IMig 200 First Welds

I've just got my Everlast IMig 200 wired and did my first welds. My only welding experience has been running one bead about 8 years ago messing around with the welder at work. The top two welds are my first two stick welds ever. Not too pretty but I thought striking an arc was very easy with the 6013 3/32 rods on this machine. I've read how hard it is to strike an arc and that I would get the rods stuck a lot when learning but so far I haven't had a 3/32 rod stick yet. The 1/8 6011's were a little more difficult for me. The bottom welds were my first attempts at mig. The top one was the first and then it progressed from the bottom up. I think they are pretty cold welds but all I was really going for at this point was a straight line as I figure this stuff out. Any critiques are welcome.

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Welcome, Kendall! Congrats on the new machine. I have the 200 also, very pleased with it. What kind of projects do you have in mind? You say you're figuring things out... there's a MIG section at WeldingTipsAndTricks.com that you may already know about, it's a great resource if you haven't heard of WT&T.

Get yourself a tank of steel mix gas ... put some .030 wire in your machine and start doing some MIG welding ... then and only then will you experience the benefits of a MIG over stick ... I think when you get going it will blow away. Stick is a dinosaur art MIG and TIG are state of the art. It's nice that you can do stick welding with an IMIG but the whole point of a MIG is to do MIG ... seriously ... you will be amazed at what you can do with wire and gas ... it truly is an eye opener.

I've got some 75/25 gas and .030 loaded. Don't get me wrong I really enjoy mig but I've wanted to learn stick for a long time so I'm glad the machine will do both. I really wish that the machine had a sticker inside with suggested starting points for the voltage and speeds for different thicknesses and wire sizes. I've been using the mig calculator but my scrap that I'm practicing on is 1/8" and the calculator only shows settings for .035 in that thickness of steel. I know after awhile the settings will make more sense and it's fun figuring it out. Right now everything that I've tried has been cold but I'll keep cranking up the power and speed until I get there.

Dave, I've watched and read everything about mig and stick over at WT&T. I love that site! I'm about to build an A/V cabinet for work to house our sound board, computer, etc. It will be 6'x2' and 42" tall. It won't have much weight on it so will be good practice for building a proper welding table. The AV cabinet is going to be all 1.5" .120 square tubing with a plywood top. I really want to learn to build decorative metal fence.

Here are pics from day two welding. Pic 1 is more mig work, pic 2 is more stick, and pic 3 is stick joining some 3/16" plate. Again, I really need to work on getting more penetration with my mig.
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Originally Posted by Kendall

I've got some 75/25 gas and .030 loaded. Don't get me wrong I really enjoy mig but I've wanted to learn stick for a long time so I'm glad the machine will do both. I really wish that the machine had a sticker inside with suggested starting points for the voltage and speeds for different thicknesses and wire sizes. I've been using the mig calculator but my scrap that I'm practicing on is 1/8" and the calculator only shows settings for .035 in that thickness of steel. I know after awhile the settings will make more sense and it's fun figuring it out. Right now everything that I've tried has been cold but I'll keep cranking up the power and speed until I get there.

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There are a bunch of online MIG calculators that will give you some basic starting points.
HERE is a page with most of the formulas and conversions on it.
For everything you ever wanted to know about MIG, see this Lincoln document.
The only issue is that the readout for wire speed on the iMIG isn't in inches per minute, so you might need to learn the scale. Just hit the trigger for 6 seconds and measure how much wire comes out, Then multiply by 10 for your true inches per minute. Every MIG welder is a little different and even two of the same model can have slight differences in wire speed settings. The thing to learn is the proper sound. Set the voltage for the metal you are welding then turn up the wire speed until you get that sizzling sound. If you can, the fastest way to figure that out is to be in a position where you can weld a test plate, while you have a hand on the wire speed knob.

Mmmmm..... fried bacon. So good even your welder will try to imitate it.

After reading your last post I was all set to go out to my shop and take a picture of my Lincoln chart and post it but then I read Rambozo’s post and saw he put a link to one … even better. My DX200 also has stick function but I’ve never used that part of it as I have a nice old Miller Thunderbolt. In fact I primarily use my DX200 for aluminum and SS. For most of mild steel stuff I’m still using mig … it’s just so easy and fast and conservative on gas. With tig you have pre flow and post flow so it goes through the argon pretty fast; to the point that I upgraded to a larger tank. I’ll tell though … when it comes to detailed work on thin metal you can’t beat a TIG system and this DX 200 just knocks my socks off.

You are correct that they do look cold. It also looks like you make pretty tight movement which is something I did at first also. I would bet more heat and maybe moving a little faster or in a little bigger strides would make it pretty nice.

After looking over the info from Lincoln that Rambozo linked to I see that I was way off on my Voltage and wire speed settings. I'll be in the shop welding on thursday so I'll try the higher settings and see how it goes. Thanks for all the tips.

I got it cranked up to 22v today with a lot more wire speed and I was getting full penetration but man did everything speed up. It took some time getting used to moving faster and was harder to keep a straight line and not blow through. I'm guessing that i'm now a little hot but would rather be on this end than the cold side. All I can say is that at the higher speeds, you can burn through a small roll of wire in a hurry. Can anyone with a Imig 200 let me know what settings you would use for 1/8" steel with .030 wire. I was at 22V and the speed was around 3/4's of the way up. I know all the welders will be a little different but would be good to get close. I was having some issues with erratic arc starts and got some burn back a few times on time bad enough to foul the tip. I'm wondering if I need to check my tensions on the rollers and wheel to see if that's where my problems are. I was reading that burn back could be caused by to slow of wire speed but the speed seems really fast. Almost too fast?

If you are using 75/25 gas you could back down the voltage just a touch. That would slow things down just a little until you are more comfortable with it. For straight CO2 I would stay where you are. Unless you measure your wire speed, there is no real way to compare settings. I find that a line's width adjustment on the dial is often enough to go from bad to good. Doesn't that model have a burn back timer control, too?

As Rambozo said, you could count the wire to get an estimated speed. I know on my MTS unit I had to dial down the burn back some when I got it. Could be a possible place for you to check but if you are burning through the metal then you would probably be ok to slow things down a little all around. This would still push enough heat in.

As far as checking the tension on your rollers what I do is I put a piece of wood down and aim the torch at it and pull the trigger … if there is enough tension the wire won’t stop it will bend … then on the other hand you don’t want the tension do tight that it cuts little groves in the wire because it’s pinching too hard. On the point of fouling the tip … I sometimes get some of that so I periodically spray a little non-stick on it.

I got it dialed in, thanks to all. I ended up at 21.5V and 270 ipm and it was perfect for the 1/8". I got my Audio Visual Cabinet built and I'll post some photos over in the projects forum. I'm not sure if this has a burn back control if it does, where would it be?

You’re quite welcome … looking forward to seeing the pictures … not familiar with your particular machine so I can’t answer the question about a “burn back control” someone else will probably get back to you on that.

The I-MIG 200 doesn't have a burn back control. The MTS units do, and the Power I MIG 250P does. I can't think of another one we have that does currently.

Winky, pictures are up in the projects section of the forum in the subforum other fabrications. The pictures are pretty terrible from my phone but I'll try and get some better ones soon.

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Originally Posted by Kendall

Winky, pictures are up in the projects section of the forum in the subforum other fabrications. The pictures are pretty terrible from my phone but I'll try and get some better ones soon.

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Thanks ...will have a look.