[TheForge] Welding advice needed pronto

[Ralph Sproul]

 "In field construction whenever we
Mig welded carbon or stainless steel we always used strait argon."

Regards,
Bill Woolley

Hi Bill, That's pretty much a direct contradiction from what I've found.
You need CO2 to make wire bite into steel.  Argon alone will not weld steel
with any strength at all.

I just went thru this two weeks ago when I put a 25 ton hitch on 10 wheeler
and the gas company had mislabeled my bottle of gas.  The top label said
75/25 which is supposed to be an argon/C02 mix, and under that was a label
that was argon helium.......that gas would weld, but it had absolutely no
penetration and created this weird soot like material ahead of my welds
(using dual shield - so the soot was from the flux core).   BUT, Long story
short is I had to air arc out all the welds and do them over........and when
I did there were pockets and voids in the weld and black soot deposits under
the weld.  I always use a C02 mix for steel.

(I haven't tried straight argon on Stainless yet).  I might do so this week
when I get a chance.

Ralph

----- Original Message -----
From: "Woolley" <wjec at verizon.net>
To: "Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2005 9:25 PM
Subject: Re: [TheForge] Welding advice needed pronto


>
> >
> >     With TIG I use straight argon all the time with great results, but
on
> > Mig I find it a bit different.  With the CO2 you get more penetration so
> the
> > bead is lower - but I get a lot of distortion.  Does straight argon
allow
> > more of a layover bead at lower temps and less distortion?  This is a
good
> > question I don't know the answer to, if you've got any input I'd like to
> > hear it before trial and error time starts in the shop.
> >
>
> I don't have enough experience with Mig to give you any real insight.  I
> went with a mix cause that is what was recommended when I bought my Mig
> machine.  After paying what was alot more than I had been paying for argon
I
> asked  some other weldors what they were using and they all said argon, so
I
> never bought another bottle of the mix.  In field construction whenever we
> Mig welded carbon or stainless steel we always used strait argon.
>
> Regards,
> Bill Woolley
>
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