welding rod

andyinct

Member
I have been welding some AR 400 with 7018 DC+. Its Radnor brand rod. I am getting a lot of splatter. Is it the brand of rod, the AR 400 or am I doing something wrong that is causing the spatter.
 
Because of the way AR400 is made, there is quite a bit of lot to lot variations in it, especially on the low end of the price scale. Often times higher grade plate is sold as 400 to meet demand or because it was rejected as high grade plate. A good test is a high quality sharp 1/4" drill bit. It will drill 400 as long as you keep pushing on it but if you let off it will work harden and stop drilling. If it is downgraded plate you wont drill it with ordinary bits. You can also center punch 400 without knocking the point off a good punch, 500 will flatten the point a bit. The reason this is important is you can weld 400 with 7018 but anything higher grade requires special rod and technique. On 400 plate you will get more spatter than on A36 but it should not be ugly with it. Could be the rod but I wouldn't bet on it. Running a hot stick on dirty metal will cause a lot of spatter. Cures are that are grinding away rust and slag from torch cuts and/or some preheat and turn the welder down. Thick sections over 3/8 or so should be heated anyway. We once sent back 10 tons of 4x8 sheets that arc blow was so bad you couldn't weld it at all, salesman blamed it on being handled with a magnet.
 
I was able to cut the pieces with a band saw. Didn't try center punch test. I will try turning the heat down and grind to bright shiny metal. It was fairly clean however.
 
Andy;

In addition to what butch(OH) has to say about AR 400, there's also the issue that Radnor brand rod is crap. Try using some of almost any other brand before you assign the blame to yourself or the metal.

Stan
 
I was stuck put of town awhile back and had to get some rods, and other accessoreis from the local welding supply. The guy had nothing but Radnor stuff in stock. It wasn't what I wanted, but I bought it because I had to have it.

That said, I'll agree with Stanly, I think the Radnor rods are the biggest bunch of crap I've ever used. Even the cable ends I needed to match up with some third party cables I had to use to get the needed length were crap.

Needless to say, I'll not be buying any more Radnor welding supplies any time soon.
 
7018 is very critical to having a dry coating and should be kept in a heated rod box or oven to drive the moisture out.
 
Thanks for the warnings about Radnor brand. 7018 has all but been replaced by the wire feeder in the shop, probably been 10 years since I last bought any. I was always a fan of LH-70 Lincoln myself but others had a disdain for that brand too.
 
If the bandsaw blade survived it must be 400 or lower plate. Possibly T-1/ar360. My experience with generic hardplate is that it is all over the scale. Hardox branded plate is usually pretty much where it is supposed to be.
 
Hey Butch;

People certainly have different opinions about what stick electrodes work best for them, but I've read so many complaints about Radnor brand on various welding forums---and no defenses of it that I can remember---that I feel comfortable describing it the way I did. Naturally I had negative expectations when I tried it, but I'm fairly sure I would have noticed that it was bad even if I hadn't heard anything about it before.

Funny that you should mention Lincoln LH-70. Just last night I went to Welding Web forum and read a thread about that very product. As you noted, opinions about it vary widely. It seemed to be evenly split between those who hate it and those who love it. It would be interesting to have Lanse make one of his always interesting videos about trying to find out under what conditions LH-70 excels versus the conditions under which it sucks.

Keep warm,

Stan
 
may not work but try changing polarity,i was welding some schedule 80 pipe with 7018 rods and kept getting honeycomb looking places in the weld, ask a coworker who was a boilermaker about it, he said your rods are damp and possibly rusted under the flux, new and dry rods solved the problem
 
excessive amperage will cause splatter. Try turning down the heat some. Have never ran Rancor, the Lincoln rods I have used I will run a 1/8 inch rod at around 120 amps,Flat. 105 amps vertical. Machines vary.
 

You never said what machine you're using, what amperage you're running at, or what position you're welding in.

Let me preface what I'm going to say below, by saying that I agree that Radnor brand rods are something I stay away from. I use Lincoln Excalibur, myself.

There are other options for dealing with spatter besides chucking the rods and buying new. This is assuming your machine settings are already right and you're familiar with how to run 7018. Also assuming that the amount of spatter actually matters - many times on AR plate it doesn't because of what the plate is being used for. I doubt any of the quarries I've welded wear plates for really care if there is any spatter on the inside of their crushers.

You can often use an anti-spatter spray to get rid of the BB's and make the ones that do stick, easier to remove. You can use a sacrificial piece of metal over the "good stuff." Something like roofing tin works well. I often place my arm or body in between metal I'm trying to save and let the leathers catch the spatter.

If you can destructively test a fused joint and it holds up, and if there are quick, easy ways around the spatter, you might as well just grin and bear it and burn those rods up.
 

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