Mig Welder Review

[RaisedByWolves]

Yes, very hot indeed.



Whats that frame 1/4"? 3/16? Somewhere in between?



Over all looks very good, This is with your new unit?

rated at 3,000 lbs 4k max. Not that the trailer it self would ever need it but if it was filled with wood and need to be off the hitch then it comes into play.

Wheel or foot?

 

[RaisedByWolves]

Disregard the unit question, just went and re read the beginning..

 

[Rspike]

Yes, very hot indeed.



Whats that frame 1/4"? 3/16? Somewhere in between?









Wheel or foot?

The frame is closer to 3/16 . The fish plate is 1/4" the jack is foot.(c- pic 9 ) Added a handle (top front ) so the trailer is easy to roll around empty, didnt want a wheel when loaded.

Looks like good penetration on pic#12, I’ll take a guess you had it set about 140 amps.

I think i had it around 160 +.

 

[brncreeper]

Looks good. What project is next?

 

[hamradio]

Ok. In regards to the muffler-
Who cares about good weld penetration on a muffler? No great amount of force is going to be applied to it. I can do a pretty good job on most things with my Handler 140. I made a really awesome looking snowplow mount for my four wheeler (I'm not done quite yet; I'd still got to make part of my pin attachment system). I do wish it did have the voltage control like a Miller, but it is good enough. My muffler on my 039 looks terrible, since I had a gap to fill when I welded it back together. It holds, though. Maybe if you were making a set of performance pipes for a snowmobile, then you'd want a good looking weld, but in my opinion, a chainsaw muffler isn't a big deal. If I'd have cared about how mine looked, I'd have really put some effort into the welds.

 

[hamradio]

I dont own a 110 welder chowdozer. BTW guys, this trailer was stick welded.

Looks good. What's the stick welder? Miller? Model?

 

[GPH85]

Over all looks pretty good, especially where you cleaned up the base of the joint...

Brace, however, you don't need something this wide... No matter how wide it is, it will still alow the whole frame to twist to either the left or right, which depending on terain driven on, you may find out can happen very easily...

Instead, I personally, would have done basically the same shape of a brace as you did, but instead I would have made it shorter and had pieces sticking both up and down that I could have heated and bent around to the top (had a rectangle with the sharp corners notched off) and then continued to bend it on around the channel of the frame "kinda like a wrap and tuck"... This way you wouldn't have had any straight across welds, but it would have been 3 times as strong, using less material and it would have controlled all directions of movement, plus the heat created from the welds would have stressed the material in more than just one direction (heat pull)

SECOND off, don't use a hard grit grinding disc to do final cleaning on your surface... YES you can use a regular disc to "initially" knock down the humps, but always, always use a "tiger pawl" or sand paper type grinding disc (can be picked up at any Lowes) to do your final cleaning... You would be extremely surprised on how the tiny surface cuts created by a hard disc will cause metal "in general" or the weld itself to tear straight through "kinda like splitting a log with a splitter - once starts just keeps on going"

Just some thoughts and advice... Do with them as you please...
BUT, you did do a nice job on the redo, I would have just done some things differently, but then again, I guess we all have our own preferences

Greg

 

[RaisedByWolves]

 

[oneadam12]

whoa! Sorry guys, didn't mean to start a small war here. I'll try to get some pics of the splitter tomorrow and post them. RBW was correct though, preheat + multiple passes. I am NOT a welder, that being said I can weld but I know there will probably be multiple problems if someone stats looking hard enough. I don't have a problem with that because it does what I need.:biggrinbounce2:

 

[Rspike]

Me too ... GPH85 about the fish plate ..... this is how we do transport truck and big frames this way except we'll add an extra inside C channel to the inside of the frame. We have done 100's of reframes this way and havent had a crack or break yet. I thought the inside C channel would of been over kill on a trailer this size + this is something i did at home in my garage shop on the weekend. I thought i would stick with posting a project more along the lines of something any home owner could do or want to do in his shop and a "wood trailer" to keep in lines with the forum. Good input is always welcome in a forum thread .

 

[GPH85]

OK, you can take a small square or rectangle, knock the sharp pointed corners off and turn it into an 8 sided shape "you can leave them pointed / either way works", put it on the place where your bracing "diamond shaped if looking at horizontally", make sure to leave enough sticking both above and below what your welding to (in a 6 inch piece of channel, you usually have what, 1.5 - 2 inch long sides plus the 1/2" for going around rounded edges "that make the (C) shape", so in this case leave 3 inches sticking both above and below the channel), you then completely weld or just tack weld the brace on where you want it (just the big area section of the channel at this point), you can then heat the brace and bend both the top and bottom around the channel and then heat the last little dab and bend it around...

Unfortunately when dealing with angled "braced" areas like this, you will have to take the needed amount out of the center of both the parts of the brace that will be bent around or you will wind up with a big hump in the center (this brace is easiest to mount when "beefing" up straight sides)... Then if needed, you don't have to use another piece of channel, just a flat piece of steel to weld in the back side of the channel for any further bracing...

SEE a regular brace like what your using will allow for a whole lot of flex "depending on how thick both the steel of the brace is and the steel of the channel"... YES it does strengthen the joint, but still will allow for any sort of movement in any direction...

Hope this helps to clear some things up "I thought maybe you had seen this before and would have known what I had meant by the fold and tuck comment"

Sorry for the confusion...
Greg

 

[GPH85]

OK I decided not to wait on using a cheapo camera, so I used my digital phone camera... I know the pics aren't necessarily that great, but it will give you something else to talk about, right

Please keep in mind that these welds are around or even over 1.5 years old and are from a test that I had to take (a looks test)... AND I'm by no means an easy test taker, so these are not exactly the best welds I could have done at the time, not to mention what I could do now with the same material...

Metal thickness = 3/32 on round tubing / just a touch under 3/32 on sqaure tubing... Welder used was a 110 volt Lincoln with infinate adjustability / not a bad welder after I got "broke-in" to it... Still prefer Miller though...

You will also be able to see a place where I got a point counted off because instead of ending (with a lot of heat) in a place, I started there and didn't allow for enough "heat soak" to really get the weld melted in, so I wound up with what the instructor called two pinholes on each side of the gusset...

Well here they are... Sorry I don't have any other weld pics, but perhaps these will do...














Please feel free to hand out any comments you wish...
Greg

 

[04ultra]

Please feel free to hand out any comments you wish...
Greg

Look's real good ..

 

[Andy1234]

Those were made with a 110V welder?!?!?!?!?

Please elaborate....

 

[Rspike]

OK I decided not to wait on using a cheapo camera, so I used my digital phone camera... I know the pics aren't necessarily that great, but it will give you something else to talk about, right

Please keep in mind that these welds are around or even over 1.5 years old and are from a test that I had to take (a looks test)... AND I'm by no means an easy test taker, so these are not exactly the best welds I could have done at the time, not to mention what I could do now with the same material...

Metal thickness = 3/32 on round tubing / just a touch under 3/32 on sqaure tubing... Welder used was a 110 volt Lincoln with infinate adjustability / not a bad welder after I got "broke-in" to it... Still prefer Miller though...

You will also be able to see a place where I got a point counted off because instead of ending (with a lot of heat) in a place, I started there and didn't allow for enough "heat soak" to really get the weld melted in, so I wound up with what the instructor called two pinholes on each side of the gusset...

Well here they are... Sorry I don't have any other weld pics, but perhaps these will do...



Please feel free to hand out any comments you wish...
Greg

Dem be some purty welds there Greg. We went with that kind of welding "whip-n-go" or "pause and weld" as we called it and come to find after many tests and destruction - stress runs that this kind of welding just didnt hold up. It looks real nice but just dont work on the thicker steel. All the dips in the toes with this kind of tack welding caused stress and didnt fill on the edges and the over weld ended up real cold . No problem on the thin stuff you have pictured. We thought we had something with this style but it ended up being a flop on anything 1/4' and up.

We ended going back to the weave for over all strength and durability. Luckily we coulght it before any work was sent out. If it works 4 u thats awesome. We have to keep the strong welds with in shop and this tack welding stringer style got the boot tho it looked nice. We'll keep the weave. Dan

 

[SmokinDodge]

GPH85 I see a future in thumb modeling for you :biggrinbounce2: . Nice looking welds. I can't comment on the strenght of them, but they are a lot better than the double bubble welds I see locally.

I have to cast a vote for the Hobart 135 handler. I run it with that crappy flux core wire (no bottles) but I haven't met anything yet that it couldn't repair, temporarily. I don't have any other mig experience I ran all stick before, but this one does what I need it too.

I just picked up a Lincoln SA 200 engine driven welding machine for a song. I can't wait to run a few beads with that bad boy. Between it and the Hobart I ought to be able to tackle most any project.

 

[RaisedByWolves]

SahWEET Weld!!


What machine did you do this with?


Would you know if its high frequency or not?

 

[GPH85]

That wasn't a "tack" weld (stop and go)... It was a (J) or (L) hook weave... You can look at the heat signature to see how far the heat spread out over the piece (although it is thin and will spread more, you can still see heat consistency)... Yes, my spacing did get a little wide on some of the weaves creating some of the places like what you've marked on your weld and really needed to be tight like it was on the round to flat weld... I learned to weld like this with a mig from guys who build Nascar chassi's so I don't guess it can be "all" bad On the "butt" joint on the backside of the two pieces of square tubing I used your basic backstep... I also beveled all places to be welded, so there's more penetration then there may seem...

Yes the (stop and go) spot welding is very bad and I've never welded like that unless it was extremely thin sheet metal, but I still try to weld with a constant bead even on sheet metal

However, your weave there does look like it's got plenty of penetration...

 

[Rspike]

SahWEET Weld!!


What machine did you do this with?


Would you know if its high frequency or not?

That was a Millermatic 210 setting of 4 / 60 short arch. 22~C-25 gas .30 wire ER70S-6, L-56 wire W/weave. Normally we use "spray arc" welding 5/16" and up.

 

[Rspike]

That wasn't a "tack" weld (stop and go)... It was a (J) or (L) hook weave... You can look at the heat signature to see how far the heat spread out over the piece (although it is thin and will spread more, you can still see heat consistency)... Yes, my spacing did get a little wide on some of the weaves creating some of the places like what you've marked on your weld and really needed to be tight like it was on the round to flat weld... I learned to weld like this with a mig from guys who build Nascar chassi's so I don't guess it can be "all" bad On the "butt" joint on the backside of the two pieces of square tubing I used your basic backstep... I also beveled all places to be welded, so there's more penetration then there may seem...

Yes the (stop and go) spot welding is very bad and I've never welded like that unless it was extremely thin sheet metal, but I still try to weld with a constant bead even on sheet metal

However, your weave there does look like it's got plenty of penetration...

good input GPH85. Two NASCAR teams are TIG welding chassis as of last year. They are Penske and Yates. Mild steel is fine for mig but with the Chr/Moly "should" only be welded with TIG . The mig welding in Nascar is "kinda" like your style of welding GPH85 but its more of a smooth stringer with even toes on the edges and the ripples are a lot closer together. They have the ripples look but dont look like tig drops or spot weldes. Your on the right track if the "Nascar" mig style is what your after. Over coming the open toes are hard to get mastered. NOTE: The Nascar pic's below are not "my" welds.