Mig welding challenge you need to do: Dial in welds without knowing settings

[@thenetwerx]

This is probably the best video I’ve ever watched for setting up a MIG machine. Can’t believe I haven’t seen someone do this before. Well done Greg!

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Thanks for the kind words 😀. I wish I would have been told the info I shared in the video when I was learning to weld. If you don’t understand what you’re adjusting you can’t effectively adjust things to get the result you want. It also makes it very difficult to switch machines and get results you want. By making the actual settings irrelevant and just adjusting things based on what you see, you can dial in any MiG machine regardless of if it uses a digital display or not. I probably made it look a bit easier than it really is, but if I can do it anyone can 😀

[@billsmith5166]

Really great advice. Also looks like an idea for an unsafe drinking game at a welders' party. ; )

[@xanatax1844]

This could be incredibly fun party game, except for the “while drinking” part. 😂

[@billsmith5166]

@@xanatax1844 Yeah, that's why I said unsafe. After 6 or 7 shots I can almost see someone touching the ground clamp to their tongue to prove that it didn't hurt.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Haha I had a good laugh off your comment. Right or wrong I have done a few vertical up welds as a challenge after a few beers with friends. It’s way harder than expected 😅. My old neighbor (74 years old Vietnam vet) told stories of stick welding overhead cranes with a 12pack in him lol. Different times, and I know I couldn’t make anything remotely acceptable with that much beer in me lol.

[@natenate2280]

man there aint nothing dangerous about welding drunk unless you're doing some tig or oxy haha

[@robchesley4591]

One of the most helpful welding vids if found. Want more!!

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Thanks, glad it helped you. If you practice it MiG will make so much more sense and you will be able to dial in welds better 😀

[@coolasice2187]

Best explanation on KZbin😊! You da man. 👍

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Thanks for the kind words 😀. I hope the video helps people out understanding MiG. If someone can do what I did in the video, they can hop on any machine and do the same. It really makes a difference with what a person can weld.

[@alexandruortinski5009]

Best approach ever on the subject. Following since 1.7K subs. Aaaa... wacthing again and again. And again. sad because I may only like once :)

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Thanks for the kind words and for sticking around 😀. I am not sure why I wasn’t taught how to MiG weld based on what I covered in the video, it makes far more sense then looking for magic numbers for settings. It wasn’t until I grasped what I showed in the video that I really was able to dial things in. Mig gives you the freedom to make any size weld you want without relying on controlling travel speed to change weld size, which is something you can’t do with stick. My hope is people change how they think about voltage and wire feed speed and they adjust things based on what they see. That will improve a persons welds 😀

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Thanks for the kind words and for sticking around 😀. I am not sure why I wasn’t taught how to MiG weld based on what I covered in the video, it makes far more sense then looking for magic numbers for settings. It wasn’t until I grasped what I showed in the video that I really was able to dial things in. Mig gives you the freedom to make any size weld you want without relying on controlling travel speed to change weld size, which is something you can’t do with stick. My hope is people change how they think about voltage and wire feed speed and they adjust things based on what they see. That will improve a persons welds 😀

[@medycznyklefedron]

Thanks for sending this video The smartest way to eliminate any unknown in our work is through the fastest way to identify errors. Here, you're correct that we shouldn't rush but move steadily, as a faster pace might mask our machine setup flaws, defeating the purpose. A consistent motion will reveal setup errors, and adjustments will come with practice once we learn how to set it up. I appreciate your insightful content; I've been searching for such material for a long time. Many others talk about different things, relying on their machine options, but I work on a different continent with different steel and wires, and most importantly, with my own understanding.

[@sebastianleicht]

You made the best explanation to start with on MIG-welding. For me: the numbers you read (no matter if on charts or apps or even displays) are just rough guidelines. They shorten the quessing-game if you have no idea in what range numbers could be. Learn to Judge your results! The miller App gives you good hints but what i like more is the fronius app (weld connect). This app covers a wide range of processes as well as materials and gas-mixes. But the my favorite feature is: it's metric😜.(may be a downside for others). These fully synergic machines make it a lot easier to start. But when they dont fit perfectly i find it very hard to figure out where my settings are off because i dont know what the programs are doing in the background when I change a parameter accesseble to me. Thanks for that Video!

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

The synergic machines make MiG much easier for the average person. What I worry about with those is every machine is different. Like you said, If you don’t know what the machine is doing to give the results, if you are ever on a different machine you may not be able to dial it in. I have also owned/used machines that are so stuck in synergic programming it was difficult to adjust for things outside of what the machine said. If you switch to processes it doesn’t account for (like dual shield wire) you run into huge issues with being able to dial in settings. That’s why I prefer either a 2 digital display 2 knob setup or a old school two knob setup with no display. Yes it takes more knowledge and skill to not have auto set/synergic modes, but with minimal work you can dial in welds better I feel.

[@sebastianleicht]

True words! I swiched from a full Synergic all-in-one machine to one that has 2 swiches (3 steps Main and 10 substeps) for voltage and a Potentiometer for wirefeed. That has very basic "Synergic" Programms for 0.8,1.0,1.2 mm hardwire and 1.2mm aluminium too but also a setting to "manual". (I dont know the english terms but some how "thyristor-controlled"). A very remarkable experience. 😂 But once I got into it, I would not swich back.

[@Justforfun-ek7et]

This is quite helpful, I’ve never been formerly trained and without knowing this stuff you present here, this is pretty much exactly what I’ve been doing. Just playing with the settings to get a solid weld.

[@johnmacmillan627]

Greg, this is the best video I have come across on this subject! Very interesting how the wire feed speed was so different. Much appreciated!

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Glad you liked it. 😀

[@DazFab]

Great channel greg, enjoyed the video to.

[@ericarachel55]

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Nice 👍. I have been shooting pistols for the last 20 years. Taught a bunch of classes and was pretty active until a few years ago. I never really competed, I kind of regret that. I need to spend some time on the range soon 😀

[@ericarachel55]

@@makingmistakeswithgreg I did shoot with the cops back in the 70's in competition, then I used to shoot with my husband up until he passed and now I've only gone a few times in the past 4 years as its not so much fun without him, but I need to get back and sharpen my skills as they perish without use like in welding, we need to practice!

[@theseldomseenkid6251]

The city closed the nice outdoor range, and my wife and I started gold prospecting instead.

[@mkearn724]

Hell of a great video Greg! Settings are key, and reading the puddle will definitely make someone a better welder. Keep up the great content

[@oilgen65]

Excellent video all your videos are excellent thank you.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

No problem 😀, glad they helped you out.

[@mariodesmo]

Great topic! Also, near the end of your video I kept swatting with my hand at the fly on the screen. Then I realized the fly was in your video, not my screen! lol

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

That little bugger of a fly ended up getting cooked on a fresh weld the next day 😂.

[@tommelomme6761]

Well done! Great information! Thanks

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

You’re welcome, glad I could help 😀

[@EAGLINWRX]

I think this is genius! Thanks Greg :) ps: I still wear the hat you sent me and I have the stickers you sent on my welding hood! I keep your note on my desk as well :)

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Awesome 😀.

[@nealesmith1873]

This is a great way to practice and learn. Unfortunately, my budget flux core welder only has a single knob, so it's just more power or less power!

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Those simple machines unfortunately don’t have many settings to work with. They will weld but “dialing them in” will be difficult.

[@Flygio]

Amazing video. Thank you. Subscribed!

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Welcome and I am glad you liked the video 😀. If you can do the challenge your ability to mig weld common material sizes will go up drastically. It definitely takes some screwing around but once you get it mig welding makes a lot more sense.

[@davidellis7440]

Thank you

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

You’re entirely welcome 😀

[@xanatax1844]

this sounds like major encouragement to do what I was already doing, … but with tips on doing it better! 💜🥰👍 with my new, “Tiny Cheapo Stick Welder” … I get the impression the numbers are kinda decorative. “75” means “more than 70, less than 80” … it does NOT mean it’s actually measuing the current in Amps. 😂 Better to do a couple tests on scrap, dial it in … rather than try to do math, as if that would be accurate.

[@xanatax1844]

😂 I like math, enough to know not to trust that number. 🤔 Someday I’m going to buy a wall-socket type Wattage meter, slide that in between the generator & welding unit … Then I’ll be able to make some notes on how much power it’s actually drawing, on various settings!

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Cheap stick machines are definitely off, no doubt. You can use a 20$ DC amp clamp and meter the output to find how inaccurate it is, and just make a little “cheat sheet” with the setpoint vs actual. Or you will just get used to it as you practice with the machine and you will know where to set it 😀

[@marshallbaser5118]

Awesome Greg. Ty!

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

No problem. If you can do the challenge your welding ability will go through the roof. It also makes it very easy to use any mig welder and have acceptable results 😀

[@Festerman50]

What I got out of this is to learn what a good weld looks like.

[@mixpick138]

Great stuff! Every time I watch your vids I wanna' go out and let the sparks fly! 🙂 It's dark now and I'm thinking night welding might be a little sketchy, so I'll have to wait. Lol This video made me curious about how much to bump up or bump down the settings for different kinds of welds (filets, edges, etc.) once you have them "dialed in" for a simple bead on the material. Do you have a "rule of thumb" that you use to make the adjustments or is it just experience/trial and error? On a different note, that ground clamp that you recommended just arrived today and it's just what I was looking for --many thanks!!

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Sure I have some tips regarding a bead on plate vs actual weld: A bead on plate will always be hotter than a actual weld joint because a weld joint has more heat sink effect to the weld pool. My go to method is to run a bead on a plate the same thickness as the metal on the actual joint. If the bead looks fairly flat/wetted out and looks close to a appropriate size, it’s probably good. On a scale of 1-10 for how hot a weld looks on a flat plate, you want to be at 8 or 9 and you’ll be good for a fillet weld. For a outside corner joint you want to be at a 7 to about 8 for heat. For outside corner joints you can generally move faster and get good results with too hot of settings. Where you want to be on the cold side is anything with a gap or open root. If you have a gap to fill you want that weld on plate to look like a 3-4 out of 10 for heat (borderline like a bead of caulk on the plate). The bigger the gap the cooler you need to be. Vertical up should be around a 5 out of 10 for heat. If you try to run a open root with settings that produced a hot/flat weld on a flat plate you will have problems. Likewise if you run settings that produced a ropey weld (on a flat plate) to weld a fillet weld it will have no fusion. Edit: glad you like the ground clamp. It definitely is worth it 😀

[@mixpick138]

@@makingmistakeswithgreg Cool/thanks!! I got a new folder on the 'puter called, "Tips from Greg". This one is going in there. 😊

[@mixpick138]

Finally made the move to gas so I'm experimenting with GMAW now baby! Question for ya', what can you read from the back side of the plate (thin stuff) in so far as correct settings/penetration? In some cases I'll see like a little outward swelling of the metal and in other cases I can see where the weld made it to the other side but was not burning through (or sorta' melted the other side a little bit on flat plate). Anything to be learned there or just another dumb newb question? 🙂 P.S. I miss my flux core! It's so flexible in that I can weld thick stuff with great penetration/strength and got good enough that I could straight weld 18 gauge material "decently". I've only got one welder so changing out wires is a real pain/waste of wire. Fortunately I can always switch to stick which is my first love anyway. Lol.

[@cousinfuzzy4544]

Being able to read a weld is an invaluable skill that takes practice and experience. But once you get it you usually don’t lose it.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

That’s for sure. You might get a little bit rusty with the hand movements to make good welds but you know what to do to fix it lol.

[@idabright503]

New guy here I was mig welding a 3 inch crack today on a tanker. 10gauge stainless steel, other technician set me up on voltage and wire speed as soon as i started it blew through the material leaving a bigger hole. I figured it was too hot but the other tech said i didnt move fast enough. Hoping to get your advice.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Couple thoughts, hope they help: Stainless MiG is tough. Many people use the wrong gas mixture with it which makes it tough to get the weld pool to do what you want. Once you make a hole it’s tough to close it. Especially because if there is no “back purge” of argon the internal weld oxides and it won’t want to joint together. The proper way to do a repair like that would be to purge the backside with argon and weld it with settings that are in range of what’s right. It can be done with no purge but the long term results will be poor (probably crack again). If the settings were too hot it will blow a hole, and yes you can move faster to help control that. There is a limit to how fast you can move though, and the higher the skill the faster you can generally go.

[@toyotatundra0455]

Greg, if you were going to weld #4 or #5 rebar to 3/16" steel plate, is stick welding the best choice? I'd like to use them in a pole barn. The rebar goes through the plate and it's welded both sides. Thank you.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

Great question. Provided the rebar is “speced” weldable you can weld it. A lot of rebar out there has high carbon content and when you weld it the weld becomes so hard and brittle it’s unbelievable. With 3/16th plate and thicker round stock I would definitely look at stick welding. You could also use Gasless flux core however it will have a tendency to produce porosity with .035 wire on that thick of material. If you do a test and have decently clean welds with flux core you would be good to go. Gas shielded MiG would also work, but if it’s open air that’s out of the question. If it was me, i was exposed to the elements when welding, and the welds needed to be strong I would use 7018. If there were a ton of restarts needed 7014 might be good because you could weld them faster (due to easier restarts). I would stay away from 6010-6011 because they produce fairly brittle welds and the off chance a some of the rebar has higher than spec carbon. Speaking of that, make a tack weld on the rebar with whatever process you end up using. Take a file and try to file the dot. If it’s stupidly hard the carbon content is high and all your welds will be brittle. If it is hard you’re going to need to weld it with a stainless or nickel alloy to get the welds to hold. Hope that helps 😀

[@veejaybomjay8145]

Hi Greg, great video but I have a question, why are your flies not blind and crawling on the floor or work table? My flies are dead blind, perhaps I weld more than you.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

When I shot the video it was my first off day, the flies had free reign in the shop for 5 days 😅. The day after I shot the video that fly got cooked on a hot weld, it’s crazy how they dive bomb welds and get cooked 😅. Especially MiG welding, they seem to like that more than stick.

[@nicholash8021]

My Titanium 200 wire speed starts off slow for a few seconds then suddenly switches to a faster speed. Not sure why.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

So your welder has what’s called “run in speed” built in. When you start to weld the wire is cold, the plate is cold, and nothings melted. By slowing the wire feed down a bit and keeping the voltage the same, you don’t end up with a weld that sits on top of the plate with no fusion. Some welders like my firepower fp200 has adjustable run in speed, many just have it on all the time with no adjustment. Older machines have none. It’s definitely helps produce more consistent welds.

[@nicholash8021]

@@makingmistakeswithgreg That's sort of what I though, however as an engineer, I would envision a design where the wire speed slowly accelerates instead of a sudden jump in speed after a few seconds. I would imagine this sudden jump can lead to issues with smoothness of your weld. Also, when the weld is still nearly red hot, if I release and press the trigger, then I almost surely don't want any run-in speed.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

@@nicholash8021 I am with you on that. In the videos that will be out soon I break welds, and the breaks show a tendency to have less fusion right after the start of a weld (from about 1/4in to 3/4inch from the start). Being able to better dial in run in speed and duration would eliminate this for sure.

[@The_Seal77]

So you can do the same practice with flux core mig as well?

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

You absolutely can, both processes work under similar principals. Now “Dual shield” wire is a bit different because it operates under “spray transfer” more so than short arc. What was shown in the video still will work, it’s just that changing how the wire melts off will have a drastic change in how it performs. Basically you need to run it above a certain voltage or you lose performance. Also keep in mind self shielded flux core wire tends to produce porosity when run too far outside of ideal values. So basically you’re a bit more limited on what settings you can run to get acceptable results 😀.

[@notmyworldnotmypeople3614]

I'm very frustrated with all of this 😤. I've watched an incredible amount of videos all with different advice and not one of them has helped me. I haven't picked up a welder in over 30 years and I'm trying to weld a hitch on a trailer which is Rusty and I'm doing it with an old Marquette 185 that doesn't have any dials on it. You can set the wire speed but the voltage and others are just buttons and there's one of two settings only. I have no idea what the thing is actually set at. I'm trying to do flux core outside on dirty metal with a welder I can't set properly and I can't hear anything because it's connected to a big loud generator and that's the only option I have. I also can barely see it. I've got more obstacles in my way than a person should ever have who hasn't picked up a welder in 30 years. Nobody out here knows how to do anything much less how to weld something. Hiring somebody is not an option. This trailer is going to have to hold some serious weight. I can't find a single video of a guy who's setting up a welder who he can't hear nor see nor set nor anything. How do I get past this?if that wasn't bad enough I've got to do vertical welds and I'm going to have to weld underneath it. 😖🤦

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

So what you describe is more of a limitation of equipment more so that your skill. Don’t get me wrong, I just shot a video welding with car batteries and was successful. However even my results were pretty poor and someone with far less skill would have even worse results. Your machine functions in a manner that even I likely would not be able to get solid results from. That is why I tell people to look at the harbor freight titanium 125, it has solid controls and it is fully capable of making excellent welds. Regarding your machine, I probably could find a way to get it to work acceptably, but likely only on one thickness of material. It probably will work poorly on many thicknesses due to lack of control. This won’t be something that can really be changed/fixed.

[@MelvinTheGrate]

So, if you are offered a great deal on a used welding machine with a busted display, ... .

[@bobgaylord8883]

What you haven't addressed, is the most important part of a weld - penetration. Agreat looking weld is no good, without proper, full penetration.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

I agree with you however short arc Mig is very limited in penetration. If your bead is not humped up like caulk and is fairly flat, it will have about as much penetration as the process allows. After a certain point short arc will not increase in penetration as settings increase and will start having weld defects instead. Much like stick welding doesn’t gain penetration when you run significantly over the amperage required, short arc hits a limit fast. That’s why I stressed the point of making sure the weld you put down is appropriate in size for the thickness of material. Excessive weld simply means there is more metal from the root out, and it doesn’t mean there is more penetration. Putting down the correct size weld for the material (WFS) and running enough voltage that it’s flat/wetted out is going to give a weld that has about as much penetration as you’re going to get with short arc. It’s always in a persons best interest to cut and etch test plates so there is no guesses as to what’s going on.

[@georgesimpson3113]

would have been nice to have burned one with the settings according to the door. then maybe even lower. - just to compare.

[@makingmistakeswithgreg]

The settings on the door will produce much the same weld. Wire feed and travel speed are what dial things in. Being on the high side of settings just means you have to move faster. When you achieve a certain level of skill you can weld far over recommended settings and produce decent looking welds. The difference between 1-2volts and 30-50 WFS has little effect in comparison to how fast/smooth you will move.

[@georgesimpson3113]

@@makingmistakeswithgreg Yea, I get it but it would have been nice to show. Otherwise why show anything? You were comparing settings... why _not_ show the given settings. We are just taking your word. You might have been surprised. I know I can set different welders to their given settings and they weld different.