Welding Thread

[Grenade]

Another thread made mention of welding and it sparked my thoughts on the subject. "Sparked".. haha.

I know there are some real professional fabricators on this board and I have respect for skills beyond my own, and even more respect when the highly skilled take time to post and share their experience. I have as many others have, gained mass amounts of knowledge from this crazy "internet thing". I don't claim to be a professional at anything other than my day job.

With that said, someone mentioned that, and I'm paraphrasing here- but it was something to the effect of "MIG welding without shielding gas is utterly hopeless/useless".

That kind of struck a little nerve with me. Here's why:

I completely disagree. No more than a half day's drive from here, is a huge area of sand dunes in Michigan. It's called Sliver Lake Sand Dunes. From Nascar country in the southern states, all the way up to the tip of Michigan, there are local off road riding areas and multitudes of dirt and asphalt racing tracks. Not really much for high speed road course racing, but they're here too. Auto-X which takes place in every major market in the country.

These um, shall we say "Backyard racers" have been building their own race cars, dune buggies and bastardized 4x4 creations powered by everything you can imagine from chain saw engines to snowmobile powered cars & bike engines into the big V8's and beyond.


Most commercially sold landscaping trailers are built the same way that the majority of these cars are built. Gasless MIG welders. Yes, gas is cleaner, leaving less slag and spatter. Yes, gas will allow you to have more control when welding. Yes it's better to use a TIG welder and have only the best of everything money can buy. It's better to use only commercial ramps & lifts to put engines in cars, but guys do it with boards & jack stands every single day and years later, those engines are still in those cars.

But to say that Gasless MIG has no value, is hopeless and should be avoided, that's just wrong. That's the way cars have been built, by local racers- for generations. Can you do that in Nascar? No, but these local boys don't run at 215 mph around tens of thousands of people. More like 95 mph down the straights, if they're lucky.
Can you do use that technique in any professional racing anywhere? Probably not. Can you use it to weld a cage together or build a perfectly functioning, relatively safe race car to use on a local level? Yes. Yes you can. Sorry for another long winded rant- but this is an open forum and the end result, is that I hope to learn something and perhaps others can learn more as well.

Here's a sample of gasless MIG welding that I do. I think it's perfectly acceptable. Flux core .035 wire. Many creations have been built this way.







Not everyone has access to expensive, modern tools & facilities. But that never stopped us before. Someone should however, stop that Imitation Pagani guy.

Contribute to the welding thread in any way you choose. I'm going to get a beer.

[cdwood2010]

Lol. Not bad. You get some good results! I can't really blame my gasless mig if you're achieving that with the same. I think I need to practice more.

That Zonda I thought was done with arc, it was even worse than mine!

C.

[Goreden]

Welding is one thing i do know know about as i am a structual steel fabricator, and the "gasless" migs are ok for small stuff, i fabricate and weld heavy structual beams for steel framed buildings everyday and I don't think it is the machine your using, its all about having your machine set up correctly at the right temp for the metal and the correct wire speed for the power of the machine, setting it up right to start with is key

Alot of people can use the machine but not as many can get it set up correctly

[cdwood2010]

Interesting. I don't think I ever learned the theory, I just got me a welder and had at it.

There's a lot to be said for decent training!

C.

[snowtigger]

Yep I'm a gardener and I don't like it when people just say "it's a lawn, mow it what's the difference" the difference is training and time, I have so long to mow a lawn with what I consider a rolls Royce of mowing equipment it's a Honda but if Toyota built one I would use that, why is it relevant to welding because that also takes time and skill over years to do a good job.

One thing I have found is welding anything it's like water plus gravity it like weld wants to flow down under gravity and find the easiest route, that's why classic car restorers/rally car builders use a rotisserie to weld a cars underneath.

[Grenade]

Much respect for the real pro Welders & Fabricators. This is my offering to the knowledge base. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I can take it.

Slow your wire speed down and raise your heat. Too high heat, you'll burn holes. Too fast wire speed and the wire pushes your welder tip away from the work. Before you attempt a permanent weld, do a sample with the same material.

Grind everything shiny clean with a flap disc. The cleaner the metal, the easier the weld. You're looking for a sound. Yeah- a sound. If the sound is craklin' & poppin'- something's wrong. It should be a smooth burn, with even melting sounds. If it's too cool heat, the welds will glob and snot all over and never penetrate properly.

The best advice I can give is raise your heat & slow your wire speed. Anyone else?

[Goreden]

Very true about raising the heat and reducing wire speed

Alot of the time you can hear when the welder is set up correctly that is true, but a tip i was taught when i was an apprentice is to have the welder temp as high as the metal will take but without melting it, the hotter the better, the cleaner the metal the better too
Wire sppeed is as important, too fast and it will just float across the top of the metal without penetrating the metal and spit half inch sections of melted wire at you, too slow and all you will do is keep melting gun tips
The only real way of getting better at it, is by doing it, practice, practice and more practice

[Paul Woods]

I guess this thread is aimed at my comment that gasless Migs are useless, well in my personal opinion i think the weld is inferior, but that is just my opinion, gasless mig wire has a flux built into it for shielding, but this doesn't do as good a job as proper shielding gas in my opinion.

What i should have said was gasless will be harder for the first time amateur at home to get to grips with, Gas Mig set ups are very easy by comparison.

If someone was starting out welding for the first time i would advise a Gas Mig setup everytime although it is possible to get good results from a gasless setup they always struck me as a cheap "make do" option.

Perhaps gasless does have its place, but i'd say it's outside where shielding gas could get blown away.

[cdwood2010]

Fair comments all round. PaulS an I were chatting on Skype yesterday, and he mentioned his welder was a gasless mig.

Now I remember looking at that tunnel fabrication work on the Spazerati and thinking 'god I need a decent welder'.

Turns out he achieved that with a gasless mig. What I should have been thinking was 'I should learn to weld'.

Next welding I do I will be more than happy to update this thread for pointers and / or criticism on how to make a better job of it.

Then I can start on my Zonda. :)

C.

[Paul Woods]

I guess that's my point "learning to weld" is ten times easier with a proper gas shielded mig, but if anyone can make a gasless work and they are happy with it then fair play.