Attaching wire feed to a stick welder

[muddstopper]

Is this what your welder looks like? This is mine and if it looks like this it is definitely more than 10 years old. I think lincoln may have some info on their site.



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Yep that is pretty much the same machine I have. I gave $1200 for the machine and it came with 50ft of leads, tig torch and foot petal and a bottle of gas, a ton of rods and tungsten. I got it from the guy that bought it new, but the machine sat in a corner covered up for several years. It looks new. It has now sat in my shop for a year and except for a little practice with the tig, I havent used it at all. The old tombstone has been pretty reliable and adequant for 99% of all the welding I do. The 175 mig does the other 1% and does a pretty good job up to about 1/4in. I have done thicker metal with it, but I usually reserve the thick stuff for the tombstone. The 50ft leads on the idealarc is the primary reason why I havent used it much. I dont need that much leads inside my shop, but I hate the thoughts of cutting the lead, never know when you have to weld something that wont fit inside the shop. I could take the leads off the tombstone and put on it, thought about it several times, and considered just buying some new 25ft'ers and setting the long leads back incase I do need them. And i could just buy some connectors and cut the leads I have. Just havent gotten around to it. Usually any welding I do is on the spur of the moment when something breaks. Aint got time to run to the welding shop then, so just keep on doing what I have been doing with whats already hooked up.

Project I am about to start will require a ton of welding which is the reason I am considering doing a little swapping around with welders before I start. Would like to have a all in one machine, stick/tig/mig. That way I dont have leads from different machines crisscrossing across the shop floor in a tangled mess. I figured if I could find a wire feeder to work with the idealarc, problem solved. Sounds like my ideal wont work so, I'll use what I have and be happy to have it.

 

[Arc weld]

Voltage sensing wire feeders will work on CC machines but you need to be over a certain amount of volts. Usually around 22-24 is the minimum they will work properly. That's why it was mentioned you need to stay in spray transfer. To get the higher volts. you'll need a higher wire feed speed(amps). If you are doing lots of wire welding, you'll need to consider the duty cycle of the machine. Being it's a TIG machine I don't know if I'd want to run a lot of high amp wire with it. I'd e-mail Lincoln and see what they say. Does the project you're doing require high strength welds, IE/ 7018? Hobart Fabshield 21B is a general purpose flux-core wire. The flux-core wires for higher strength, 7018 like, welds are pricey! If you want more production and don't need 7018 strength, get some 5/32" or 3/16" 7024 and go to town. 7024 is/was the go to rod for production stick welding. There is also 7028 that is a higher deposition 7018 but both these rods(7024, 7028) are for flat or horizontal welding only. The other option is renting a CV machine for your big project.

As far as machines, you have a good AC/DC TIG welder with high frequency. The so called all-in-one welders are very misleading. They are only DC and can't TIG weld aluminum. I think the machine you have would be a much better TIG welder and probably stick as well. I would guess it uses the same or very similar components as the standard Idealarc 250 which is an outstanding machine.

 

[muddstopper]

The project is a firewood processor. Most of the high strength welds will be the cyl mounts and the wedge, which I planned to stick weld anyways. Everything else will just be tubeing and angle iron, so I can get by with what I have. I have never even seen spray transfer, done a little reading on the subject but dont have the machine to try it. I appreciate the replys from everyone

 

[Arc weld]

Spray transfer usually refers to higher voltage solid wire MIG welding with a different shielding gas mix. When wire welding there are 3 types of metal transfer. Short circuiting, globular and spray. Flux-core usually has globular or spray transfer. The data sheet should say what type of metal transfer the wire has. Solid wire can work in all 3. The determining factor is usually the volts the wire is run at. Spray transfer is not possible with solid wire using the common c-25 shielding gas. It probably sounds confusing to people not in the welding trade.

If it was me, I weld everything up with 7018 and maybe 6010 depending on the type of joint and be done with it. A ton of welding is a relative term. I worked on one weld that took 2 people 2 1/2 shifts to complete using 1/4" 7018.

 

[rankrank1]

Agree with the other posters, as I am not sure why you would even want one of those 3-N-1 welders as those things are usually a compromise and rarely do Aluminum. Often a hassle to switch between processes too.

You already have an excellent tig rig that will do both steel and aluminum (the idealarc).
You already have an excellent stick machine (again the idealarc).
You have a serviceable stick unit in the tombstone (but certainly no idealarc, but still a good enough stick machine for a home owner).
You even have a nice wire feeder already in your 230 volt powered mig unit. (much better than most peoples 130 volt machines).

Heck you got lots of welding processes covered and with mostly higher end machines to boot. If it were me that idealarc would get put to good use stick welding that heavy plate. Leads being too short is a problem. Leads being too long is merely a minor inconvenience and never a problem. Simply pull out what you need and leave the rest laying in the floor in an intentional randomized imperfect circle coil. (I avoid coils in a perfect circles on any cords so as to avoid transformation or loss).

 

[muddstopper]

Agree with the other posters, as I am not sure why you would even want one of those 3-N-1 welders as those things are usually a compromise and rarely do Aluminum. Often a hassle to switch between processes too.

You already have an excellent tig rig that will do both steel and aluminum (the idealarc).
You already have an excellent stick machine (again the idealarc).
You have a serviceable stick unit in the tombstone (but certainly no idealarc, but still a good enough stick machine for a home owner).
You even have a nice wire feeder already in your 230 volt powered mig unit. (much better than most peoples 130 volt machines).

Heck you got lots of welding processes covered and with mostly higher end machines to boot. If it were me that idealarc would get put to good use stick welding that heavy plate. Leads being too short is a problem. Leads being too long is merely a minor inconvenience and never a problem. Simply pull out what you need and leave the rest laying in the floor in an intentional randomized imperfect circle coil. (I avoid coils in a perfect circles on any cords so as to avoid transformation or loss).

I have never been more than a hobby welder at best. Lots of proper welding proceedures I dont know.Any formal training I have had with welding was in shop class in high school back in the early 70's. My main concern was with the mig. Once I got one, it seems that is what I like to use the most. First mig was a 12 5hobart, then a 135 lincoln, seems I am always wanting more heat. The 175mig does a good job on just about everything I put it on, but I feel it would be better if I had a little more amps to throw at the weld. Which is why I was considering a wire feed for the idealarc. I think if I had the exrta amps, I would probably use the mig even more than I already do, not really neccessary I know since I do have other options.

As for spray welding, what kind of amps or volts are required and if you dont use c25 sheilding gas, what do you use, pure CO2? pure argon?

 

[Shield Arc]

I played around with spray just to see what it was all about. I rented a bottle of C-10. 10% CO2 / 90% argon. I understand that if you use 98% argon and 2% oxygen you can get into spray faster. Some people like C-5 over C-10.
In my opinion if you're not in a really high production mode it is not worth the trouble! The metal has to spotless! I'll take dual shield over spray any day of the week.

Here are the results I got with spray.

 

[rankrank1]

...My main concern was with the mig. Once I got one, it seems that is what I like to use the most....

Your post #21 says you use your tombstone 99% of all the welding you do and only use your mig the other 1% in your welding tasks. I took that to mean you liked stick and decently good at it.

I did not comment on adding the wire feeder to your idealarc as it seemed like a pricey addition for something you would only use 1% of the time - plus the other fellas covered it better than I could have anyways. I simply wanted to point that you do currently have some very nice machines capable of handling your upcoming task. I imagine if you put that idealarc to some practice some that you would be quite impressed with it.

I am certainly not a person to judge skill level as I lack that too (no formal training at all). I get by with less skill and certainly less in the way of welding machines compared to what you currently have at your disposal. Since my skill level is limited I do not tackle what I consider to be potentially risky projects. (My arsenal: Lincoln SP-135P 115 volt wire feeder and Miller Thunderbolt AC/DC 230 volt buzzbox stick machine). My rule of thumb is I will only attempt to weld something if there is zero chance that me or anyone else is a candidate for injury if my weld were to fail. While none of my welds have ever broken, if it is something I deem critical then I pay someone to weld it instead of trusting myself.

Can not comment on your spray arc question. I have never done it (I have only ever weld short circuit style with wire feeder) although I would like to try it sometime but it takes a larger type machine than I have although I imagine your idealarc with a wire feeder just might do it. We have some larger machines at work that I may try to play with one sometime just for kicks, but I think there is also some gas bottle changes involved as far as what is the optimum shielding gas to use in order to do spray arc well. I doubt we have those alternate varietys of shielding gas at work as we mostly have just the simple stuff (75% CO2 and 25% Argon) and (some 100% Argon).

 

[Arc weld]

You need fairly high volts (25+) and amps for spray transfer. Even if you did hook up a wire feeder to your Idealarc, I don't think it has enough oomph to run spray transfer. You need at least 85% argon/CO2 mix to run spray transfer. 85/15, 90/10 and 92/8(O2) are common mixtures for spray transfer.

 

[muddstopper]

rank, I know I like the idealarc, found that out from the first bead I ran with it. super smooth. I only have one 230v plug in in my shop, which is why I havent gotten around to using it more. Now, I have to share the same plug for the tombstone, mig, and plasma cutter. The idealarc is heavy and it aint on wheels, kind of makes it hard to pull out from the wall to plug something else in. I'll get around to it sooner or later and probably before I start the processor build. been planing on building a cart to mount the idealarc and mig on, bought the wheels, just havent had time to get it done.