I'm a terrible welder. Self taught. My goal is to get truck back on road asap, not going to pebble beach. You can look at my posts to see my awful work. I'm fine with it.
I'm butt welding patches into metal that often have some paint and rust and when I'm done theres no pinholes and its super strong. I've stopped even grinding them because I just don't care.
My mig is an 'astro mig 90' that I got on craigslist for $125 including a bottle. I upgraded to a 125 bottle.
One thing I really like is that my torch has a two step button, squeeze lightly the gas starts flowing, squeeze harder and I get wire and arc. This lets me hose an area with gas before welding, also to keep the gas going after the weld to put out fires and keep the weld away from oxygen while it cools. With whatever centrashield solid core wire I'm using the welds are nice and soft. Stopping the welds from insta-rusting makes cleanup super easy. Also I can just keep the gas going and stitch beads together about 0.75-1.5 seconds apart, really nice especially when chasing down and filling a rust patch in a footwell that I didn't see until too late.
Apparently all migs used to have valves in the torch but now they don't. I guess because good welders don't need it because they know that the most important thing is prep.
Problem is my current mig is weak and unstable, at higher settings or at lower wire speed. I tried my friends miller 211 and its just so much better to weld with, the wire doesn't hang up, the spark is always so consistent even if the metal isn't. Made me realize something is off with my device. Its so easy to weld with his machine.
But... a thing I hate about my friends miller is that I can't flow gas independently of the spark, on his machine they go on/off together and I freakin' hate it.
I've read about fancy welders that have a pre/post purge that can be programmed in but I just don't want to deal with that, I just need to give a little gas while the bead is cooling, wait until the area cools enough that the sealant won't ignite again.
I've read about all these welder innovations, pulse/etc, really these amazing new machines are digitally controlled today. With all this abstract control, why aren't there torches with wire speed control, a gas valve, etc? Id love to have a torch that let me adjust settings without de-contorting out of whatever confined space I'm in. Is this a thing? I'd love to control gas and also adjust wire speed without having to move my hands.
Seems like there ought to be a young hungry mig maker that has innovated in this area?
Whats going on? Am I just completely incompetent? Is what I'm doing so strange? Why doesn't this exist?
I'm butt welding patches into metal that often have some paint and rust and when I'm done theres no pinholes and its super strong. I've stopped even grinding them because I just don't care.
My mig is an 'astro mig 90' that I got on craigslist for $125 including a bottle. I upgraded to a 125 bottle.
One thing I really like is that my torch has a two step button, squeeze lightly the gas starts flowing, squeeze harder and I get wire and arc. This lets me hose an area with gas before welding, also to keep the gas going after the weld to put out fires and keep the weld away from oxygen while it cools. With whatever centrashield solid core wire I'm using the welds are nice and soft. Stopping the welds from insta-rusting makes cleanup super easy. Also I can just keep the gas going and stitch beads together about 0.75-1.5 seconds apart, really nice especially when chasing down and filling a rust patch in a footwell that I didn't see until too late.
Apparently all migs used to have valves in the torch but now they don't. I guess because good welders don't need it because they know that the most important thing is prep.
Problem is my current mig is weak and unstable, at higher settings or at lower wire speed. I tried my friends miller 211 and its just so much better to weld with, the wire doesn't hang up, the spark is always so consistent even if the metal isn't. Made me realize something is off with my device. Its so easy to weld with his machine.
But... a thing I hate about my friends miller is that I can't flow gas independently of the spark, on his machine they go on/off together and I freakin' hate it.
I've read about fancy welders that have a pre/post purge that can be programmed in but I just don't want to deal with that, I just need to give a little gas while the bead is cooling, wait until the area cools enough that the sealant won't ignite again.
I've read about all these welder innovations, pulse/etc, really these amazing new machines are digitally controlled today. With all this abstract control, why aren't there torches with wire speed control, a gas valve, etc? Id love to have a torch that let me adjust settings without de-contorting out of whatever confined space I'm in. Is this a thing? I'd love to control gas and also adjust wire speed without having to move my hands.
Seems like there ought to be a young hungry mig maker that has innovated in this area?
Whats going on? Am I just completely incompetent? Is what I'm doing so strange? Why doesn't this exist?
