At Home In The Woods

[dave1949]

You can extend your welder's power by putting a 45* chamfer on the edge, the upright piece in your practice pics. That allows you to get down into the joint a bit deeper on the first pass. Then you would build up on that weld.

Your tacks looks like you had aimed too much at the upright piece, which will heat/puddle faster than the flat piece. Something to compensate for.

 

[clemsonfor]

YEa something is not right there with your technique? It should atleast penetrate something? I have welded 1/4 several times and you can melt the corners of the stuff down easy, and again i have the same welder??? Try what Dave said, grind that verticle peice on the end that your joining at a 45 deg angle, kind of like your making a blade on the end you want to join. This will then thin that end out and aim into that crack that is formed when you stand the verticle onto teh horizontal ppiece. I think DAve hit it on the head and i am just repeating what he said in mor words.


But i agree looks like you aimed to high on the verticle, maybe had the torch to far away and did not move it, causing the weld metal to just pile up on it self??


EDIT: I am at work but i looked for some pics of some repairs i have made to my bushhog and could not find any on my phone or my work PC. I may have some at home or on the SD card that use to be in my phone. I will look, i cant take any right now as the tractor and hog is at the farm 3 hours away.


As far as the Boxblade your probably going to have to take your grinder and grind out the crack on it so that there i like a "V" where the crack is. You sure its 1/2 steel?? yea just looked at a ruler i bet it is 1/2 inch.

Now that i look maybe i was welding 3/16 steel?? But even that i could melt it no problem so i would thing that i could melt 1/4 pretty easy. I have welded some big nuts on an implement as a spacer and i bet it was 1/4 inch steel there and it melted no problem.

 

[MotorSeven]

Obed, that's almost zero penetration....not hot enough. How may amps is your welder and do you have it set on "high or Max". Also, do not run it on an extension cord unless it's a 10 gauge and shorter then 25'.

 

[catdozer]

You have your wire turned up way to much. Turn down the wire and turn up the heat. You are just melting the wire instead of melting the metal.

 

[Beltman60]

agree with catdozer
you need the wire speed down to maybe half as to have your amperage melt the metal and wire is just a filler
looks to me like you just melted the wire with no melting of the parent material
any weld prep should have a chamfer so you penetrate the parent material and your wire is a filler
you should be able to do 1/2 steel as long as you have a chamfer v ground almost thru and might take 2-3 passes

 

[clemsonfor]

Another trick to weld something that is to thick for a welder is to preheat it, but with out an OXy torch you cant get to hot but anything would be better than nothing, you could try and heat with mapp gass but i think that thaat weld is to longs and your torch woudl not get hot enough to do much good, maybe if you heated one spot and tacked it and kept tacking?? But i think you will get it you just have to keep messing with it.

 

[Ted Summey]

As a former weld tester for the Navy, given proper prep of the two pieces and proper technique, one can weld very thick material with multiple passes. I will give +1 on beveling your stock, upping he amperage and slowing your wire speed.

Since this is a practice weld, I suggest welding the outside of the angle first. The other thing is to make sure the gap between the two pieces is as small as possible.

Keep trying, I still make some ugly welds from time to time.

 

[Obed]

You have your wire turned up way to much. Turn down the wire and turn up the heat. You are just melting the wire instead of melting the metal.

agree with catdozer
you need the wire speed down to maybe half as to have your amperage melt the metal and wire is just a filler
looks to me like you just melted the wire with no melting of the parent material

I have two settings, current (high or low) and wire speed. The current was on high. The wire speed was on the fastest setting. Slowing down the wire speed makes sense. I'll try some stuff tomorrow. The welder manual says to increase wire speed if you are not getting penetration. That would seem backwards to me but the manuel is clear about that. I'll try some practice beads on flat 1/4" metal without trying to join anything together. Once I figure out how to get some penetration, I'll try to join two thick pieces.

Obed

 

[Obed]

We added a grab bar in the shower for my mom.

 

[Obed]

I bucked up a dead red oad tree that fell over.



I got some poplar from the log stack.



This guy was sunning himself on a log.



I started working on the "roof" for the round stack.



I split some pieces into "shingles" and started positioning them around the top of the stack.



I still need split ans stack some more "shingles" on the top but this stack is close to being finished.

 

[Obed]

Here's the winter spinach crop. My wife cut it up, filled up some ziplock freezer bags, and put them in the freezer.

 

[Obed]

If you recall, I tried to tack weld two 1/4" thick pieces of steel together without success. My welds were not penetrating the metal. My flux core welder was set to High current with the wire feed on the fastest setting.

So last night I practiced laying some beads on the 1/4" thick metal using various wire feed speeds. I rechecked my welder manual and a welding book. Both indicated that to get more penetration, I should increase the wire feed speed. The book said (for a Mig welder), increasing the wire feed speed will increase the current which will improve penetration. However, my failed tack weld attempts last time were done at the highest wire feed speed which just piled up the weld material on top of the metal without good penetraction.

I cleaned off my metal with the angle grinder.



I then made some new practice beads. My first bead on the bottom of the picture below was made using the fastest wire feed (9.5 out of 9.5). Penetration was not good. The second bead from the bottom was made using a very slow wire feed speed (2 out of 9.5). Penetration was much better (contrary to the advice in the welder's manual). The third and fourth beads from the bottom were made using a middle wire feed setting (5 out of 9.5). The 5 speed setting seemed to make a good bead.



Below you can see the penetration.



I set my welder at 5 out of 9.5 and attempted more tack welds. My first new tack welds did not penetrate.



I cleaned off the bad welds and tried again.The first weld got good penetration. Unfortunately, while welding the second tack weld, the metal pieces pulled apart leaving a gap.



I cleaned off the metal and tried again. The first tack weld penetrated ok.



The second tack weld did not penetrate.



This time I did not clean off the existing tack welds and just welded another tack weld beside the previous weld. This one penetrated ok but resulted in a lot of extra metal.



This is where I stopped. Next time I'm going to try to finish welding the two pieces together. I may lower the wire speed from 5 to maybe 2 or 3 on my first attempt.

 

[joshuabardwell]

Look up the speed for a hole saw in thicker steel... its going to be fairly slow, if you go to fast, you generate too much heat. The heat softens the metal and you can loose the sharpness in a single hole.

This is a critical point. If using a drill press, just set the speed and go, but a handheld drill must be manually controlled. It's very easy to go too fast with a hand drill.

 

[Obed]

This is a critical point. If using a drill press, just set the speed and go, but a handheld drill must be manually controlled. It's very easy to go too fast with a hand drill.

I will be using a hand drill to drill the 1" dia. hole. Yes I will have to be careful to not drill to fast.
Obed

 

[dave1949]

Evening Obed,

The welds. I don't think any of them show good penetration to be honest. Sorry.

You may be at the upper limit of the welder's capacity, melting a lot of wire but not really digging into the material because not enough heat is being generated to create a good puddle in that thickness of metal. That's my amateur's opinion.

A good bead on a tee weld would form a concave radius between the vertical and horizontal pieces, like you ran a bead of caulk down it, then wiped it with your finger. I would try grinding a 45* bevel on the end piece to about half its thickness. Then weld inside that bevel for the first pass after tacking both ends.

 

[radioman]

If you are not getting penetration - its time to bevel edges and do a root pass to penetrate then fill passes on both sides of root. Also I dont think you are moving the hand gun in a weave. If beveling is not working but helps - then you know the welder is not getting hot enough. I would do a fake weld above where you plan to weld to get the metal pieces hot then do the root ASAP. You should be clamping the metal pieces together if they are moving around that much until you gain experience in tacking pieces.

Since this is a Harborfreight welder and its cheap - I wonder if the spool wire is not up to snuff. try swapping it with a spool wire from hobart/miller or get one from a local welding store supply. you just need to google it for your area.

 

[radioman]

If you are not getting penetration - its time to bevel edges and do a root pass to penetrate then fill passes on both sides of root. Also I dont think you are moving the hand gun in a weave. If beveling is not working but helps - then you know the welder is not getting hot enough. I would do a fake weld above where you plan to weld to get the metal pieces hot then do the root ASAP. You should be clamping the metal pieces together if they are moving around that much until you gain experience in tacking pieces.

Since this is a Harborfreight welder and its cheap - I wonder if the spool wire is not up to snuff. try swapping it with a spool wire from hobart/miller or get one from a local welding store supply. you just need to google it for your area.

 

[Obed]

I was able to get good penetration with my practice beads on the 1/4" thick metal as you can see below. Ignore the first bead on the left. It was made with the highest wire feed speed setting.



However, I am struggling with penetration on my tack welds.

 

[mkane09]

Try slowing down movement of your gun. You will concentrate the heat more in one area that way. Don't move the gun until you see the puddle formed and can push (or pull) it.

mkane09

 

[dstig1]

Like others have said, try new wire first, but I am afraid you are just too limited by the welder output to be able to do much with this