You’re welcome 😀. The great thing is shooting videos gives me the excuse to practice and I learn a bunch too. I have done a bunch of testing videos that will be rolling out soon and some of them really had surprising results. I wish when I was in school the instructor did tests like I have done to show real world strength differences, it would have helped me understand things more 😀
you get a really good sense for how crappy these welds are when you turn them to the side at 15:36. Yet, I'll say the same thing I did on the last test, if even crappy welds can hold enough to let you turn your piece of work into a pretzel, then what more to they need to do. At that point, whatever you made has been pulverized to junk whether or not the weld holds. I think this should give all of us weekend warriors a cause for celebration. And I don't mean to say we should be ok with crappy welds, I would hope no one would be ok with welds that look like this. I don't agree with your comment at 13:19 that another pass wouldn't matter. I think for breaking towards the face all of your tests together suggest that the amount of metal laid down is the most important variable. My takeaway from all of this is that if I had to weld thick metal, I'd chamfer and multipass. Preheating doesn't seem like enough of a difference maker and when it matters it just moves the needle from horrible to bad.
great video btw - I hope none of the above makes it sound like I'm saying your welds are crappy. You are working within well defined limitations and that is the whole point of your tests. I hope my comment didn't come across differently.
I understood what you meant, no need to worry 😀. I have done a bunch of videos doing multi pass welds (that aren’t released yet) and there have been some very interesting results (including outright failures despite multi passes). Some of the results that have me stumped, I look forward to hearing opinions on the results 😃. Probably the biggest thing I have learned so far is I don’t give short arc MiG enough credit. It produces very clean solid welds and I need to use it more often lol.
thanks for doing this test. Surprising, but i think the throat depth difference may be the primary factor. But hopefully someone can weigh in on how the weld on the preheated plate is less ductile than the non-preheat ones. When you anneal steel, it needs a slow cool down, so I dont understand how the preheated test welds are more brittle.
I really think the weld basically spread out over a wider area with the same metal, which lead to a thinner weld. I am still surprised it broke on the second test. Something seemed different with the weld from a brittleness standpoint. I think what you’re implying that the slow cool down would have more of a improvement in ductility, not the opposite, and that makes total sense. More testing will need to be done to eliminate variables 😀
It really surprised me too. I definitely thought the preheat would have helped more but it really didn’t help a lot. Definitely proves the thought you can’t trust how something looks lol.
Well, this is why, if I can, I weld both sides of a plate. I’m not working to inspection, just to have the most strength in any direction. I also believe that penetration at the root is the least important part of the weld. It’s just a matter of leverage. An extra 1/16” penetration into the root simply isn’t going to make that much difference. Bending away from the weld has the root more in compression than tension, so is pretty much out of the action. Bending towards the weld puts the root in tension and so it has more of an affect. But what percentage of the weld strength is it? I haven’t measured it, but it’s not very much, just a few percent.
I have a video coming out soon on beveling. To answer your question now, the simple answer is no. On a fillet weld beveling one plate and welding it may increase fusion to that plate, however the other unbeveled plate will still not properly fuse. If you were welding a butt joint and both plates were beveled along with a gap, you could achieve full fusion with a lower powered welder. The second you put a backing plate or go to closed root everything is out the window. Beveling plates can actually reduce the strength of a joint. If the welder can’t achieve root fusion or penetration on a unbeveled fillet weld, doing a slight bevel will not give more fusion magically. The video will make more sense if this when it comes out. The best way to see where things are at is to test your welds to see what’s going on. Welding is an imperfect science and sometimes wildly unpredictable results can happen lol.
Greg- what about weighing your samples before welding and after? May have helped in this case since you suspect you put down less weld on the heated plate.
Greg, perhaps I have missed it but have you done a strength test comparison between a stick welded joint and a mig welded jointor even a tig welded joint?
So you are definitely onto something with that. I believe that it would be possible to weld 3/8th vertical up with a weave at 140a output. Due to the puddle sinking via gravity it would be far easier to achieve root fusion. The major issues with this is not all welds can be positioned vertical up, it takes far more skill to weld vertical up with mig, and the duty cycle of the welder and mig gun will likely be a issue more or less maxing the machine out just to weld the material. I will definitely test this, thanks for the idea 👍
Surprising! Wow! Mayby we should think of "fusion" is more important than "penetration" with shortarc MIG. I would place a bid - if the weld on the preheated plate would have been as big as the cold and if the force applied would have been dynamic - the preheated weld would have performed much better.
Great question, and I can answer it pretty confidently: yes it does affect penetration. I have done tests on flat plate and fillet welds. Doing a circle e or weave tends to penetrate more into the sides and less into the root on a fillet weld, and on a flat plate it widens the penetration with a reduction of depth. I will actually test this with a bend test in the future. I would expect the reduction of penetration to cause a decrease in a fillet weld break strength when broke towards the face, the strength when bent away should remain much the same. Edit: there is a movement that requires sort of a Christmas tree pattern where the wire hits the root often. It’s commonly used for uphill welding. That could possibly retain the penetration yet still deposit more material. Keep in mind that metal deposition rate and strength generally favors single stingers over wider welds.
Honestly don’t waste your money. They advertise their welders as doing all sorts of things (like running 6010 rod when they won’t), their setpoints are wildly inaccurate, and the build quality is poor. If you’re after a stick machine, 100% buy the harbor freight titanium 225 instead. It is a much better welder that you can weld with any rod. If you’re after a flux core wire machine buy the titanium 125 from harbor freight. For a cheaper MiG welder look at the titanium series from hf or for a bit more money buy a firepower fp200 for 550$ with coupon from northern tool. You will get a welder that does what it says, and those all weld really good. I wish yea welder max better products but they don’t. Yes welder is a no name cheap welder company that spent millions on advertising to basically steal peoples money. The fact harbor freight is a step up tells you something lol.
No problem 😀. It’s not my desire to bash products, because anything affordable that can help a person build stuff is a good thing. It’s just that yes welder lies about everything, and there are so many better welders out there. When it comes to welders the difference between say a 1k welder and a 4k$ isn’t generally that much. Between a 2-400$ welder of different brands the difference can be night and day. That’s why I support the harbor freight titanium series. For the money they perform well, they don’t lie anywhere on specs, they are available everywhere, and they have proven themselves. No, they aren’t high end machines, but they can tackle virtually anything you might want to do. Especially the titanium 225 stick welder, it’s excellent.
You have to remember everyone one showing them on youtube received them as a free gift and companies have the final say on the video they post. They are supposed to tell you up front they received them free or were paid, but some don't (which is a violation of a federal law (or rule). If someone says they paid for it or patrons did , then they usually find all sorts of large or small problems that you might hate.
I read a comment earlier on a video about the HF Flux 125, he said used a preheat and the 125 to weld 1/2" plate all the time with his. You will see comment from paid welders saying they do the same thing, maybe the same ones claiming they are cooking the water out... Does preheating ever make a significant impact on penetration? Or is this just about a good looking weld? On aluminium? Yeah i watched your other preheat test and it didn't have a happy ending. These vids are so depressing...
So preheating at best might increase sidewall fusion on a weld, but root fusion or penetration will be virtually unchanged over room temp. This is due to the fact penetration is really a limitation of heat input and how much molten metal you need to weld though. Since preheating doesn’t change how thick the molten pool is, or change the heat input like a change of shielding gas (aka using 100% co2 vs c25), there won’t be much difference in root fusion. The truth is welding 3/8th or 1/2in steel with mig is pretty much a lost cause. You need atleast a 220-250a machine and spray arc gas mixes to run spray to get proper fusion. The issue with this is cost, you now need a fairly expensive non portable mig machine to properly weld thicker steel. Luckily there are other options. Stick can cleanly weld 3/8+ steel without much issue. So can tig. Both of those processes can tackle thick steel without a lot of the drawbacks of short arc mig. Both take more skill to do though. Regards to aluminum, preheat has much more pronounced effect on it because of how good of a conductor of heat it is. Stainless steel and normal steel don’t conduct heat as well so the second you start welding on them the area of the weld is stupid hot and fuses fine. Aluminum when cold will pull so much heat out of the weld pool as you move the heat away (aka move the molten pool) it instantly solidifies behind the puddle. This lowers the time for root fusion to happen which is why aluminum welds have poor root fusion if you’re not careful. Preheating allows more time for root fusion to happen and reduces the “bridging” effect aluminum welds have (where they just stick to the sides and nothing at the root). Also, the heat input is spread out over such a large area on aluminum due to the a/c arc that the input amperage has less of an effect. 200amps dc tig on 1/2in steel is a stupid amount of heat in a very small area. 200amps a/c trying to melt 3 times the amount of high heat conducting aluminum is a different story, and you can see why there are so many issues. Preheating does work to a certain extent with aluminum. You still can’t weld 1inch thick aluminum with a low powered tig welder though. Edit: I forgot to mention, with flux core self shielded pre heating may actually help it more than other processes. Not in penetration but in clearing out defects. Self shielded wire has issues with porosity in the welds on thick steel, due to how fast the molten pool solidifies. By pre-heating the plates the weld will stay hotter longer and thus the gas has more time to escape. It it is possible preheated steel that’s flux core welded with common .035 wires would have stronger welds than room temp plates, simply because of the fewer defects.
Preheating is a good idea when your welder is marginal, but to really get some root penetration with such an undersized machine, you’d need to have those plates glowing red.
The problem with gmaw hardwire is that one you'll never see being used on any coded procedure I think you u can use short arc for a open root on pipe that's it but think about it mild steel filler metals have enough carbon and other stuff to harden if it cools quickly low hydrogen electrodes Slag along with fluxcore wires have an important role besides protecting it from the atmosphere it also insulates the deposit ever notice chipping Slag off even after awhile and it still being very hot to the touch it cools slowly giving u a very ductile tough weld hard wire pretty much hits the air and cools instantly making it more brittle
Under the right circumstances wire can perform very well. The problem for most people is the cost. I just picked up the esab 235 to use spray arc and bigger dual shield wires on above 1/4 plate. Not only do you need a substantial (read expensive) machine, you need a different gas blend along with a MiG gun that can hold up to the heat. Short arc MiG has proven to be a solid performer on my testing but it has serious limitations on thicker material. It’s very hard to beat the performance of stick for the money. The average person doesn’t do enough volume of thicker steel to justify spending 2-3k on a setup for a spray arc capable wire machine over a 350-1k stick setup.
Thanks for keeping the info coming. You provide a weeks worth of education for a few hours worth of viewership.
You’re welcome 😀. The great thing is shooting videos gives me the excuse to practice and I learn a bunch too. I have done a bunch of testing videos that will be rolling out soon and some of them really had surprising results. I wish when I was in school the instructor did tests like I have done to show real world strength differences, it would have helped me understand things more 😀
I’m one of the guys that asked you to do 140, and for that I greatly thank you. Who would have thought?😮! Great conclusion.
Thanks Greg!!!
No problem 😀
another great video.....will comment more after I finish watching.....cheers, Paul in Florida
you get a really good sense for how crappy these welds are when you turn them to the side at 15:36. Yet, I'll say the same thing I did on the last test, if even crappy welds can hold enough to let you turn your piece of work into a pretzel, then what more to they need to do. At that point, whatever you made has been pulverized to junk whether or not the weld holds. I think this should give all of us weekend warriors a cause for celebration. And I don't mean to say we should be ok with crappy welds, I would hope no one would be ok with welds that look like this.
I don't agree with your comment at 13:19 that another pass wouldn't matter. I think for breaking towards the face all of your tests together suggest that the amount of metal laid down is the most important variable.
My takeaway from all of this is that if I had to weld thick metal, I'd chamfer and multipass. Preheating doesn't seem like enough of a difference maker and when it matters it just moves the needle from horrible to bad.
great video btw - I hope none of the above makes it sound like I'm saying your welds are crappy. You are working within well defined limitations and that is the whole point of your tests. I hope my comment didn't come across differently.
I understood what you meant, no need to worry 😀. I have done a bunch of videos doing multi pass welds (that aren’t released yet) and there have been some very interesting results (including outright failures despite multi passes). Some of the results that have me stumped, I look forward to hearing opinions on the results 😃. Probably the biggest thing I have learned so far is I don’t give short arc MiG enough credit. It produces very clean solid welds and I need to use it more often lol.
thanks for doing this test. Surprising, but i think the throat depth difference may be the primary factor. But hopefully someone can weigh in on how the weld on the preheated plate is less ductile than the non-preheat ones. When you anneal steel, it needs a slow cool down, so I dont understand how the preheated test welds are more brittle.
I really think the weld basically spread out over a wider area with the same metal, which lead to a thinner weld. I am still surprised it broke on the second test. Something seemed different with the weld from a brittleness standpoint. I think what you’re implying that the slow cool down would have more of a improvement in ductility, not the opposite, and that makes total sense. More testing will need to be done to eliminate variables 😀
Woah! Was not expecting tha to happen! I guess theres no cure for cubes!
It really surprised me too. I definitely thought the preheat would have helped more but it really didn’t help a lot. Definitely proves the thought you can’t trust how something looks lol.
Well, this is why, if I can, I weld both sides of a plate. I’m not working to inspection, just to have the most strength in any direction. I also believe that penetration at the root is the least important part of the weld. It’s just a matter of leverage. An extra 1/16” penetration into the root simply isn’t going to make that much difference. Bending away from the weld has the root more in compression than tension, so is pretty much out of the action. Bending towards the weld puts the root in tension and so it has more of an affect. But what percentage of the weld strength is it? I haven’t measured it, but it’s not very much, just a few percent.
Would beveling both sides of the top plate allow you to use a lower amp machine?
I have a video coming out soon on beveling. To answer your question now, the simple answer is no. On a fillet weld beveling one plate and welding it may increase fusion to that plate, however the other unbeveled plate will still not properly fuse. If you were welding a butt joint and both plates were beveled along with a gap, you could achieve full fusion with a lower powered welder. The second you put a backing plate or go to closed root everything is out the window. Beveling plates can actually reduce the strength of a joint. If the welder can’t achieve root fusion or penetration on a unbeveled fillet weld, doing a slight bevel will not give more fusion magically. The video will make more sense if this when it comes out. The best way to see where things are at is to test your welds to see what’s going on. Welding is an imperfect science and sometimes wildly unpredictable results can happen lol.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Wow, thank you for such a detailed response. I'll definitely watch when it comes out.
I wonder what the result would be if both sides of the t joint were welded , could it be considered that the plates were justed metal glued together.
If both sides were welded it would be strong and likely not fail, but I will be testing that 😀
I think one aspect of the preheat failure on the bend away is perhaps because of residual stress.
Greg- what about weighing your samples before welding and after? May have helped in this case since you suspect you put down less weld on the heated plate.
Great idea, it’s so simple I feel stupid not thinking of that 😮.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg that means a lot coming from you, thanks. Learning a lot from watching you.
Greg, perhaps I have missed it but have you done a strength test comparison between a stick welded joint and a mig welded jointor even a tig welded joint?
I will be doing that soon. It’s fairly difficult to achieve a fair test but I should be able to find a way.
How about doing the same test, 140 mig uphill 1/4-in plate butt weld.
So you are definitely onto something with that. I believe that it would be possible to weld 3/8th vertical up with a weave at 140a output. Due to the puddle sinking via gravity it would be far easier to achieve root fusion. The major issues with this is not all welds can be positioned vertical up, it takes far more skill to weld vertical up with mig, and the duty cycle of the welder and mig gun will likely be a issue more or less maxing the machine out just to weld the material. I will definitely test this, thanks for the idea 👍
Were these push welds? They sort of looked like it to me. If they were I wonder how this might have come out if they were pull welds?
Angles do affect penetration.
Surprising! Wow! Mayby we should think of "fusion" is more important than "penetration" with shortarc MIG. I would place a bid - if the weld on the preheated plate would have been as big as the cold and if the force applied would have been dynamic - the preheated weld would have performed much better.
Metallurgy can be complicated. I may get rid of my other welders , get the HF125 glue gun and just say ignorance is bliss.
Hey Greg, do you think that running stringer beads vs wig wag, cursive e’s, or whatever else affects penetration?
Great question, and I can answer it pretty confidently: yes it does affect penetration. I have done tests on flat plate and fillet welds. Doing a circle e or weave tends to penetrate more into the sides and less into the root on a fillet weld, and on a flat plate it widens the penetration with a reduction of depth. I will actually test this with a bend test in the future. I would expect the reduction of penetration to cause a decrease in a fillet weld break strength when broke towards the face, the strength when bent away should remain much the same.
Edit: there is a movement that requires sort of a Christmas tree pattern where the wire hits the root often. It’s commonly used for uphill welding. That could possibly retain the penetration yet still deposit more material. Keep in mind that metal deposition rate and strength generally favors single stingers over wider welds.
Thank you for taking the time to answer, and also posting the informative videos. I need to get around to doing some testing myself :-)
Greg, do you have any insight into the quality of welders made by Yeswelder?
Honestly don’t waste your money. They advertise their welders as doing all sorts of things (like running 6010 rod when they won’t), their setpoints are wildly inaccurate, and the build quality is poor. If you’re after a stick machine, 100% buy the harbor freight titanium 225 instead. It is a much better welder that you can weld with any rod. If you’re after a flux core wire machine buy the titanium 125 from harbor freight. For a cheaper MiG welder look at the titanium series from hf or for a bit more money buy a firepower fp200 for 550$ with coupon from northern tool. You will get a welder that does what it says, and those all weld really good. I wish yea welder max better products but they don’t. Yes welder is a no name cheap welder company that spent millions on advertising to basically steal peoples money. The fact harbor freight is a step up tells you something lol.
I'm glad I ran my question by you before making a purchase. Thank you very much for taking the time to reply.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Thank you very much for you timely response. I'll look into your recommendations.
No problem 😀. It’s not my desire to bash products, because anything affordable that can help a person build stuff is a good thing. It’s just that yes welder lies about everything, and there are so many better welders out there. When it comes to welders the difference between say a 1k welder and a 4k$ isn’t generally that much. Between a 2-400$ welder of different brands the difference can be night and day. That’s why I support the harbor freight titanium series. For the money they perform well, they don’t lie anywhere on specs, they are available everywhere, and they have proven themselves. No, they aren’t high end machines, but they can tackle virtually anything you might want to do. Especially the titanium 225 stick welder, it’s excellent.
You have to remember everyone one showing them on youtube received them as a free gift and companies have the final say on the video they post. They are supposed to tell you up front they received them free or were paid, but some don't (which is a violation of a federal law (or rule).
If someone says they paid for it or patrons did , then they usually find all sorts of large or small problems that you might hate.
Would it be a Crazy Idea to Preheat by Sticking the Rod for a few seconds... If u didn't have a Torch etc... Cause that Gets pRetty Hot.....
You probably could do that, but the steel will be far less hot than the rod 😀. By time the steel got hot the rod would probably be melted.
I read a comment earlier on a video about the HF Flux 125, he said used a preheat and the 125 to weld 1/2" plate all the time with his. You will see comment from paid welders saying they do the same thing, maybe the same ones claiming they are cooking the water out...
Does preheating ever make a significant impact on penetration? Or is this just about a good looking weld? On aluminium?
Yeah i watched your other preheat test and it didn't have a happy ending. These vids are so depressing...
So preheating at best might increase sidewall fusion on a weld, but root fusion or penetration will be virtually unchanged over room temp. This is due to the fact penetration is really a limitation of heat input and how much molten metal you need to weld though. Since preheating doesn’t change how thick the molten pool is, or change the heat input like a change of shielding gas (aka using 100% co2 vs c25), there won’t be much difference in root fusion. The truth is welding 3/8th or 1/2in steel with mig is pretty much a lost cause. You need atleast a 220-250a machine and spray arc gas mixes to run spray to get proper fusion. The issue with this is cost, you now need a fairly expensive non portable mig machine to properly weld thicker steel.
Luckily there are other options. Stick can cleanly weld 3/8+ steel without much issue. So can tig. Both of those processes can tackle thick steel without a lot of the drawbacks of short arc mig. Both take more skill to do though. Regards to aluminum, preheat has much more pronounced effect on it because of how good of a conductor of heat it is. Stainless steel and normal steel don’t conduct heat as well so the second you start welding on them the area of the weld is stupid hot and fuses fine. Aluminum when cold will pull so much heat out of the weld pool as you move the heat away (aka move the molten pool) it instantly solidifies behind the puddle. This lowers the time for root fusion to happen which is why aluminum welds have poor root fusion if you’re not careful. Preheating allows more time for root fusion to happen and reduces the “bridging” effect aluminum welds have (where they just stick to the sides and nothing at the root). Also, the heat input is spread out over such a large area on aluminum due to the a/c arc that the input amperage has less of an effect. 200amps dc tig on 1/2in steel is a stupid amount of heat in a very small area. 200amps a/c trying to melt 3 times the amount of high heat conducting aluminum is a different story, and you can see why there are so many issues. Preheating does work to a certain extent with aluminum. You still can’t weld 1inch thick aluminum with a low powered tig welder though.
Edit: I forgot to mention, with flux core self shielded pre heating may actually help it more than other processes. Not in penetration but in clearing out defects. Self shielded wire has issues with porosity in the welds on thick steel, due to how fast the molten pool solidifies. By pre-heating the plates the weld will stay hotter longer and thus the gas has more time to escape. It it is possible preheated steel that’s flux core welded with common .035 wires would have stronger welds than room temp plates, simply because of the fewer defects.
Preheating is a good idea when your welder is marginal, but to really get some root penetration with such an undersized machine, you’d need to have those plates glowing red.
The problem with gmaw hardwire is that one you'll never see being used on any coded procedure I think you u can use short arc for a open root on pipe that's it but think about it mild steel filler metals have enough carbon and other stuff to harden if it cools quickly low hydrogen electrodes Slag along with fluxcore wires have an important role besides protecting it from the atmosphere it also insulates the deposit ever notice chipping Slag off even after awhile and it still being very hot to the touch it cools slowly giving u a very ductile tough weld hard wire pretty much hits the air and cools instantly making it more brittle
Under the right circumstances wire can perform very well. The problem for most people is the cost. I just picked up the esab 235 to use spray arc and bigger dual shield wires on above 1/4 plate. Not only do you need a substantial (read expensive) machine, you need a different gas blend along with a MiG gun that can hold up to the heat. Short arc MiG has proven to be a solid performer on my testing but it has serious limitations on thicker material. It’s very hard to beat the performance of stick for the money. The average person doesn’t do enough volume of thicker steel to justify spending 2-3k on a setup for a spray arc capable wire machine over a 350-1k stick setup.