welder question

Leroy

Well-known Member
I see all these posts about mig and tig and so on, I do not know what they mean. I have a Speigel 70 amp 110 volt machine that Dad bought used in I think 1959 that I learned to weld on, I also have a 225 Amp AC lincoln that I used to be able to do decent on flat surface welding when I could see better. About 15 years ago I would guess I bought a new 110 volt wire welder that I only ran one 2 pound coil of wire through because I could not get it to work. Do not remember the brand. It has no provision for a gas of any kind. Now the main question is what is this, a mig, tig or something else?
 
The Spiegel and the Lincoln use welding rods. That technology is referred to as SMAW (Shielded Metal Arc welding). The stick electrode is used up/deposited as you weld and the molten pool is protected by a shielding gas cloud produced by the flux coating on the rod burning as the rod melts.

MIG (Metal Inert Gas) welding is what your newer welder is doing. A spool of wire is fed thru a lead and gun, melted by and arc and deposited. Shielding of the molten pool is either accomplished by Inert gas being fed thru the lead from a bottle or by using special wire that has a flux core.

TIG (Tungsten Inert gas) welding uses a tungsten rod as an electrode and creates an arc between the tungsten and the work metal to create a molten pool. Wire rod is fed into the pool by hand to act as filler rod. Shielding gas from a tank is introduced thru the lead supplying power to the tungsten electrode. This process has some slight similarity to oxy-acetylene welding in procedure and technique.
 
On the part about being able to see better. I had the same problem. Finally loosened up my wallet a bit and bought one of those auto-darkening helmets. Now I can find the best part of my tri-focal glasses to look through and focus on the work, and then just start welding. Before, with a conventional welding helmet, I always lost track of exactly where I wanted to weld while going through the motions of dropping the helmet down.
 
The wire welder that doesn't use shielding gas, uses flux core wire. The process is called FCAW...Flux Core Arc Welding.

MIG machines can do FCAW by using flux core wire and not using the shielding gas. Since your machine doesn't have shielding gas capabilities it's technically not a MIG welder.
 
What Rusty sez... I had similar experience. I hate head mounted helmets that drop down. But at least with auto darkening, I can see where I'm at to start. Always used to use hand held helmets before. Better but still not the best.
With auto darkening, I still like to flood work with a 300 watt halogen work light. I suspect my welder instructor friend would have a field day at my expense, but you gotta do what you gotta do...
 
I think that is what I am going to have to do. have tryfocals and allso auto darkening helment
 
Ray,

Have you had any trouble with weld spatter hitting the bulb and blowing it out? That happened to me while I was trying to illuminate the work area with a conventional incandescent bulb. I know halogen bulbs are much hotter than regular incandescent bulbs, but I don't know whether they're hot enough to be immune to weld spatter. Weld spatter must leave the weld puddle at over 2000 degrees F. But I don't know how hot the molten metal is by the time it hits something a couple of feet away, and I don't know how hot the surface of a halogen bulb is.

Stan
 
Use one of the outdoor fixtures that had a plexiglass cover.Mount it on a pipe with a lamp dimmer and an ac outlet in a duplex box.The dimmer will let you run the lamp at reduced power to lengthen lamp life.Weld the pipe to an auto rim.If you are sharp enough to use 2 pipe sizes you can adjust the lamp height.
 
When I started wearing trifocals I went to the large window welding helmet. I have one now that also is an auto-darking.
 
You did not say what brand, the flux core wire feeder is. Look at the output label on the machine and see what type of voltage it outputs. If it is DC then that is good. If it is AC then not worth fooling with. Both MIG and Flux core are DC only processes. In short, there is not a mig wire or flux core wire made that is designed to work with AC. That said there are many unscrupulous manfactureres that offer AC output wire feeders and many fools buy them looking at the dirt cheap prices.

If you have DC output on that wire feeder like I am hoping you do then do verify that you have the polarity set correctly for the flux core and it should work fine on metal up to about 1/8" thick or so if a cheapo unit. Up to 3/16" thick metal can be handled if a better quality wire feeder. Much over that is fantasy land on even the best of quality 115 volt wire feeders. Mig or flux core is typically excels at thin metal welding on the units sized where an average homeowner can afford them. (FWIW I like Hobart Fab shield 21, aka E71T-11 for flux core wire welding. $19.99 for 2 lbs at any TSC and available in 0.030" or 0.035" diameters. Even though I have gas provision in my machine I typically use 0.030" Hobart E71T-11 flux core as I always weld outside which does not work well with MIG gas - wind blows shielding gas away).

Nothing wrong with an AC output stick welder like your Lincoln AC225 or even your little Spiegel. There are rods designed to work on AC output in stick machines. (6011, 6013, and especially 7014).
 
Here is a neat video on how you could do some crude tig welding with the AC-225 stick welder that you already have although you would need to either build or buy:
a) one of those cheater converters to DC (see em cheap on craigslist from time to time).
b) Air cooled tig torch $50 to $60 on ebay.
c) argon bottle and regulator (not real cheap).

FWIW: I spent the $50 for an ebay torch and did this myself since my Miller thunderbolt already put out DC and I already had an unused bottle and regulator for the cause. While it has been fun to play with; I can not say, I have truly needed it.

Remember this is crude tig welding. (copy and paste link into your browser if link does not work).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lV4tzg4zn0
 
mvphoto20653.jpg

My sil bought this welder at a sale and it didn't have any leads or an end on the power cord. After rounding up some necessary parts I finally bought the copper lead wire and hooked it all up a while ago and it stick welds! It has other capabilities but they are costly, so I'm gonna see what he wants to do. I just welded with it about 1 hr ago. It's a maxstar 200/miller
 

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