Quote:
Originally Posted by Sundance
The secret to good penetration with a small 110 machine is to use the small wire so the heat is concentrated longer in one spot. Course this goes against anything I've ever seen in print.
Easy way to see for yourself is to take a couple of 1/4" pieces of scrap, set the gap between the pieces around 1/16" inch. butt weld the pieces using .045 wire and .023 wire and see which gives you deeper penetration. Make sure you speed up the wire feed just a little for the smaller wire.
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I totally get yer thinking on the smaller wire with the weaker machine. I use the .023 wire on my 220 machine even at full power. And it does give a sharper penetration, digs right in where the .045 wire will consume more heat just to melt the wire and I get too much build-up of filler before I get to melt the base metal. So my joint is filled rather than welded. The .045 wire melts faster than the base metal gets heated and so the joint gets filled with melted wire and I need to move on. But with .023 wire Im melting less filler so I can heat the base metal up to molten before the joint gets filled up with filler. Ok, hard for me to splain, but thats the best I can say it. Now with a more powerful machine I could really crank up the heat and get the base metal melted at the same rate as the filler on 1/4" plate. But that machine isnt nice to work with for 22ga sheetmetal and .045 wire. So a 200 amp machine with .023 wire IMO is the best for car work.
I love welding, not great at it, but its fun to melt metal.. JR