Flux core wire welder advise

My welds with it aren't pretty like with the stick on DC with a 7018 rod, but I can grind them off and they look pretty.

Since it is 115v, I just put it on my work bench along side what I am working on and go to welding. I use the .035 flux wire.

Mark

I agree that fluxed cored for thin gauge welding is not the ideal welding process as warpage will be servere. Joint design and prep would play a huge factor on controlling warpage for any process chossen.

A good GMAW machine with solid wire and cover gas will work alot better but will still warp thin SM even under the best of conditions as your putting in to much filler metal at one time thus causing a shrinkage problem or warpage.

You need a process where the least amount of filler metal is added to obtain 100% penatration and that leaves Tig or gas welding.

With Tig you can add filler metal or use the base metal as a filler thus obtian a very narrow bead causing the least amount of base metal distortion.

Gas welding can also be used for the same reason but is harder to learn than Tig. Once you master the Gas welding techinque you will then know why and what causes metals to join, why heat input control is very important, why the correct amount of filler metal is very important and what the true meaning of heat fusion is.

T_Bone