Need Help with Dual shield mig

keep getting these little long pits that look like a worm crawled through the puddle.

INFO: I am using .045 Lincoln outershield elite in my Power Mig 255. I installed the proper feed rollers, liner, and tip. Setting the voltage at 26 and wire speed at 350ipm (per specs) I set out welding a lap joint on 1/4" plate. Got the worm lines. changed polarity, got the worm lines. adjusted voltage and wire speed repeatedly for 20 3" passes, still worms. went from dragging to pushing, worms. went from making c's to e's, worm tracks. i even got desperate and used a stick type whip and pause, worms. adjusted gas several times ranging from 25 to 40cfh, still the same.


i am at the end of my patience and would appreciate any input. I believe the proper acronym is FCAW-G. I was told this is the way to go for my type of ag-industrial welding due to penetration and versatility.

Also I don't have a bottle of pure CO2 on hand, running Ar/ CO2 and have Ar on the TIG cart and Tri-Mix sitting the benches.

i am thinking maybe slow down and put up with big bubbly welds?

Can you post some pictures?

I'm guessing the wire size is too big for the welder unless you have it connected to 3 phase power, .045 wire is pretty big wire if you only have 250 amps on single phase power. Try a smaller wire size and see what happens , one other thing 350 wire speed is too fast try 200 -250

let us know your result

I too think the feed is too fast, but I think 260 to 290 should be right.

The manual in my Hobart confirms that. Also, is 26 the starting voltage or the actual welding voltage?
My chart shows a start voltage of either 26 or 28, but it slopes to 20 (or 22) during the welding process. Based upon the 2 recommended settings for .045 wire

I am working on uploading pix.

the welder does a good job running .045 solid wire so i don't suspect the flux core wire is too big, however i use .035 L56 wire for about everything else.

The specs on the wire show DC+ 22-25v @ 175ipm, 24-27v @ 250ipm, 25-28v @ 300ipm, 26-29v @ 350ipm, 27-20v 350ipm.

i ran all of above settings thinking it just shows each setting for different speeds and base metal thickness. i stopped at the last setting because the next setting in specs shows a 260amp current and my machine tops out at 255A. I did later run it higher but with little success (looked like dog butt)

26volts is starting point and wire speed could be it, the best weld came from 23 volts @ 180ipm. it had the same craters but aside from that the weld was ok, the higher settings seemed to spatter more and look horrible. i cut up a couple welds and there were not pockets inside the weld just the nasty trenches in the surface that look like a crack waiting to happen.

hope to have pix soon, thanks for all the help so far

first 2 i ran my usual .035 just to make sure i didn't bump my head and loose all ability to make decent looking bubble gum!

welder label and box lid from wire

Sometimes you have to go with what you know, your .035 welds look great, want more penetration change the gas to CO2, as far as the .045 wire goes I would dump it, could be bad wire who knows. Give that roll of wire to somebody who uses it to see how they make out with it.

Geezer, that was my thought after two days of messing with it but I hate to give up. I don't need to be able to weld it....I just want to. It's kind of a curse, I always push to learn new things, even when it is a waste of time.

I thought this process would be a lot easier to get on to, so far i have invested more time and energy than I did with TIG and have yet to produce a weld I am happy with.

For now I am taking your advice and swapping back to my solid wire I have grown to love but I will not give up on dual shield, if just to be able to say....." Yea, I can do that"

Thanks for the advice

Quote:

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Originally Posted by geezer

Sometimes you have to go with what you know, your .035 welds look great, want more penetration change the gas to CO2, as far as the .045 wire goes I would dump it, could be bad wire who knows. Give that roll of wire to somebody who uses it to see how they make out with it.

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I'm with geezer on this too.

The only other thing I can think of is that maybe the shielding gas and flux are not playing nicely.

Did you try running without gas to see what the welds look like? Then maybe add/increase the gas flow rate to see what effect its having on the bead?

Pull with the gun and see if that helps. Also a fast osillation and tighter arc will help. A little more prep will help too. It looks like some gas may be getting trapped under the weld.

Here is a quote from another web site: For the best all position E71T-1 gas shielded flux cored wires, I recommend either the ESAB 1.2 mm dual shield wires (This is an Alloy Rod wire and Alloy Rod developed these wires). I also strongly recommend any Kobelco argon CO2 and straight CO2 wires.

While I recommend the made in Cleveland Lincoln "L50" MIG wires, I have never recommended the Lincoln gas shielded flux cored products as I found there wires have created many weld issues for me. In their optimum weld parameter range, the all position Lincoln E71T1 wires that I tested, provided erratic weld transfer which suggests a wire chemistry imbalance and also extensive worm tracks resulted. In contrast to the ESAB / Kobelco wires, the Lincoln E71T-1 gas shielded wires also provided a narrower optimum weld parameter range, with less control of low and high amp settings. For the weld shop this means that the Lincoln wire I tested, would provide less weld deposition and less weld fusion potential for vertical and horizontal welds.

Check out this site: http://www.weldreality.com/equipment_evaluation.htm

It pretty much explains why .045 wire and pulse welding are the joke of the welding industry, especially for guys that are limited by single phase power machines.

Your welds with .045 are similar to the welding on a ford pickup truck frame (that bad). (see the pic's on that site).

Geezer, Thanks for the link, I checked it out and at one point he mentioned just about anything can be welded with an 035 or 045 gas shielde, flux core wire on a conventional MIG. That's good news because it goes along with what I had heard and the reason I will figure out what I am doing wrong. The best thing I saw on that sight was in a reply he made to someones question. He said make sure to use serrated drive wheels for flux core ( I am) and make sure the tension is not too high...... I just reduced my tension by half, I need to look into what it should be.

I blamed the crud I was welding through until I got the same results on clean steel. This wire seems to have a fast freezing puddle. I Pushed and pulled and changed my "mode" over and over. The best results came from slowing down and not weaving as much. I also have ran gas pressures from 20cfh to 45cfh. No real difference until the outer boundry each way.

I will have another crack at it with proper tension on the rollers and I am not ruling out another bad bottle of gas? I got a bad or mislabeled bottle of Argon that played games with my emotions while practicing with the TIG

Glad to be of help if I can, lots of neat reading on that site, and every bit of knowledge makes us smarter.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by notawelder

keep getting these little long pits that look like a worm crawled through the puddle.

INFO: I am using .045 Lincoln outershield elite in my Power Mig 255. I installed the proper feed rollers, liner, and tip. Setting the voltage at 26 and wire speed at 350ipm (per specs) I set out welding a lap joint on 1/4" plate. Got the worm lines. changed polarity, got the worm lines. adjusted voltage and wire speed repeatedly for 20 3" passes, still worms. went from dragging to pushing, worms. went from making c's to e's, worm tracks. i even got desperate and used a stick type whip and pause, worms. adjusted gas several times ranging from 25 to 40cfh, still the same.


i am at the end of my patience and would appreciate any input. I believe the proper acronym is FCAW-G. I was told this is the way to go for my type of ag-industrial welding due to penetration and versatility.

Also I don't have a bottle of pure CO2 on hand, running Ar/ CO2 and have Ar on the TIG cart and Tri-Mix sitting the benches.

i am thinking maybe slow down and put up with big bubbly welds?

---

Worm holes are usually a result of gas marking,ie to close,make sure you have 5/8-3/4 stickout on this diameter wire more on larger size wire,this is 2x as much as short arc mig.

We had the same problems for years with a particular brand of wire in 1/16" and 5/64" dia, The process that puts the flux in the wire was faulty. The wire started as a flat piece of material. As it was feed thru the forming process to make it a round wire the flux was deposited onto the partially formed wire. There problem was that the flux was not being distributed evenly causing air pockets and voids after forming it into a round product.The settling is what gave us the worm hole problem. The distributor of the wire we were using found the problem after opening up a section of wire and finding small voids in the powdered flux. At that time we changed brands and had no more such problems.

This was something that was a major concern to us ,as the welding process was for over the road and off road trailer chassis with GVW weight ratings to 80,000 pounds.

Where I work we run.52 ( I believe) one step up from .45 Lincoln dual shield wire. I think it lays in flat and produces a nice looking weld. We run CO2 gas, I think 75/25 could be part of your problem. This is the wire I learned how to mig weld with. All of our welders whip it back and forth. When you get it set right it will run extremely smooth and have little to no splatter.