Alpha, check out weldreality.com has tons of useful info on just the thing you're doing. Also what is the wall thickness and diameter of that pipe? Ten minutes seems an awful long time for that by looking at the pictures.

 

Now that I look more closely at the pics that is a spiraling weld around the pipe end to end? That makes more sense. Guess I gotta pay more attention huh!

 

The bigger pipe is 8" OD, 1" wall thickness. We are just trying to run normal contact tips to failure for a baseline comparison. So yeah we are using a trolley and a pandjiris to weld sprials to get the longest beads possible, each lasted 10 minutes, we have done about 1.5 hours of straight welding as of now, arc is still stable and chugging away. The HI is decent, even on the 1" pipe we can't do too many passes. Running 30V and with our feed speed the current settles around 200A, hoping it will fail soon...get a free tan out of it

 

just funnin you there are times i would give my right arm for that set up

 

It is nice, but not mine, I wish it was.....dang I will get something someday. But doing research usually gets nice stuff donated

 

I pulled our mild steel weld procedure for a 4G position.
ER705-6 wire
75%/25% Ar/CO2 at 30 CFM
125 to 150 Amps DC reverse polarity
Wire speed of 150 ipm with a travel speed of 7 to 10 ipm.
Thats probably a little hot for your welder to run 100% duty cycle

 

What kind of voltage would that be? I got the digital wire speed/voltage, doesn't display Amps though.

I have had decent success today, but still having some porosity issues. Also have some issues where the wire melts back to the contact tip, so you don't get the nice constant sound. Everything is ground clean prior to welding. Temps are up today.

Also on some welds, gets a good covering brown smoke. I don't remember this being and issue when I was welding years ago, but again, that was years ago. This happens on both the bare steel and the painted steel (again, it all ground clean prior to welding). I've got a couple friends who say they are decent at welding, I'm gonna get them to come give this machine a spin, see if its me or the welder.

 

what voltage are you running?it sounds like yho need to turn your wire speed up. turn it up until it quits burning back on you.turning your volts down will also help but there is a balance.so far as your porosity goes try turning your gas up .

 

for that process, we run 15 to 18 volts.

Is your welder set up for constant current or constant voltage? Our welders have adjustments for the current, but the voltage is just displayed.

 

Voltage is adjustable. With my unit, its pre programmed for the process and metal and gives you your wire speed and voltage, all of which you can fine tune. But something went south today on the machine, either the gas solenoid, or the PC board. Either way, no gas, so will be doing some diagnosing on the weekend, and getting new parts come Monday.

I also noticed after this happened, all the parameters changed. Wire speed was now higher, and voltage was lower. Checked the rest of the specs, they were the still the same. So I don't know. When I get this fixed, I'll report back.

 

Looks like my PC board is hoopered. Talked to a shop on Friday about possibilities and prices, and I'm looking at the $800 range.

 

Good news. The board was fine. The whip was wrecked internally, so the gas line was crushed as were the wires, giving intermittant connection to the solenoid (although it would still feed out fine). Got it back yesterday, played with it today, works like a charm. Have a lighter whip on it, much easier to handle too. Looks like the welder was more at fault than the operator for the poor welds.

 

That's always good to hear! So many little things can affect the weld.

Lay some bead!