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OT Mig Welder

gotchips

Aluminum
Joined
Feb 5, 2006
Location
Brighton, Michigan
I am making a dozen fixtures to hold some odd shaped parts and am thinking about welding them instead of screwing them together.Thought about buying a Mig welder and have seen a few advertized using a flux covered wire instead of gas. Does anyone here have any expierence with this gasless mig welding.
thanks
dale
 
The flux in the wire provides shielding like the gas normally would, so with proper technique you won't have the porosity you mentioned. But gas welders can use either wire (flux cored or solid), IMHO it's worth a few extra $$ to get the better welder.
 
<Quote by 'gotchips'>I am making a dozen fixtures to hold some odd shaped parts and am thinking about welding them instead of screwing them together.Thought about buying a Mig welder and have seen a few advertized using a flux covered wire instead of gas. Does anyone here have any expierence with this gasless mig welding.
thanks
dale

Dale, Most weldors I know have VERY limited experience with flux core, they either avoided it in their first purchase or, rapidly transitioned to gas. Unless conditions are optimum, and, you are experienced, the weld will likely look like Skippy Chunk Style dog sneeze all over everything. Flux core definitely has its place but not for an amateur in the shop working on tooling fixtures. My humble opinion.

If, on the other hand this is a one time deal, then stick weld it, faster, easier, less mucking around.

Lloyd
 
"I am making a dozen fixtures to hold some odd shaped parts and am thinking about welding them instead of screwing them together." Hm.

Are the parts steel, stainless, or copper alloy? Ever think about silver brazing them together? Praactically zero distortion, very strong, and, if done well with fitted machined joints, very accurate, and hold up to temps to 600 F with little loss of strength.

The only inescapable conditions to silver brazing are scrupulous cleanliness, plenty of flux, good local heat control, and application of the silver brazing alloy so that it goes into the joint instead of blobbing up on the exterior.

Make a few practice joints before you go for the gusto.

Getting back to the MIG question, most home machine shops benefit from the presence of welding equipment provided the show owner takes a night course in welding at the local vocational school or community college. MIG is only one of four metal jointing permanent processes handy to the home shop user. Arc, MIG, TIG, and spot. Add to this silver brazing, soft soldering, oxy-acetylene welding, plasma and oxy-fuel cutting and time spent taking a light class pays off very well in your future metalworking versatility and accomplishment.

All those skills might seem a lot ot take on at one bite but over a couple of school quarters you can cover the basics very well. Also you gain new acquaintances and insights into this new world of metal working. Trust me when I say it's all gain and no loss to learn welding/metals joining skills in parallel to your machine shop skills.
 
Fluxcore has its place. Its becoming more and more common for structural welding because it "makes" its own sielding gas, similar to a SMAW electrode, however you can use a gun and run one continuous bead.

Now for home hobby stuff, its smokey and its crap. Dont bother. Go for a true MIG step.

Mig is short for Metal Inert Gas, the official name is Gas Metal Arc Welding. Fluxcore is NOT Mig welding... Fluxcore is FCAW... Fluxcored arc welding. Alot of cheap machines use the term interchangably but its bad advertising. Ideally you want true GMAW/Mig. Alot of people get confused because the two processes work in similar ways, except of course for the shielding gas.

Also, FCAW tends to run hotter than true GMAW, which could be a problem on thinner metal. You will need special fluxcore wire to be able to do out of position welding

Jim
 
There's fluxcore and then there's Fluxcore. Never saw anything I would consider "good" come out of the little rolls of hobby wire from HD and such. Good professional fluxcore will do great welds but is expensive. I prefer Dual-sheild. It's a fluxcore wire run with an inert gas like CO2, can't run it without the gas. Extremely fast and very nice welds with good properties.

Fluxcore is generaly about twice the price of solid wire per pound. Note the a pound of fluxcore includes the flux, its not 1 pound of actual metal. Which makes it a very expensive process. Savings are only on time and labour.

I'd rather have a basic stick welder then a hobby wirefeeder.
 
OK, Thanks alot for the great adise on the fluxcore wire and the gasless welding. I have been doing welding off and on for close to 40 years,done quite a bit of silver brazing matter of fact and have used both 110V and 220V mig welders,however never have used a gasless set up and from what I have read here,don't think I will. I do mostly small tools and build small machines and have thought that I should get a welder,I had a stick welder a couple of years ago but it was only ac,it was ok but am now looking for a 220v wire feed.Never heard of anyone with the gasless type so I posted here hoping to find some information on them and I did.And don't think I am interested in one.
Thanks to all.
Dale
 
I have used flux-core wire gasless for 10yrs or so. We repair shipping containers with it among other things. Welds can be done reasonably nice and strong without shielding gas. Welding with shielding gas can produce a weld that is very smooth to look at. The gasless weld will never look like that, rather it looks more like a stick weld to me. In your application I dont see a problem with using the flux-core. Ive been running some Lincoln ER70S Innershield I think its called. Recently welded about 60 linear ft. of 5ft handrail with it no problem. Ive made all kinds of ornamental bending jigs with this type welding too. It certainly has its place.
 
JL, Cmon now. I can run a SMAW bead that looks way nicer than alot or production Mig welds, be it GMAW or FCAW. I think its all in the time you take to do it and how much you concentrate on technique. Ever Run 7024? Appearance wise, you cant beat them!


Jim
 
Over the past 50 or so years I have accumulated an OA setup, a 225 amp "buzz box" (AC), a 200 amp MIG (setup for steel), a 250 amp MIG ( spool gun, set up for AL), and a 250 amp TIG that can double as a stick welder, AC or DC. I have tried other folks MIG outfits with the cored wire, but didn't like it.
If I had to settle for just 2 outfits, it would be the buzz box and the OA.
Dave
 
I have probably 100-200 hrs experience welding 1" plate using 7/64" diam. flux core wire powered by a 400 amp MIG welding machine, and as long as I could convince my foreman to let me use (95-5 gas at as much flow as needed, I could make welds pretty enough to make my crusty old foreman who had been everywhere and done everything actually comment " pretty nice welds there, Nelson"! So if the situation requires it, and you have the right wire/gas/power supply, there is nothing better, but what is used in your basic homeowners size MIG is useless at best, unless you are welding outside when it's windy. Here endeth the lesson for today!

Dale Nelson
 
Getting away from the esoteric( whatever that is),

Flux in Mig welding? I did a City and Guilds course. No such animal as flux. The flux is in the CO2 gas and in Oxy/Acetyline.

Learn to weld properly. You seen the best advice from the best.
Take it!

Norm
 
Norman, perhaps it isn't in use in the UK, but there exists and is used often here in USA a flux cored wire. The flux is in an internal core in the wire. It is used without any gas at all.
While it isn't actually and technically a MIG process, it is done with a wire welder and many people therefore call it MIG welding with cored wire.
Dave
 
Flux cored wire is a tubular wire.

Tubing or rather pipe comes to mind, and a basic 'rule of thumb' in pipe working anytime you double the diameter the volume increases 4 times. So in diameters .045 & under how much flux can be packed into the I.D. for enough shielding?.
My own limited experience is on .045 is to run it dual-shield and also a few of the tubular wires I use require this.
 
Come on chaps, I know that's what they're called but I tink Norm may be hinting that technically you cannot have gassless MIG because MIG stands for Metal Inert Gas, which is incidentally NOT what you are doing when you use CO2 for shielding.

MIG
MAG
TIG
TAG
MMA

Co2 is actually classed as an active gas (MAG), for mild steel other than new CO2 often gives better penetration and weld strength than Argon or a gas mix.
Argon realy is inert.
Gasless MIG is effectively an Auto-Feed version of MMA and a good solution for many situations.
BTW, anyone tried brazing with a MIG set? Body shops started over 10 years ago.
Regards,
Nick
 
Nick,
I do accept that descriptions of processes tend to incorrect. You are spot on.

I really was far more concerned with the problems which fluxed wire was supposed to cause in enclosed places. Not my view but people who were teaching the subject to VBRA standards at that time.

Currently, I have no experience with 'new' CO2 and used a mixture of argon and CO2 for general use but also for high strength low alloy steels of car body thicknesses.

I did try brazing using silicon copper wire but it meant using pure argon. I did see excellent examples but these were on the older manganese steels on classic cars. I did buy a roll but could not prevent it snagging and generally wasting my time and patience. Eventually, I used it up with oxy/acetyline.

Maybe others can show better results.

Cheers

Norman
 
I've got some silicon bronze rod that I used once in a while when I had the prop shop. I kept the rod, thinking I could maybe use it with my tig for work requiring brazing. Haven't tried it so far. Waiting for something to come along that's mine, and that won't create a catastrophe if it fails!
Dave
 
Norman,
I think you need a separate set of liner components for brazing, as with alluminium to avoid feed problems.
You may find feed will benefit from new feed rollers (I recondition mine by blasting the surface with fine carborundum media),
Regards,
Nick
 








 
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