Help Welding a Welder Cart

[henryarnold]

(09-15-2012, 01:15 PM)Rickabilly Wrote:

(09-15-2012, 11:50 AM)EdK Wrote: I was using flux core wire but that shouldn't be an excuse.

Actually Ed it's a perfectly valid reason, not an excuse, as far as hobby sized welders go, I've never seen a decent looking weld off of flux cored wire. So after 15 years as a trained weld inspector not one pretty flux cored weld, might be a good idea to steer clear of that stuff

There are some proper uses for the flux cored process but these are mostly involving very specific metallurgical reasons often to add powdered alloying materials to the weld pool for hard facing and other reasons, these wires are invariably used on much larger machines than those available to hobbyists, as always a little bit of extra current hides a variety of welding sins, and hobby sized machines just don't have the grunt required.

If you can afford it always spring for a bottle of gas and use it at the right flow rate in order to both create a nice weld and to do it economically.

Best Regards
Rick

Ed,
Rick is right. The weld I showed was TIG with gas. I tried MIG with flux core and it was horrible not to mention the clouds of smoke, chipping the slag away, and clean up with a wire brush. It still was ugly. You should switch to CO2/Argon mix. You will see a remarkable improvement.
Henry