As a beginner, self-though welder, working as shipping container repairer... Your videos are a golden nugget. The negative/positive polarity topic you covered so simply and succinctly! Thanks Mr. Greg
This was a great follow-up video to part 1. And thank you for making it a two part series (who knows, could be more?). I know you like to split the 'book learning' and 'practical' aspects with your videos. Part 1 just ended up being so learning heavy, it was actually nice to have some time to let that soak in before moving onto the full welding and testing phase. As always, great video sir!!!
Glad you liked it 😀. I was shocked at how the DCEN on mig was able to make a bead, the sound was bad. Everything else was shockingly bad about it too. It fun to test out theories to see what happens.
I had bought a lincoln flexcore welder to learn on and it sucked bad!! Then I learned that alot are made in the same factory that makes sc mig machines and they just hookup the leads the same way!! Checked mine and switched the leads and now it welds fine!!
You would be surprised at how many welders get put up for sale as “doesn’t weld right” and all that’s wrong is the polarity. Don’t feel bad though, I shot a whole video on doing outside corner joints with mig on the wrong polarity. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t figure it out until the end 😅
Great Knowledge- thanks for your channel, and the certified youtube welder sticker its proudly on my helmet. love your channel and welding and learning. I'm learning so much- thank you Greg. PS. I didn't know what I didn't know.
Glad to hear you got the sticker and you’re learning a lot 😀. When you learn a bunch about the “behind the scenes” you will be able to progress faster, and come up with solutions when things don’t go the way you wanted.
The only better thing to do than watching Greg's videos is : gobble up delicious chop and potatoes and jug of cold beer, while watching Greg's videos 😀In Europe ESAB OK46.00 is 6013 for root passes , documents says to run in DCEP. Other one is Bohler Fox SPE 6013 (aka "voestalpine bohler fox spe") , this rod is especially for root passes , document says to run in DCEN
Well, the push is a 'slight' forward angle running the wire in the front portion of the puddle, in practical practice, and it depends on how a person sets, or can set, their machine and the joint fabrication. Pulling can result in more spatter, more weld buildup, colder starts, the wire butting in the weld, and less of a smooth welding machine function and performance. You can hear how the weld is performing, and normally you'd want that sort of buzzing-whizzing sound to let you know the machine and the weld are working well together. Really, in application you're going to be changing your angles to maintain the puddle and the wire in the hotter portion of the puddle. Modern machines, with their hot-starts and other goodies, makes mig easier and more versatile, so a welder has more flexibility in their form.
Well said I have pushed 60# roles of 45 thousand wire in 7 1/2 hours some where.300 to 400 amp even 3/8 metal you know you have penetration because if you linger you fall through. I like this guy welding is vast .
First real welding job we only used .035" wire but with wire speed turned all the way up and power at around 300 amps. ' squirtgun welding ' Filling 1/2" gaps welding in the air.
I have heard other countries doing 7018 DCEN on pipe. Whats wild with that is I am unaware of any manufacture that specifies 7018 to be run on DCEN (in the U.S.), and I have never heard of a code in this country that specifies DCEN with 7018 on pipe. 7018 is universally used for fill/cap and not root pass. I would imagine the rod could be run DCEN, it would probably be less likely to drip/run on an open root.
My copy of the AWS welding hand book says that with MIG/MAG the drag technique produces a more convex narrower bead with a more stable arc and less spatter on steel but for aluminium lead/push technique is preferred as it provides a better cleaning action, I find for thin sheet steel that a push rather than pull is better as it is less likely to blow a hole. The reason why stick welding is better with DCEP is down to the positively charged metal droplets being attracted to the negatively charged work piece, accelerated both by this and the magnetic field they strike with a lot of energy which also produces heat.To my mind the beauty of mig is it's very forgiving and you can change the direction of travel to suit the job and position.
You bring up some great points. With Aluminum mig pushing is often required because pulling produces undesirable side effects, which has a lot to do with shielding gas. As with everything with welding there are very few things that are absolute, there is always atleast one process that does everything differently. The push vs pull with aluminum is solidly in the “push only” lol.
When I did a lot of MIG welding I usually drug my welds to keep them neater as pushing was fine if you liked to shoot spatter balls all over the room. With the weird metal that I TIG weld today I have found that it likes to be pushed along better as when I try pulling it the weld is dirty and sooty looking. There is not much difference but the weld sure comes out different.
Could DCEN with MIG work for thin metal or joining old pipe to new like i often do where penetration isnt alway better? I'm sure I'll be giving it a shot next time i got a runaway blow through on a budget repair
Flux core is great. However I can tell you the spatter will be incredible on DCEP lol. I don’t think it would put much of a weld down. I have done it by accident and it is a sight to behold lol.
Glad to hear it 😀👍. It will build confidence when you can see what’s going on inside the weld. If it’s not as good as you expected, make slight changes and try again. Remember too, it’s very difficult to achieve a “perfect weld” so don’t be hard on yourself. Focus on being consistent, consistency is key.
Yeah. True. Germany too. For example the Rutile-Basic rods i mentioned previously do recommend DCEN. I think DCEN vastly reduces spatter on some rod types and the reduced penetration you just compensate by running 10 more amps. Heh. Needs to be tested. As i said, i can maybe make such a video in september or october.
This 1/16 rod on thin metal on DCEN sound interesting. Maybe you can make a video about it. NOt only autobody sheets (0.8mm or less) but bit thicker things like 1.2 or 1.5mm... Cos lot of falks do not have MIG/MAG, but just stick, and if they can do this without making lot of holes...
I can tell you (no bs’ing) the hardest/most frustrating welding job I have ever done was auto body with stick. Now I didn’t use DCEN with 1/16th rods but it’s hard to say how much that would have helped. I will have to give it a shot and fail a bunch to see if it’s possible lol.
In Europe we have electrode clear labeled on box DCEN, DCEP or AC We can find on the box folowing symbols +~ -~ Also symbols for working position. I think people who produce this electrode know why DCEN why DCEP Also possible work position.
Another great educational video. I am looking at the Everlast 200 amp migs. They max at 24v at 240. With a 24v max, what would be the limitations other than metal thickness. Don't think I could run dual shield.
So 24v max is good for general short circuit. Dual shield would really need 25v to work the way you would want. Spray would be the same, 24v is the base of spray arc. A possible solution to get decent performance would be to use 100% co2 gas. That machine would run that and I believe you would be able to weld 3/8th steel with it. It will have slightly lower strength than c25 gas but for most things I don’t believe it would be enough to matter.
Whats interesting when we need to get more penetration between GMAW and FCAW. We would run FCAW, DCEN, 0.045 and 0.035 on a miller and fronius.. And dual shield on I beams
Self shielded flux core tends to have far more penetration than normal short circuit mig. Part of it is because it operates like a cross between spray arc and globular transfer. What sucks is .035 Gasless flux core tends to get internal porosity on thicker material, 045 and bigger is far better with porosity. It’s weird as well that dual shield tends to have less penetration than Gasless.
So FCAW tends to burn hot. To a certain extent using a machine with really good low end output helps. Depending on your machine you may get more capability with a different machine. A limiting factor with flux core is that it needs enough heat to function, if you reduce settings too much you will get porosity. If you are able to weld it with a series of tack welds you should be able to weld it as 1/2in to 1in long beads. It may require much faster travel speed. Sometimes running a bit hotter and a faster will achieve the results. Stick tends to be miserable on thin material. 1/16th rods are your best friend on thin material. Even then it’s a challenge. The easiest to weld thin is .023 gas shielded mig wire. With a decent machine it’s comically easy in comparison to other processes. I need to do a video on .023 one of these days to show how easy it is to weld thin material with the right setup.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Thanks for the quick reply and the advice. You're right, I had some porosity and the welds looked pretty rough on the vertical up, especially on t-joint. I would like to see a video on running .023" wire to weld some 18 ga. sheet in various positions if you can find the time. Right now on the mig welder, I can run either .030 or .035 wire and C25 gas only. Until now I didn't have much need to weld very thin material so I'll have to get some .023/.025 tips and feed roller and wire before I do anything with it. I want to learn at least one good method other than tig, which I don't have any experience.
It did lol. It’s a solid 80 degrees, which is way better than 100. I am not joking, the camera I film with can record 5min at a time when it’s 90+ before it shuts down on over temp. I kept going though lol.
Interesting practical test. For MMA our handbook only has a short paragraph on electrode polarity, saying something like depending on the shield material (the cover) the heat at the electrode can be more or less. Connecting the electrode to positive will get 70% of the heat and the work material will get 30%. Connecting it to negative will be the opposite. AC will be 50/50%. Possibly that 70% heat in the material does not equal better penetration? Maybe one should do this test also in a country outside the US, with different standards. A common electrode here, The Elga P48, specifies on the box: DC positive, for root-welds DC negative. The most common electrode OK 48.00 is marked + (-), meaning it should be positive but can be used negative if you know what you are doing.
So on root welds I have a feeling DCEN would be used because it would help prevent excessive penetration. The simple test I did was the best case scenario, with the least effect. Welding an open root would tend to cause excessive penetration and internal defects. To avoid those the gap, landing, and bevel angle are controlled to create a consistent result. My guess is the rod you guys run open root has more penetration than a normal fill rod. By running it DCEN it gives the ability to not over penetrate, allows faster travel speed, etc. Much of pipe welding (and code work in general) is finding a reliable way that’s time efficient to achieve the goal. In this country 6”10 downhill on DCEP was chosen as a common standard. But we don’t have access to multiple types of 6013 rods like many other countries do.
Greg, a couple years ago i watched a video of a fellow stick welding electrode negative with a copper rod in the jaws for texturing and gouging the metal for art. Is that safe for the welder and the welder?
I have never seen that but I have some thoughts. So more or less you would have a copper electrode that passes an arc to the base material. You would end up melting copper onto the base material but it probably wouldn’t stick which is a plus. On a normal stick welder that regulates current I wouldn’t think it would damage it. You may have a hard time achieving a consistent arc due to many welders not being able to supply enough voltage. It doesn’t take much of a arc gap to hit 40volts to maintain the arc, and that is tough for many welders to output.
So this question is actually more complex than it seems. Many 7018 rods specify they will work on a/c however owners of the old tombstones will find most 7018s don’t run that good. Thats why there is a 7018 a/c rod, which tends to run better on those machines. My understanding is the flux is formulated to reduce the voltage needed to keep the rod lit, which is helpful because on a/c the voltage is fluctuating between positive and negative with time spent at 0 volts. Bigger industrial transformer welders like the dial arc 250 and ideal arc machines don’t have as much issue running any 7018 rod on A/c. 6013 will truly run on any polarity and a/c just fine, 7018 is more particular depending on machine and particular 7018.
So I did cover a bunch regarding that on hydrogen embrittlement and 7018. However that will covered in more detail in a video I will shoot soon. I bought some stupidly expensive “rock mount” brand rods that supposedly weld anything. I was figuring I would try them on tool steels and see what happens. Honestly I should do a whole video on just welding high strength steels🧐.
People assume that because most of the heat, and therefore penetration, is in the work with DCEN TIG, due to electrons flowing to the work from the tungsten, it must also be so with SMAW. This is incorrect because there's more going on than just electrons and ions in the arc when you add the fact that the anode or cathode is consumable and not refractory. So why does DCEP SMAW have better penetration when the electrons are expending the energy into the stick? How could it be possible that most of the heat ends up on the negative side? Because that heat is then transferred back to the work in the form of molten metal droplets. Ever see spatter that's way outside the arc, but welds itself to the plate so well, it has to be ground off? Imagine what's going on inside the arc. From The Procedure Handbook of Arc Welding, "If the electrode is refractory - Carbon or tungsten - there are no metal droplets to be forced across the gap and onto the work." "More of the heat developed by the arc is transferred into the weld pool with consumable electrodes than with nonconsumable electrodes." TIG DCEN... More heat at the work. Better penetration. SMAW/GMAW DCEP... More heat at the work because the heat put into the wire is then transferred back to the work in the molten metal. Beter penetration
So aluminum runs DCEP, and is done is spray mode (high voltage high wire feed, wire is liquid before it hits the molten pool). If you had a A/c power sorce and could use that with aluminum wire, I would guess that a/c would knock it kit of spray mode and cause a lot of spatter. On a side note, a/c tig has the ability to weld aluminum due to the EP stripping oxides off the surface. Well aluminum wire is done on pure EP so it too has cathodic etching in the weld area and surface oxide removal. In the case of wire EP has more penetration, so it works. For tig 100% EP will liquify the tungsten and has less penetration. That’s because the arc doesnt deposit metal with it.
Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. More wire feed speed will only make the weld taller. Higher voltage will wet it out a bit more, but it won’t improve penetration. Keep in mind I was running 21 volts, many machines don’t go above 22-23v and that much won’t make any difference overall.
Making mistakes with Greg.. Very well explained my friend. Thanks for sharing it with us.
As a beginner, self-though welder, working as shipping container repairer... Your videos are a golden nugget. The negative/positive polarity topic you covered so simply and succinctly! Thanks Mr. Greg
You’re welcome 😀. The more you know the more tools you have in the tool box.
Wow, this and the last video just had the ac Tig cup size thing click. Now I can't wait to try stick. You are a fantastic teacher
Damn did I find you at the right time last year just as I started hobby welding. You're like my teacher.
Glad to hear you’re learning and taking up welding 😀👍
I was hoping you’d end up doing a cut and etch episode in relation to this, thanks for putting this together!
No problem 😀.
Thank you for being so clear. This is helpful to the newer welders such as myself.
No problem, glad it helped you out 😀
This was a great follow-up video to part 1. And thank you for making it a two part series (who knows, could be more?). I know you like to split the 'book learning' and 'practical' aspects with your videos. Part 1 just ended up being so learning heavy, it was actually nice to have some time to let that soak in before moving onto the full welding and testing phase. As always, great video sir!!!
Glad you liked it 😀. I was shocked at how the DCEN on mig was able to make a bead, the sound was bad. Everything else was shockingly bad about it too. It fun to test out theories to see what happens.
Thank u Greg appreciate all ur incredible knowledge 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
Very nice work and well said! keep up your thoughts!
I had bought a lincoln flexcore welder to learn on and it sucked bad!! Then I learned that alot are made in the same factory that makes sc mig machines and they just hookup the leads the same way!! Checked mine and switched the leads and now it welds fine!!
You would be surprised at how many welders get put up for sale as “doesn’t weld right” and all that’s wrong is the polarity. Don’t feel bad though, I shot a whole video on doing outside corner joints with mig on the wrong polarity. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t figure it out until the end 😅
Flux core lincoln ns-3m run 2-3/4 " -3-3/4" electrical stick out I liked yourvideo!!!
Bonus, a part 2. Thanks Greg!
No problem 😀
Great Knowledge- thanks for your channel, and the certified youtube welder sticker its proudly on my helmet. love your channel and welding and learning. I'm learning so much- thank you Greg.
PS. I didn't know what I didn't know.
Glad to hear you got the sticker and you’re learning a lot 😀. When you learn a bunch about the “behind the scenes” you will be able to progress faster, and come up with solutions when things don’t go the way you wanted.
Very good explanation!
Glad you liked it 😀👍.
So clearly explained!
The only better thing to do than watching Greg's videos is : gobble up delicious chop and potatoes and jug of cold beer, while watching Greg's videos 😀In Europe ESAB OK46.00 is 6013 for root passes , documents says to run in DCEP. Other one is Bohler Fox SPE 6013 (aka "voestalpine bohler fox spe") , this rod is especially for root passes , document says to run in DCEN
Thanks for answering all my questions!
No problem 😀.
Pretty technical stuff... I only know one rod for welding thin sheet mild steel. Good video 👍
Useful and interesting
Well, the push is a 'slight' forward angle running the wire in the front portion of the puddle, in practical practice, and it depends on how a person sets, or can set, their machine and the joint fabrication. Pulling can result in more spatter, more weld buildup, colder starts, the wire butting in the weld, and less of a smooth welding machine function and performance. You can hear how the weld is performing, and normally you'd want that sort of buzzing-whizzing sound to let you know the machine and the weld are working well together. Really, in application you're going to be changing your angles to maintain the puddle and the wire in the hotter portion of the puddle. Modern machines, with their hot-starts and other goodies, makes mig easier and more versatile, so a welder has more flexibility in their form.
Well said I have pushed 60# roles of 45 thousand wire in 7 1/2 hours some where.300 to 400 amp even 3/8 metal you know you have penetration because if you linger you fall through. I like this guy welding is vast .
First real welding job we only used .035" wire but with wire speed turned all the way up and power at around 300 amps.
' squirtgun welding '
Filling 1/2" gaps welding in the air.
😎👍👍
Here in Europe, because we don't have 6010 or 7016, those who weld pipe use 7018 on DCEN for the root pass, from what I've heard.
I have heard other countries doing 7018 DCEN on pipe. Whats wild with that is I am unaware of any manufacture that specifies 7018 to be run on DCEN (in the U.S.), and I have never heard of a code in this country that specifies DCEN with 7018 on pipe. 7018 is universally used for fill/cap and not root pass. I would imagine the rod could be run DCEN, it would probably be less likely to drip/run on an open root.
My copy of the AWS welding hand book says that with MIG/MAG the drag technique produces a more convex narrower bead with a more stable arc and less spatter on steel but for aluminium lead/push technique is preferred as it provides a better cleaning action, I find for thin sheet steel that a push rather than pull is better as it is less likely to blow a hole. The reason why stick welding is better with DCEP is down to the positively charged metal droplets being attracted to the negatively charged work piece, accelerated both by this and the magnetic field they strike with a lot of energy which also produces heat.To my mind the beauty of mig is it's very forgiving and you can change the direction of travel to suit the job and position.
You bring up some great points. With Aluminum mig pushing is often required because pulling produces undesirable side effects, which has a lot to do with shielding gas. As with everything with welding there are very few things that are absolute, there is always atleast one process that does everything differently. The push vs pull with aluminum is solidly in the “push only” lol.
When I did a lot of MIG welding I usually drug my welds to keep them neater as pushing was fine if you liked to shoot spatter balls all over the room.
With the weird metal that I TIG weld today I have found that it likes to be pushed along better as when I try pulling it the weld is dirty and sooty looking.
There is not much difference but the weld sure comes out different.
Very good
Could DCEN with MIG work for thin metal or joining old pipe to new like i often do where penetration isnt alway better? I'm sure I'll be giving it a shot next time i got a runaway blow through on a budget repair
Gonna definitely try 6013 with dcen on thin sheet-metal, already bought the 1,6mm tiny sticks.
It will buy you a little bit of “wiggle room”. 6013 is pretty low penetration to start with, but sometimes any little bit helps.
Great video, don't forget about the flux core gang lol. Would love to see this same test with fcaw-s.
Flux core is great. However I can tell you the spatter will be incredible on DCEP lol. I don’t think it would put much of a weld down. I have done it by accident and it is a sight to behold lol.
I'll be testing some welds tomorrow- Mig and stick, to see what is going on with my welds.
Glad to hear it 😀👍. It will build confidence when you can see what’s going on inside the weld. If it’s not as good as you expected, make slight changes and try again. Remember too, it’s very difficult to achieve a “perfect weld” so don’t be hard on yourself. Focus on being consistent, consistency is key.
Yeah. True. Germany too. For example the Rutile-Basic rods i mentioned previously do recommend DCEN. I think DCEN vastly reduces spatter on some rod types and the reduced penetration you just compensate by running 10 more amps. Heh. Needs to be tested. As i said, i can maybe make such a video in september or october.
This 1/16 rod on thin metal on DCEN sound interesting.
Maybe you can make a video about it.
NOt only autobody sheets (0.8mm or less) but bit thicker things like 1.2 or 1.5mm...
Cos lot of falks do not have MIG/MAG, but just stick, and if they can do this without making lot of holes...
I can tell you (no bs’ing) the hardest/most frustrating welding job I have ever done was auto body with stick. Now I didn’t use DCEN with 1/16th rods but it’s hard to say how much that would have helped. I will have to give it a shot and fail a bunch to see if it’s possible lol.
In Europe we have electrode clear labeled on box
DCEN, DCEP or AC
We can find on the box folowing symbols
+~
-~
Also symbols for working position.
I think people who produce this electrode know why DCEN why DCEP
Also possible work position.
Another great educational video. I am looking at the Everlast 200 amp migs. They max at 24v at 240. With a 24v max, what would be the limitations other than metal thickness. Don't think I could run dual shield.
So 24v max is good for general short circuit. Dual shield would really need 25v to work the way you would want. Spray would be the same, 24v is the base of spray arc. A possible solution to get decent performance would be to use 100% co2 gas. That machine would run that and I believe you would be able to weld 3/8th steel with it. It will have slightly lower strength than c25 gas but for most things I don’t believe it would be enough to matter.
Whats interesting when we need to get more penetration between GMAW and FCAW.
We would run FCAW, DCEN, 0.045 and 0.035 on a miller and fronius..
And dual shield on I beams
Self shielded flux core tends to have far more penetration than normal short circuit mig. Part of it is because it operates like a cross between spray arc and globular transfer. What sucks is .035 Gasless flux core tends to get internal porosity on thicker material, 045 and bigger is far better with porosity. It’s weird as well that dual shield tends to have less penetration than Gasless.
I'm still making some test runs to determine some good ways to weld thin sheet steel (
So FCAW tends to burn hot. To a certain extent using a machine with really good low end output helps. Depending on your machine you may get more capability with a different machine. A limiting factor with flux core is that it needs enough heat to function, if you reduce settings too much you will get porosity. If you are able to weld it with a series of tack welds you should be able to weld it as 1/2in to 1in long beads. It may require much faster travel speed. Sometimes running a bit hotter and a faster will achieve the results.
Stick tends to be miserable on thin material. 1/16th rods are your best friend on thin material. Even then it’s a challenge. The easiest to weld thin is .023 gas shielded mig wire. With a decent machine it’s comically easy in comparison to other processes. I need to do a video on .023 one of these days to show how easy it is to weld thin material with the right setup.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Thanks for the quick reply and the advice. You're right, I had some porosity and the welds looked pretty rough on the vertical up, especially on t-joint. I would like to see a video on running .023" wire to weld some 18 ga. sheet in various positions if you can find the time. Right now on the mig welder, I can run either .030 or .035 wire and C25 gas only. Until now I didn't have much need to weld very thin material so I'll have to get some .023/.025 tips and feed roller and wire before I do anything with it. I want to learn at least one good method other than tig, which I don't have any experience.
... hmm screwing around in the shop. *grin* Did the temp drop below 94F and you got all giddy?
It did lol. It’s a solid 80 degrees, which is way better than 100. I am not joking, the camera I film with can record 5min at a time when it’s 90+ before it shuts down on over temp. I kept going though lol.
Interesting practical test.
For MMA our handbook only has a short paragraph on electrode polarity, saying something like depending on the shield material (the cover) the heat at the electrode can be more or less. Connecting the electrode to positive will get 70% of the heat and the work material will get 30%. Connecting it to negative will be the opposite. AC will be 50/50%.
Possibly that 70% heat in the material does not equal better penetration?
Maybe one should do this test also in a country outside the US, with different standards.
A common electrode here, The Elga P48, specifies on the box: DC positive, for root-welds DC negative. The most common electrode OK 48.00 is marked + (-), meaning it should be positive but can be used negative if you know what you are doing.
So on root welds I have a feeling DCEN would be used because it would help prevent excessive penetration. The simple test I did was the best case scenario, with the least effect. Welding an open root would tend to cause excessive penetration and internal defects. To avoid those the gap, landing, and bevel angle are controlled to create a consistent result. My guess is the rod you guys run open root has more penetration than a normal fill rod. By running it DCEN it gives the ability to not over penetrate, allows faster travel speed, etc.
Much of pipe welding (and code work in general) is finding a reliable way that’s time efficient to achieve the goal. In this country 6”10 downhill on DCEP was chosen as a common standard. But we don’t have access to multiple types of 6013 rods like many other countries do.
My experience with DCEN is the same, less penetration, and, it tends to get some porosity more often.
I was worried about porosity but didn’t see any (very limited time I have done it though lol). I bet 7018 would be really bad.
Greg, a couple years ago i watched a video of a fellow stick welding electrode negative with a copper rod in the jaws for texturing and gouging the metal for art. Is that safe for the welder and the welder?
I have never seen that but I have some thoughts. So more or less you would have a copper electrode that passes an arc to the base material. You would end up melting copper onto the base material but it probably wouldn’t stick which is a plus. On a normal stick welder that regulates current I wouldn’t think it would damage it. You may have a hard time achieving a consistent arc due to many welders not being able to supply enough voltage. It doesn’t take much of a arc gap to hit 40volts to maintain the arc, and that is tough for many welders to output.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Great thanks. A random or non constant arc would make a nicer pattern.
Harbor freight has some I sent someone to get me some rods to get me by . They are 6013 dcen but I used them on dcep I have never stick welded on dcen
Can 7018 AC also run on DC (does it just do both)?
So this question is actually more complex than it seems. Many 7018 rods specify they will work on a/c however owners of the old tombstones will find most 7018s don’t run that good. Thats why there is a 7018 a/c rod, which tends to run better on those machines. My understanding is the flux is formulated to reduce the voltage needed to keep the rod lit, which is helpful because on a/c the voltage is fluctuating between positive and negative with time spent at 0 volts. Bigger industrial transformer welders like the dial arc 250 and ideal arc machines don’t have as much issue running any 7018 rod on A/c.
6013 will truly run on any polarity and a/c just fine, 7018 is more particular depending on machine and particular 7018.
you should do one on interpass temp and weld embrittlement-
So I did cover a bunch regarding that on hydrogen embrittlement and 7018. However that will covered in more detail in a video I will shoot soon. I bought some stupidly expensive “rock mount” brand rods that supposedly weld anything. I was figuring I would try them on tool steels and see what happens. Honestly I should do a whole video on just welding high strength steels🧐.
People assume that because most of the heat, and therefore penetration, is in the work with DCEN TIG, due to electrons flowing to the work from the tungsten, it must also be so with SMAW.
This is incorrect because there's more going on than just electrons and ions in the arc when you add the fact that the anode or cathode is consumable and not refractory. So why does DCEP SMAW have better penetration when the electrons are expending the energy into the stick? How could it be possible that most of the heat ends up on the negative side? Because that heat is then transferred back to the work in the form of molten metal droplets. Ever see spatter that's way outside the arc, but welds itself to the plate so well, it has to be ground off? Imagine what's going on inside the arc.
From The Procedure Handbook of Arc Welding, "If the electrode is refractory - Carbon or tungsten - there are no metal droplets to be forced across the gap and onto the work." "More of the heat developed by the arc is transferred into the weld pool with consumable electrodes than with nonconsumable electrodes."
TIG DCEN... More heat at the work. Better penetration.
SMAW/GMAW DCEP... More heat at the work because the heat put into the wire is then transferred back to the work in the molten metal. Beter penetration
100% 👍👍
What about aluminum wire feed, any benefit to running it on AC?
So aluminum runs DCEP, and is done is spray mode (high voltage high wire feed, wire is liquid before it hits the molten pool). If you had a A/c power sorce and could use that with aluminum wire, I would guess that a/c would knock it kit of spray mode and cause a lot of spatter.
On a side note, a/c tig has the ability to weld aluminum due to the EP stripping oxides off the surface. Well aluminum wire is done on pure EP so it too has cathodic etching in the weld area and surface oxide removal. In the case of wire EP has more penetration, so it works. For tig 100% EP will liquify the tungsten and has less penetration. That’s because the arc doesnt deposit metal with it.
If dcen doesnt make the filler as hot, why dont you turn up the amps so it is similar temp?
Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. More wire feed speed will only make the weld taller. Higher voltage will wet it out a bit more, but it won’t improve penetration. Keep in mind I was running 21 volts, many machines don’t go above 22-23v and that much won’t make any difference overall.
I was talking about stick
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