At Home In The Woods

dave1949 · Apr 17, 2013

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 · Apr 17, 2013

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 · Apr 18, 2013

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 · Apr 18, 2013

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 · Apr 18, 2013

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 · Apr 18, 2013

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 · Apr 18, 2013

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 · Apr 26, 2013

catdozer said:
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 said:
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