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Welding question

Posted: Sat May 02, 2015 5:12 pm
by Cassidy
So I am your average backyard welder mostly self taught with some good advice from some of the people here and of course u tube. I have a harbor freight 110v Flux welder that I normally run .035 Lincoln wire in. I have been welding some .120 wall stuff for a front bumper and ran out of wire. Went to the local home Depot and all they had was .030 wire so I thought what the heck.......back to welding and I am finding I am not getting the penatration I was (I could see it on the back side before not after ) and my duty cycle is much shorter. Is this normal?
I would have thought the smaller wire would have carried less current so the penatration is not all that suprising but why then is the duty cycle shorter?

Re: Welding question

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 9:39 am
by csuengr
First of all did you get flux core wire? The wire should be gray colored, not copper colored.

The .030 wire will melt faster than the .035. You will have to turn the wire speed up a bit to compensate.

Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2015 8:13 am
by Cassidy
Thanks for the response. At first I was like of course I got flux wire....I always buy flux wire .......I went and found the .o35 flux wire I normally use and went to change it out and sure enough I had accidentally bought .030 mig wire.......doh.
Problem solved now to convert this thing to DC.

Re: Welding question

Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2015 10:13 am
by AwesomeJ10
If you connect a bottle filled with 75% CO2 and 25% argon you will have much better welds and you can use the wire that you bought.

Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2015 11:55 am
by Cassidy
Lol one of these days I will get a real mig welder but for now this cheapo gets the job done.

Re: Welding question

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2015 9:43 pm
by jasspaul
I couldn't do welding at my own. I always need the help of some engineering and technical knowledge for this.