottrikes.com/

pro tools will email you a pdf file with full plans for their welder free of charge, also any parts that you cant build or figure out they will sell you individually.
http://offroadfabnet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7976
www.pro-tools.com
Gail is the owner i believe, super nice and im sure appreciates the support. I also just relized there out of my own back yard here in tampa, fl.

Im also On OFN and use protools dies