4 Great Welding Tips - Refresher
4 Quick Welding Tips You may have Forgotten
- Gasless flux core Polarity Tips
- Filling a hole in Stainless Sheet metal
- Making a simple hold down tool for tack welding
- Poor Man's wire rotary ground
1. Get the Polarity Right and you might be surprised by Gasless flux core
Gasless flux core is designed to run on DCEN. (electrode negative)
Gas shielded mig runs on DCEP (electrode positive)
The problem is that small mig welding machines are often made to be used both with and without gas. But sometimes folks forget to check the polarity.
Self shielded flux core welds horribly on the wrong polarity and a lot of small 115 volt mig welders have been given away and sold at yard sales for this reason.
It is very easy to check. just make sure the mig gun is connected to the positive terminal.
Most Newer inverter mig welders make it easy with a pigtail on the front but some mig welding machines require using a wrench to swap wires.
2. TIG welding a hole in stainless steel
This tip is for stainless but will also work on all types of sheet metal where you need to fill a hole.
Using backing to fill a hole works much better that trying to weld against air. Backing pulls heat out of the metal and also traps argon to provide a much better result on stainless steel holes.
3. Making a hold down tool for tack welding thin sheet metal
Years ago, I watched a fellow welder tack weld some really thin stainless. In one hand, he had the tig torch, In the other hand he had an improvised tool he used to make sure there were no gaps in the lap joint he was fitting. It was a 12 thousandths patch on 20 thousandths thick 15-7ph stainless. If you have ever welded this alloy, you know its not like 300 series stainless.
Anyway, you can make this handy tool out of an old crappy screwdriver.
4. Poor Mans Rotary Ground and Jumper Ground
Make good use of an old welding lead, tig torch cable, or ground lead to make a bare wire ground strap that also serves as a rotary ground for round objects
