A few welds with my IMIG 200...

[Brian Ski]

Well maybe this is a good place to ask... Great to hijack a thread. I am a backyard self taught welder. I was told when making a MIG weld you want to swirl the torch. On Jody's videos he called it making e's hard to describe it. He even showed it when using a TIG. When you weld you run the torch like a lower case written e and keep hooking them together... It comes out like swirls or similar to stacking dimes. Then I see a lot of people weld straight across... The welds look more like a caterpillar.

Just another way of welding or is one better than the other???

[Rambozo]

Well maybe this is a good place to ask... Great to hijack a thread. I am a backyard self taught welder. I was told when making a MIG weld you want to swirl the torch. On Jody's videos he called it making e's hard to describe it. He even showed it when using a TIG. When you weld you run the torch like a lower case written e and keep hooking them together... It comes out like swirls or similar to stacking dimes. Then I see a lot of people weld straight across... The welds look more like a caterpillar.

Just another way of welding or is one better than the other???

It all depends on the kind of joint, and the conditions. Uphill, downhill, flat or overhead and the amount of groove to fill or fillet to add. Also the size has some effect, as it's hard to do the same kind of wire manipulations on really small welds, so you simplify your motions. On a deep groove you almost want to follow the contour of the groove, and be slightly ahead in the center, almost like making a series of inverted vees. There are many techniques that help to achieve the same thing and that is a good tie to the base metal and weld metal. If you are welding from right to left or left to right, the little cursive e's or u's do that same motion where you dwell slightly on each side of the weld and move pretty quickly over the center. The description of motion varies depending on how you are viewing the weld. All of these are pretty small motions on something like 11ga. It's easier to see the effects on much thicker metal, then you just scale down your motions. But by the time you get to sheet metal you are basically doing a straight push or drag. Maybe a robot welder could get a slightly better weld by doing ultra small motions, but my eyes are no longer up to the task of moving something accurately just a few thousandths of an inch. The speeded up videos really help to show the motions. Someday I will have to try recording some welds and speed them up to see what they look like.

[SeanMurphy265]

I whip it like you run flux core (with shielding gas), but that's mostly from habit. I like running .035 wire in my Imig200.

[everlastsupport]

Welds look good. How did you square things up? A jig, tack and square? The heat can sometimes tweak you without a tacks.