Doing this video left me wondering if somehow I flat out screwed up something lol. Polarity was right, gas was right, settings were producing 200amp output (actual metered), and I still busted bad on 1/4inch plate. Part 3 will be out in a couple days, and I will be shooting part 4 soon. I will be honest, I am disappointed in the results. Once I complete the testing I will come to a absolute opinion, but for right now I would 100% take gas shielded Mig over .035 dual shield with a 200amp mig welder.
Being a one man show and not owning a computer for 10 years has made it a pretty steep learning curve lol. I try to improve one small thing every video. It’s no joke difficult and time consuming to edit. I have 30+ videos already shot and I I have to edit them lol. I will likely hire on someone to help edit things in the new year. I want to focus more on testing/making stuff and less on editing. Especially because I am planning on building a off road tube frame buggy and that will require so much time from a fabrication end that spending 30 hours a week editing videos doesn’t make sense when I could spend that fabricating and showing how to do stuff 😀
No problem. Now that I have a more powerful mig welder I will be trying the .035 dual shield at much higher settings along with .045 dual shield soon. The .045 dual shield wire should have serious penetration based on what I have ran in the past. The .035 just doesn’t seem to cut it unfortunately.
Some of your vids (like this one) just make my head spin --but I love it! 🙂 What a conundrum, I thought for sure you were gonna' get the best of both worlds with this gas shielded flux core wire (I.E., great penetration, clean looking welds, and no porosity) but you have shown that is not the case. Dunno' what more you could want from a UA-camr. Great stuff/thanks!!
You’re welcome 😀. The results weren’t what I expected that’s for sure. I had high hopes that it would atleast have some root fusion and be a viable option for anyone with a 200 amp machine. The truth appears as though you would be way better off with self shielded flux core on 1/4inch plate, even with the light porosity it commonly has. Considering the cost of the dual shield wire and the fact it needs additional gas, I don’t see much benefit in the .035 wire. It will produce less brittle welds than Gasless flux core, but that’s about it.
This is such an interesting video series!! I'm not sure what's going on either....but hoping you get it figured out, so that we can all learn something. Thanks for the fantastic content!
Thanks. At this point I am thinking .035 dual shield either needs more wire feed/amps than 200 to do a fillet weld with some fusion, or it simply can’t do it on 1/4in plate. Which is a huge disappointment. I will be doing further testing to try to get the product to work but I don’t have much faith. I definitely would use normal short arc mig instead of it for sure, the bend tests are far better. Which is crazy because short circuit mig is not known for welding 1/4 and above worth anything lol.
@@pollauritsabrahamsenjq1618 I can adjust inductance on the firepower fp200. I generally run it at 6 or 7. I did play with the settings with dual shield wire between 3 and 8 and the performance for fusion was about the same. The inductance seemed to have far less effect with the dual shield than Gasless flux core, likely because the wire is practically liquid and not shorting out the same as short circuit mig.
Take this for what it’s worth… I run this exact wire out if a Yeswelder 250PRO and have had really good luck with 3/8 steel as long as I start with shiny metal. I run it at 210 amps with 25 SCFH of 25/75. I’m not a trained welder, but the welds look good and I did a cut and polish using Naval Jelly and there seems to be fun penetration with very little spatter.
Very interesting. I ran the wire up to about 210a and 27 volts with minimal penetration on 3/8th plates. Since the video I did a test plate on 1/4 with varying inductance (which had no effect due to the wire being liquid and not direct shorting), setpoints up to 230a, and I even amp clamped the output of the machine to see if was off, and it was dead on. Everything I did wouldn’t improve penetration by much at all. Are you running lower voltage than me? I am not sure how you would see better results with the same product, I am willing to test other setpoints.
Absolutely interresting. And kind of disappointing too. Maybe there could be use for this wire if you have to build up material and stack beam to beam like on repair jobs before machining or milling. Or remodeling parts you can't easily cut of and replace. But i think that's a quite specialized application for us average guys out here. That you revealed the "hidden weaknes" of these pretty welds is for sure a benefit to security for us all! I'm very curious how the wire performs in a break test.
I have the break test video coming out tomorrow. The results were about what was expected but definitely check it out. I am definitely disappointed, the fact straight short arc Mig performed better than the dual shield wire is a bummer. The dual shield wire will weld vertical up far easier which is a benefit, and it seems to have faster travel speed. However on 1/4inch steel with a single pass I definitely wouldn’t want to use it.
Great thought, I pulled up the spec sheet (which is tough to find lol). It lists it as H, F, V-up, and O, so they claim it can run in all positions. I never even thought to check because if it was designed for flat plate only that could explain some things lol. I bought the blue demon because esab and Lincoln would be a couple weeks to get. I may end up trying one of the others, since at this point things aren’t looking too good.
Heck I’ve never cut and etched mine but I don’t have a ton of experience with it. Maybe I need to try it. I have plenty of 035. My welder will go 3-400 amps so it has the power to test. I’m stumped on this one.
Everything I am seeing is pointing to the fact the wire can’t carry enough amperage for solid performance on 1/4. I know that .045 dual shield would get it done but .035 doesn’t seem to. I really had hopes it would be a solid option for 1/4in plate but short arc MiG out performed it on break tests (video out tomorrow). Based on my testing I would 100% use short arc MiG on 1/4in plate over that dual shield wire. Not what I could have guessed and honestly a bummer lol.
Nice vid. The more we know the better. Please try the .035 flux core wire with gas, just for smifs & giggles. Maybe the gas will help some of the porosity?
So I did do a test just to see what happened in a previous video. The results didn’t seem to change much. The interesting thing is the shielding gas can actually change the properties of the weld, so with Gasless flux core who knows what might actually happen to the strength of the weld. What I am going to do is grab some .045 self shielded flux core wire and try that on 1/4plate. I have a feeling it will work far better with less porosity on 1/4 plate. The .035 is just pushed a bit too hard I think, especially on 3/8th plate.
@makingmistakeswithgreg I ended up with a 25lb spool of .045 Lincoln innershield at auction. If you were closer, I would give you the spool. I don't have a welder capable of running either the voltage or spool size.
One more: What would the welds have looked like if you had beveled the 1/4" and 3/8"? Spaced up the center plate on the 'T' joint? It would be interesting to see those joints thrown in with the others for the break test. Guess I will be stick welding the thicker stuff until I see a way to make this perform. At this point I wouldn't buy any. Thanks for saving me the wasted money.
I have a video coming out where I compare beveled plates and if it improves strength. Since it will be about a week before that drops, I will give a couple thoughts. Beveling plates will improve penetration to a certain point, same thing with leaving a gap. The main reason it increases strength is due to the mechanical advantage offered by a weld with penetration. It’s harder to lever the base material using the weld as a fulcrum point so it is mechanically stronger. Having more weld on the outside of a fillet weld will also help with this. 3/8th plate should have 3/8th high of a weld toe to have idea strength (single side weld). If what you’re welding doesn’t have access to the backside, penetration plus a proper sized weld is a must. If you have access to weld the other side you can get away with far smaller welds and have a stronger part. Hopefully that makes sense.
I have tried that and it doesn't really seem to have a effect. Stepping up to .045 self shielded flux core will solve the porosity issue with 1/4 inch plate though. I have done better than 40 cut and etches in the last 3 years on gasless flux core (.035) and every one of those cuts had atleast one small dot of internal porosity on 1/4 inch plate. Thats even if the surface looked clean. On thinner plate its not a issue. I think that .045 would do just fine on 1/4 inch plate, the problem is my welder is a bit on the small side to be running that wire, and I dont have the drive roll for it. I did order the drive roll recently so I can atleast give it a shot though 😀.
With your generator are you running on 240 ac? How many amps does your machine put out at the voltage you have available? Just trying to make a comparison to what I have available before I decide on purchasing dual shield.
So I run on a predator 9500 (7500 running watt) harbor freight generator. That is the absolute lowest running wattage you can have to hit around 200 amp of output. Most 200 amp MiG welders suggest a 10k peak 7500 running watt generator and that would be ideal. I trip the breaker on the generator right around 205 amps of output depending on output voltage. I have a “welding on a generator” guide video coming out in a bit over a week. But for now I will say the output achievable is limited by the efficiency of the welder. The highest efficiency I have seen in a wire welder is 60%. The fp200 I run is around 55 to 57 depending on settings. To calculate output you can get off a generator take the running watt max (in my case 7500) and multiple that by .57. That’s 4275 watts is what the welder will output using 7500. Then take that 4275 and divide it by the output voltage setting you want to run. In the case of short arc use 21 volts. That gives you around 204, which is referring to output amps. So the theoretical max amps of my welder on a 7500 watt generator is 204 amps at 21v. Many welder barely hit 50% efficiency so that is why they will get nowhere near than output.
Also, I saw 200 amps on my clamp meter when I ran the .035 dual shield wire, this number may be suspect. Based on my generators output I should have tripped the breaker at 200amps because of the higher output voltage of 25-26v. I am thinking the output of the welder was closer to 175 to 180 amps and not 200. It is possible with more power the welder could have got penetration on the 1/4in plate with dual shield. However at that point you are truly exceeding the capability of the machine and it will likely overheat due to overload. It wasn’t really meant to be pushing 475-500in per minute of wire and 25-26 volts. Which pretty much still points to the conclusion I made and that is that .035 dual shield simply isn’t something a person with a 200 amp class machine would benefit from.
I think you're overthinking the weld penetration. Those welds are fine. Dual shield bites hard and will not pull off like solid mig. Just my opinion. For 035 on 1/4" I'd start around 23.5v and 320ish and maybe go as high as 24/380. Different welder and wire though.
You said you did a lot of off camera testing, you also said in the previous video that you have to switch the polarity opposite of the normal flux core configuration. Did you try switching the Polarity and see how it ran?
I did switch the polarity and it didnt like it at all 😂. I have been known to run the wrong polarity, I shot half of a video on welding outside corner joints only to find out I was running the wrong polarity lol.
Have you tried Argon/Helium (not sure of the other gas with the Argon mix) with the flux core? I have never used it but I have heard Jody and others talk about it being a much hotter weld with MIG. Might be interesting to see if it makes a silk purse out of a cow's ear? Cancel my previous comment you laid it out after I had written it. Thanks again for a very interesting series!
So the helium MiG mixes are primarily used for stainless steel because they make welding it cleaner and function better. The issue with such MiG mixes is they typically require high voltage to work properly. Much like running 100% co2 on mig requires more voltage than c25, a trimix gas with helium would probably require even more voltage than c02. The welder i have is limited to 26v which is likely not enough. Also, something I haven’t talked about much (and definitely need to cover) is with mig, the shielding gas used has a effect on the test results of the weld. 100% co2 will make a slightly more brittle weld with the same wire as c25. The is relevant to using shielding gasses with other wires that weren’t meant for them, because they can produce undesirable changes to the strength. Some Mig mixes even have hydrogen or oxygen in the mix as well. The reason for so many gas mixes and wires is to produce the results a company wants, with the speed required, on the material they are working with. We at home have to make due with what we have, and for the most part it doesn’t matter because we aren’t welding tons of expensive alloys nor are we welding on things with high liability. Not to mention speed is not of a concern for us because we aren’t producing stuff that takes hundreds if not thousands of hours to complete (either by volume or size of product). For a big company concerned about liability, cost, and speed, it makes sense to run expensive stuff like metal core wire and have 10k dollar wire feed welders to do it. Honestly that’s why I am primarily a tig welder, I can get absolute quality with a very simple setup, and it’s actually not that expensive. Tig falls apart on speed for sure, which is why I generally switch to stick to weld thick material.
It really depends on wire type and plate thickness. Wire feed speed is determined by what size weld you want to put down in a single pass. If you’re welding 1/4in plate with short arc you need to be in the 180-200 in/min and 19 to 22v with .045 wire as a base range depending on travel speed. With spray arc you need be around 25-26v with 98-2 gas and maybe 220 on wire. Different gas blends will require different settings. With thicker material you will need a lot more wire and slightly more voltage. If you are running dual shield you need to be around 260in/min and 25v on 1/4. The issue you will have is one process with 1/8th to 1/2in thick is that what works best for thicker plate is not what will work well for thinner. It also depends on joint configuration and position. Spray arc is mostly out of the question for out of position unless you have pulse, and it’s not suitable for 1/8th. Which spray arc gas mixtures are mostly suited for thicker material, not 1/8th, so you would have to switch mixtures to get ideal welds on 1/8th. Dual shield wire can work out of position, and can weld thicker material, but .045 isn’t what I would want to use on 1/8th material. A single gas blend will work however with that wire. Short arc Mig works great on thinner material, but with .045 wire you will likely have excessive spatter because you have to run the wire on the cold side. So basically you will have less then perfect results attempting to stick to one specific wire and one specific gas blend and trying to weld anything between 1/8th and 1/2 steel. It’s a pain to switch wires and gas bottles so I get using one process. I would personally consider trying .045 dual shield wire in that situation, but I would verify you have some root fusion. .045 wire in my experience (years ago) performed far better than the .035 I tested in this video, but you should do some cut and etches yourself to verify. Dual shield will run out of position better than spray arc, it will weld thinner material better than short arc with a spray arc gas mixture will, and it only requires a single cylinder of c25 gas to operate. It will require some practice though, your settings will be all over the map with .045 welding 1/8 to 3/8th +.
Thank you as always for taking the time to teach. I am now sixty and still learning how to improve what I love to do. Have watched your mig, stick and flux core series and having never welded dual shield am excited to try and see, if I may add thank you for showing both success and failure and giving a thought process to solve issues. I have learned far more from failure than success but always adhered to the principles my father and others instilled at a young age, if you are going to do something do it with passion and never send work out you be ashamed to sign. Thanks again for taking the time to help an up and coming generation
I did fool around on another piece with gas settings and 25-40 cfh produced the same looking welds. I have a feeling a decent breeze would blow the shielding gas away because you have to run 5/8th to 3/4 stickout with it. With short arc MiG having a tighter 3/8th stickout I would think that might actually work better.
Great question, and I have a few videos I am editing on this that will be released in about 8-10 days. Since that doesn’t help you out now, I will give you some advice now, hope it helps: Without going in excessive detail, you need to determine the size of welder you want to run (amperage). A 140 amp MiG welder needs a bare minimum 3600 running watt generator, and a 4k+ will be ideal. For a 200 amp welder a bare minimum 7500 running watt generator will be needed. You will still likely not be able to max the machine out at 7500 watts. The type of welder matters, 200 amps on tig takes less generator power than 200amps on stick or MiG. This is because both stick and mig operate at higher output voltages than tig. Generator wise all welder manufactures suggest running on a low THD (clean power) generator or pure sine wave inverter. The electronics on modern inverter welders do not like dirty power cheap generators put out. Dirty power generators shorten the life span of the electronic components. One way to get around this is to buy a transformer based welder like many Hobart and Lincoln MiG machines. They won’t be bothered by the poor power, however they will output different power based on running on house or generator power (aka they need different settings). I personally run on a predator 9500 (from harbor freight, 7500 running watt) which will just allow 200amps of MiG welder output. It’s a expensive option but it runs my portable stick machine really well and the Mig machine decent. For most people they are best off with a portable 130-180 amp stick machine for welding thicker steel and a mig machine for thinner stuff when running on a generator. You simply can’t get the thick steel performance out of a mig machine without having atleast 180 amps of welder output power and less than a 7500 running watt generator. If you need clarification on anything let me know. 😀
@makingmistakeswithgreg I'm looking forward to that video. I'm new to welding, and I'm just grabbing the bull by the horns. Eventually, do mobile welding.
Hello Greg, I have one question. I have the opinion to get my hands on 8016 rods 11 kg for 90€. Should I buy them? The most I weld is mild steel but also parts on agricultural machinery and Mini-excavator.
Great question. So I have never ran a xx16 rod. They fall into what I would call a specialty rod where they have a specific use. The -16 denotes all position (likely not vertical down), and a low hydrogen potassium coating. Looking up intended uses for that specific rod, it seems that if it’s a 8016 b6 or b8 rod the primary use for it is in oil and chemical factories. The rods produce welds that are incredibly strong and tolerant of high heat. So regarding if you should buy them, it’s a tough call. Because they are so specific for what they are used for you can get a lot of undesirable side effects from using them on certain materials. On mild steel you would see no increase in testing strength (assuming same weld size)over a lower strength 7018 rod. On higher strength steel it could produce a brittle weld. My main concern would be issues regarding pre/post heating of the weld. Higher strength rods commonly require preheating the base material to a specific temp, making sure the temp never exceeds a certain point during welding, and then keeping the post welding temp at a certain level (aka avoid fast cooling). If the requirements are not followed the weld will likely crack/fail, many times during cooling. Based on the risk to reward I would say I would pass unless you know they work for your application and the price is very cheap. I do believe they would work well for farm equipment but verify the working temps required of the rod.
Wondering what gas/mix you used when I first started MIG straight CO2 was talarated but 75/25 was considerated the norm. I did a lot of MIG -CO2 useing beverage grade because it was cheeper. now they are saying CO2 gives better penetration. I just learned that spray MIG uses still another mix like 90/8/2% the 2 is oxygen . some mixes also have Helium . Keep up the testing you never know when you will strike it rich.LL&P
I really want to try c02 with the dual shield, but my welder doesn’t have more than 26volts. They are saying 1.5 to 2 volts over c25 so that puts it at 27-28v. Once I get a replacement spool I will be running it on a buddies 250a miller to see what it does. I don’t have high hopes but that will definitely answer if the wire even has a hope of performing lol.
035 dual shield isn't really suitable for 1/4" material. It's limited to about 3/16". I learned this a while back when I decided to try it as well. I ran beautiful fillet welds on a couple T-joints, cut, polished, and etched them, and found a line of slag right down the root of every one. I consulted with an expert (Journeyman Iron Worker, CWI, CWE), and basically what he said is that the thick material sucks the heat out of the weld too fast, and the slag solidifies in the root instead of floating to the surface. One way to get around this is to run vertical uphill, if you can. To weld 1/4" you really need 045. In fact, 045 is only useful up to about 5/16" before it potentially starts doing the same thing. For 3/8" and up you need to go to 052 or even 1/16 wire.
That seems to be exactly what I found out too. It sucks that the performance is so limited with .035. The .045 I just picked up should solve the issues on 1/4. I will also try bigger wire in the future 😀. I really like the way the stuff runs.
Perhaps that spool is bad? You did mention the box was in bad shape, and looked like it was a return. Perhaps you should return it as defective and exchange it for a new roll, or different brand. Somehow, I think the results will be about the same with any 0.035 dual shield, for all the reasons you have stated. Even if the costs were equal to standard flux core, I wouldn’t use it after seeing your results, and hearing what others have said. That has saved me from making an expensive mistake! I’m afraid what you have there my friend is a lifetime supply of dual shield wire for thin plate only! For the money, I would buy a decent cheap stick welder and go from there if I had need of welding thicker material. Even if I didn’t know how to stick weld, your stick welding series would have them up and running in no time with one of the easier to run rods, and they could get pretty decent penetration, and save money in the long run. In one of the earlier comments, someone said “Canadian Welding Supply” had smaller rolls of dual shield, but I couldn’t find it. If it wasn’t too expensive for a smaller roll, it might be worth a try…. To whomever posted that, It would be great if we could get a link to that smaller roll please.
I am sending the spool back because it had some “issues” lol. The 3rd video that’s out tomorrow will show what I mean. Stick welding is definitely the way to go on thicker metal to get solid performance. With a 200+ amp mig machine 1/4inch plate can be safely welded with short arc, but that .035 dual shield is definitely a no go for me. That’s a real bummer since if it just had a bit more root fusion it could be a very solid option. Dual shield is far easier to weld vertical up and overhead than short arc. I will also be testing .045 gasless flux core on 1/4 to see how it works, my bet is it produces cleaner welds than .035 and will post better bend test results than short circuit MiG.
You said you ordered the 0.045 V-groove drive roller. To run that sized wire, Will that require a new larger liner? . I would think you would probably need to make sure your whip was relatively straight, similar to running aluminum wire through a standard wire wound MIG gun liner. It will be very interesting to see the penetration/porosity results!
I just looked into it earlier, and apparently for my machine I need a different liner, and roller than I have. That's all fine, but it appears as though there may not be a tip that can be used in my mig gun that is for .045 wire. So what I am going to do is stop by a buddies house in a week and use his miller 250 to see what happens😀 .
That will be very interesting, and I know many others will really want to know too. I think many people have been literally shocked and mystified at your dual shield results.
Me to lol. I am not lying when I say I did atleast 14 other welds off film that I cut and etched (many on flat plates) and not a single one hit deeper than a whisper below the surface. You would think on flat plate I would have seen some progress. It’s running like it’s brazing. I watched a couple old welding tips and tricks videos today, and with .045 dual shield wire he was hitting some solid penetration at 220 amps on 1/4. Jody and his friend also ran .035 dual shield uphill and that had solid penetration (but they were running it at 130 amps and taking their time). I tried running it lower and slower and that made it worse. Just wait until you see the fillet weld break numbers to the face in video 3 😅. Definitely not what I expected at all.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg I’ve never ran .035 dual shield, but with .045 the weld parameters are so wide like you mentioned. I’ve ran .045 at 28v all the way down to 21.5v and when adjusting the wire feed to correspond the only thing that really changes is the deposition rate. I wonder if it’s the wire that you have, or if it’s just the nature of .035? I can’t imagine they would produce an insufficient wire intentionally🤷♂️. I wonder if the Lincoln or esab produce the same inadequate welds.
I know it will fuse the root on vertical up better, but if that's all its good at its kind of a odd product. It makes no sense to use it on 1/8 to 3/16 steel when short arc or flux core will do a fine job on those. I mean it is easier to run uphill than short arc but considering how much more the dual shield wire costs over short arc and likely gasless flux core, I don't see much use for the .035. Pretty disappointing to me :(
Maybe try contacting JD Brewer from Apex fabrication to see what his secret is. I remember seeing a video of him on a welding tips & tricks video using a Lincoln 210 MP and .035 71m on some heavier stuff.
I watched that same video and I ran the same settings he was using without any root fusion. That made me suspect it’s the wire, but then after a 3 hour internet wormhole pit i fell in it seems that people have claimed to have the same issues I experienced with both Lincoln and esab wire. I distinctly remember him using the Lincoln 210 mp and saying he liked dual shield because “it’s in there” aka it has penetration. So at this point I am not sure what to think. If 25-26v at 400+ inch per minute can’t get any penetration on 1/4in plate, that’s crazy. Straight flux core in a harbor freight titanium 125 produces better penetration lol. I am going to try to move faster and deposit even less metal per some recommendations. I was moving so fast as it was it was yet it was difficult to have the wire hit ahead of the puddle. If I had seen some sort of penetration in any of the cut and etches it would give me hope. I could ride the puddle on gas shielded short arc and still fuse the root or atleast get some penetration on flat plate lol.
Doing this video left me wondering if somehow I flat out screwed up something lol. Polarity was right, gas was right, settings were producing 200amp output (actual metered), and I still busted bad on 1/4inch plate. Part 3 will be out in a couple days, and I will be shooting part 4 soon. I will be honest, I am disappointed in the results. Once I complete the testing I will come to a absolute opinion, but for right now I would 100% take gas shielded Mig over .035 dual shield with a 200amp mig welder.
Enjoyable video Greg, great job. The production quality is getting slicker too. Your on your way, my friend!
Being a one man show and not owning a computer for 10 years has made it a pretty steep learning curve lol. I try to improve one small thing every video. It’s no joke difficult and time consuming to edit. I have 30+ videos already shot and I I have to edit them lol. I will likely hire on someone to help edit things in the new year. I want to focus more on testing/making stuff and less on editing. Especially because I am planning on building a off road tube frame buggy and that will require so much time from a fabrication end that spending 30 hours a week editing videos doesn’t make sense when I could spend that fabricating and showing how to do stuff 😀
Good to see part 2. So much for dual shield welding ! Thx for the great videos
No problem. Now that I have a more powerful mig welder I will be trying the .035 dual shield at much higher settings along with .045 dual shield soon. The .045 dual shield wire should have serious penetration based on what I have ran in the past. The .035 just doesn’t seem to cut it unfortunately.
Some of your vids (like this one) just make my head spin --but I love it! 🙂 What a conundrum, I thought for sure you were gonna' get the best of both worlds with this gas shielded flux core wire (I.E., great penetration, clean looking welds, and no porosity) but you have shown that is not the case. Dunno' what more you could want from a UA-camr. Great stuff/thanks!!
You’re welcome 😀. The results weren’t what I expected that’s for sure. I had high hopes that it would atleast have some root fusion and be a viable option for anyone with a 200 amp machine. The truth appears as though you would be way better off with self shielded flux core on 1/4inch plate, even with the light porosity it commonly has. Considering the cost of the dual shield wire and the fact it needs additional gas, I don’t see much benefit in the .035 wire. It will produce less brittle welds than Gasless flux core, but that’s about it.
This is such an interesting video series!! I'm not sure what's going on either....but hoping you get it figured out, so that we can all learn something. Thanks for the fantastic content!
Thanks. At this point I am thinking .035 dual shield either needs more wire feed/amps than 200 to do a fillet weld with some fusion, or it simply can’t do it on 1/4in plate. Which is a huge disappointment. I will be doing further testing to try to get the product to work but I don’t have much faith. I definitely would use normal short arc mig instead of it for sure, the bend tests are far better. Which is crazy because short circuit mig is not known for welding 1/4 and above worth anything lol.
Can you adjust induction settings, on my esab fabricator I set it to 90%
@@pollauritsabrahamsenjq1618 I can adjust inductance on the firepower fp200. I generally run it at 6 or 7. I did play with the settings with dual shield wire between 3 and 8 and the performance for fusion was about the same. The inductance seemed to have far less effect with the dual shield than Gasless flux core, likely because the wire is practically liquid and not shorting out the same as short circuit mig.
good to see part two Greg.....cheers from Orlando, Florida, Paul
I'll have to try that brandy old fashioned.... :)
Take this for what it’s worth… I run this exact wire out if a Yeswelder 250PRO and have had really good luck with 3/8 steel as long as I start with shiny metal. I run it at 210 amps with 25 SCFH of 25/75. I’m not a trained welder, but the welds look good and I did a cut and polish using Naval Jelly and there seems to be fun penetration with very little spatter.
Very interesting. I ran the wire up to about 210a and 27 volts with minimal penetration on 3/8th plates. Since the video I did a test plate on 1/4 with varying inductance (which had no effect due to the wire being liquid and not direct shorting), setpoints up to 230a, and I even amp clamped the output of the machine to see if was off, and it was dead on. Everything I did wouldn’t improve penetration by much at all. Are you running lower voltage than me? I am not sure how you would see better results with the same product, I am willing to test other setpoints.
How important are atmospherics? I’m in Miami, could the temp or humidity matter? Or wire consistency?
I lied. I looked at the table and I was running at 250 amps.
Absolutely interresting. And kind of disappointing too. Maybe there could be use for this wire if you have to build up material and stack beam to beam like on repair jobs before machining or milling. Or remodeling parts you can't easily cut of and replace. But i think that's a quite specialized application for us average guys out here. That you revealed the "hidden weaknes" of these pretty welds is for sure a benefit to security for us all!
I'm very curious how the wire performs in a break test.
I have the break test video coming out tomorrow. The results were about what was expected but definitely check it out. I am definitely disappointed, the fact straight short arc Mig performed better than the dual shield wire is a bummer. The dual shield wire will weld vertical up far easier which is a benefit, and it seems to have faster travel speed. However on 1/4inch steel with a single pass I definitely wouldn’t want to use it.
👍
some dual shield spray is only for flat, so a fillet is horizontal unless you put the V of the downward.
Great thought, I pulled up the spec sheet (which is tough to find lol). It lists it as H, F, V-up, and O, so they claim it can run in all positions. I never even thought to check because if it was designed for flat plate only that could explain some things lol. I bought the blue demon because esab and Lincoln would be a couple weeks to get. I may end up trying one of the others, since at this point things aren’t looking too good.
Heck I’ve never cut and etched mine but I don’t have a ton of experience with it. Maybe I need to try it. I have plenty of 035. My welder will go 3-400 amps so it has the power to test. I’m stumped on this one.
Everything I am seeing is pointing to the fact the wire can’t carry enough amperage for solid performance on 1/4. I know that .045 dual shield would get it done but .035 doesn’t seem to. I really had hopes it would be a solid option for 1/4in plate but short arc MiG out performed it on break tests (video out tomorrow). Based on my testing I would 100% use short arc MiG on 1/4in plate over that dual shield wire. Not what I could have guessed and honestly a bummer lol.
Nice vid. The more we know the better. Please try the .035 flux core wire with gas, just for smifs & giggles. Maybe the gas will help some of the porosity?
So I did do a test just to see what happened in a previous video. The results didn’t seem to change much. The interesting thing is the shielding gas can actually change the properties of the weld, so with Gasless flux core who knows what might actually happen to the strength of the weld.
What I am going to do is grab some .045 self shielded flux core wire and try that on 1/4plate. I have a feeling it will work far better with less porosity on 1/4 plate. The .035 is just pushed a bit too hard I think, especially on 3/8th plate.
@makingmistakeswithgreg I ended up with a 25lb spool of .045 Lincoln innershield at auction. If you were closer, I would give you the spool. I don't have a welder capable of running either the voltage or spool size.
One more: What would the welds have looked like if you had beveled the 1/4" and 3/8"? Spaced up the center plate on the 'T' joint? It would be interesting to see those joints thrown in with the others for the break test. Guess I will be stick welding the thicker stuff until I see a way to make this perform. At this point I wouldn't buy any. Thanks for saving me the wasted money.
I have a video coming out where I compare beveled plates and if it improves strength. Since it will be about a week before that drops, I will give a couple thoughts. Beveling plates will improve penetration to a certain point, same thing with leaving a gap. The main reason it increases strength is due to the mechanical advantage offered by a weld with penetration. It’s harder to lever the base material using the weld as a fulcrum point so it is mechanically stronger. Having more weld on the outside of a fillet weld will also help with this. 3/8th plate should have 3/8th high of a weld toe to have idea strength (single side weld). If what you’re welding doesn’t have access to the backside, penetration plus a proper sized weld is a must. If you have access to weld the other side you can get away with far smaller welds and have a stronger part. Hopefully that makes sense.
What would happen if you ran straight flux core with C25 to try to get rid of the porosity ? Any thoughts ?
I have tried that and it doesn't really seem to have a effect. Stepping up to .045 self shielded flux core will solve the porosity issue with 1/4 inch plate though. I have done better than 40 cut and etches in the last 3 years on gasless flux core (.035) and every one of those cuts had atleast one small dot of internal porosity on 1/4 inch plate. Thats even if the surface looked clean. On thinner plate its not a issue. I think that .045 would do just fine on 1/4 inch plate, the problem is my welder is a bit on the small side to be running that wire, and I dont have the drive roll for it. I did order the drive roll recently so I can atleast give it a shot though 😀.
With your generator are you running on 240 ac? How many amps does your machine put out at the voltage you have available? Just trying to make a comparison to what I have available before I decide on purchasing dual shield.
So I run on a predator 9500 (7500 running watt) harbor freight generator. That is the absolute lowest running wattage you can have to hit around 200 amp of output. Most 200 amp MiG welders suggest a 10k peak 7500 running watt generator and that would be ideal. I trip the breaker on the generator right around 205 amps of output depending on output voltage. I have a “welding on a generator” guide video coming out in a bit over a week. But for now I will say the output achievable is limited by the efficiency of the welder. The highest efficiency I have seen in a wire welder is 60%. The fp200 I run is around 55 to 57 depending on settings. To calculate output you can get off a generator take the running watt max (in my case 7500) and multiple that by .57. That’s 4275 watts is what the welder will output using 7500. Then take that 4275 and divide it by the output voltage setting you want to run. In the case of short arc use 21 volts. That gives you around 204, which is referring to output amps. So the theoretical max amps of my welder on a 7500 watt generator is 204 amps at 21v. Many welder barely hit 50% efficiency so that is why they will get nowhere near than output.
Also, I saw 200 amps on my clamp meter when I ran the .035 dual shield wire, this number may be suspect. Based on my generators output I should have tripped the breaker at 200amps because of the higher output voltage of 25-26v. I am thinking the output of the welder was closer to 175 to 180 amps and not 200. It is possible with more power the welder could have got penetration on the 1/4in plate with dual shield. However at that point you are truly exceeding the capability of the machine and it will likely overheat due to overload. It wasn’t really meant to be pushing 475-500in per minute of wire and 25-26 volts. Which pretty much still points to the conclusion I made and that is that .035 dual shield simply isn’t something a person with a 200 amp class machine would benefit from.
I think you're overthinking the weld penetration. Those welds are fine. Dual shield bites hard and will not pull off like solid mig. Just my opinion. For 035 on 1/4" I'd start around 23.5v and 320ish and maybe go as high as 24/380. Different welder and wire though.
You said you did a lot of off camera testing, you also said in the previous video that you have to switch the polarity opposite of the normal flux core configuration.
Did you try switching the Polarity and see how it ran?
I did switch the polarity and it didnt like it at all 😂. I have been known to run the wrong polarity, I shot half of a video on welding outside corner joints only to find out I was running the wrong polarity lol.
Have you tried Argon/Helium (not sure of the other gas with the Argon mix) with the flux core? I have never used it but I have heard Jody and others talk about it being a much hotter weld with MIG. Might be interesting to see if it makes a silk purse out of a cow's ear? Cancel my previous comment you laid it out after I had written it. Thanks again for a very interesting series!
So the helium MiG mixes are primarily used for stainless steel because they make welding it cleaner and function better. The issue with such MiG mixes is they typically require high voltage to work properly. Much like running 100% co2 on mig requires more voltage than c25, a trimix gas with helium would probably require even more voltage than c02. The welder i have is limited to 26v which is likely not enough. Also, something I haven’t talked about much (and definitely need to cover) is with mig, the shielding gas used has a effect on the test results of the weld. 100% co2 will make a slightly more brittle weld with the same wire as c25. The is relevant to using shielding gasses with other wires that weren’t meant for them, because they can produce undesirable changes to the strength. Some Mig mixes even have hydrogen or oxygen in the mix as well. The reason for so many gas mixes and wires is to produce the results a company wants, with the speed required, on the material they are working with. We at home have to make due with what we have, and for the most part it doesn’t matter because we aren’t welding tons of expensive alloys nor are we welding on things with high liability. Not to mention speed is not of a concern for us because we aren’t producing stuff that takes hundreds if not thousands of hours to complete (either by volume or size of product). For a big company concerned about liability, cost, and speed, it makes sense to run expensive stuff like metal core wire and have 10k dollar wire feed welders to do it. Honestly that’s why I am primarily a tig welder, I can get absolute quality with a very simple setup, and it’s actually not that expensive. Tig falls apart on speed for sure, which is why I generally switch to stick to weld thick material.
TIG with Helium is diffinatly hotter and is why TIG was first called "Helearc" IDIC LL&P
Have 250i Eastwood. Would like to try settings 15-30volts and wire speed 78-679 any suggestions as to where to start
It really depends on wire type and plate thickness. Wire feed speed is determined by what size weld you want to put down in a single pass. If you’re welding 1/4in plate with short arc you need to be in the 180-200 in/min and 19 to 22v with .045 wire as a base range depending on travel speed. With spray arc you need be around 25-26v with 98-2 gas and maybe 220 on wire. Different gas blends will require different settings. With thicker material you will need a lot more wire and slightly more voltage. If you are running dual shield you need to be around 260in/min and 25v on 1/4.
The issue you will have is one process with 1/8th to 1/2in thick is that what works best for thicker plate is not what will work well for thinner. It also depends on joint configuration and position. Spray arc is mostly out of the question for out of position unless you have pulse, and it’s not suitable for 1/8th. Which spray arc gas mixtures are mostly suited for thicker material, not 1/8th, so you would have to switch mixtures to get ideal welds on 1/8th. Dual shield wire can work out of position, and can weld thicker material, but .045 isn’t what I would want to use on 1/8th material. A single gas blend will work however with that wire. Short arc Mig works great on thinner material, but with .045 wire you will likely have excessive spatter because you have to run the wire on the cold side. So basically you will have less then perfect results attempting to stick to one specific wire and one specific gas blend and trying to weld anything between 1/8th and 1/2 steel. It’s a pain to switch wires and gas bottles so I get using one process. I would personally consider trying .045 dual shield wire in that situation, but I would verify you have some root fusion. .045 wire in my experience (years ago) performed far better than the .035 I tested in this video, but you should do some cut and etches yourself to verify. Dual shield will run out of position better than spray arc, it will weld thinner material better than short arc with a spray arc gas mixture will, and it only requires a single cylinder of c25 gas to operate. It will require some practice though, your settings will be all over the map with .045 welding 1/8 to 3/8th +.
Thank you as always for taking the time to teach. I am now sixty and still learning how to improve what I love to do. Have watched your mig, stick and flux core series and having never welded dual shield am excited to try and see, if I may add thank you for showing both success and failure and giving a thought process to solve issues. I have learned far more from failure than success but always adhered to the principles my father and others instilled at a young age, if you are going to do something do it with passion and never send work out you be ashamed to sign. Thanks again for taking the time to help an up and coming generation
This is going to sound strange, but I wonder what it would look like in a relatively strong breeze.
I did fool around on another piece with gas settings and 25-40 cfh produced the same looking welds. I have a feeling a decent breeze would blow the shielding gas away because you have to run 5/8th to 3/4 stickout with it. With short arc MiG having a tighter 3/8th stickout I would think that might actually work better.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg I was just wondering if the shielding gas was somehow getting trapped.
I have a question I know has nothing to do with the video. How do you determine which generator to buy for your welder?
Great question, and I have a few videos I am editing on this that will be released in about 8-10 days. Since that doesn’t help you out now, I will give you some advice now, hope it helps:
Without going in excessive detail, you need to determine the size of welder you want to run (amperage). A 140 amp MiG welder needs a bare minimum 3600 running watt generator, and a 4k+ will be ideal. For a 200 amp welder a bare minimum 7500 running watt generator will be needed. You will still likely not be able to max the machine out at 7500 watts. The type of welder matters, 200 amps on tig takes less generator power than 200amps on stick or MiG. This is because both stick and mig operate at higher output voltages than tig.
Generator wise all welder manufactures suggest running on a low THD (clean power) generator or pure sine wave inverter. The electronics on modern inverter welders do not like dirty power cheap generators put out. Dirty power generators shorten the life span of the electronic components. One way to get around this is to buy a transformer based welder like many Hobart and Lincoln MiG machines. They won’t be bothered by the poor power, however they will output different power based on running on house or generator power (aka they need different settings).
I personally run on a predator 9500 (from harbor freight, 7500 running watt) which will just allow 200amps of MiG welder output. It’s a expensive option but it runs my portable stick machine really well and the Mig machine decent. For most people they are best off with a portable 130-180 amp stick machine for welding thicker steel and a mig machine for thinner stuff when running on a generator. You simply can’t get the thick steel performance out of a mig machine without having atleast 180 amps of welder output power and less than a 7500 running watt generator.
If you need clarification on anything let me know. 😀
@makingmistakeswithgreg I'm looking forward to that video. I'm new to welding, and I'm just grabbing the bull by the horns. Eventually, do mobile welding.
Hello Greg, I have one question. I have the opinion to get my hands on 8016 rods 11 kg for 90€. Should I buy them? The most I weld is mild steel but also parts on agricultural machinery and Mini-excavator.
Great question. So I have never ran a xx16 rod. They fall into what I would call a specialty rod where they have a specific use. The -16 denotes all position (likely not vertical down), and a low hydrogen potassium coating. Looking up intended uses for that specific rod, it seems that if it’s a 8016 b6 or b8 rod the primary use for it is in oil and chemical factories. The rods produce welds that are incredibly strong and tolerant of high heat.
So regarding if you should buy them, it’s a tough call. Because they are so specific for what they are used for you can get a lot of undesirable side effects from using them on certain materials. On mild steel you would see no increase in testing strength (assuming same weld size)over a lower strength 7018 rod. On higher strength steel it could produce a brittle weld. My main concern would be issues regarding pre/post heating of the weld. Higher strength rods commonly require preheating the base material to a specific temp, making sure the temp never exceeds a certain point during welding, and then keeping the post welding temp at a certain level (aka avoid fast cooling). If the requirements are not followed the weld will likely crack/fail, many times during cooling. Based on the risk to reward I would say I would pass unless you know they work for your application and the price is very cheap. I do believe they would work well for farm equipment but verify the working temps required of the rod.
Many thanks! The rods seem to be used with and without heat treatment. I think Ill give them a try and do some testing.
Wondering what gas/mix you used when I first started MIG straight CO2 was talarated but 75/25 was considerated the norm. I did a lot of MIG -CO2 useing beverage grade because it was cheeper. now they are saying CO2 gives better penetration. I just learned that spray MIG uses still another mix like 90/8/2% the 2 is oxygen . some mixes also have Helium . Keep up the testing you never know when you will strike it rich.LL&P
I really want to try c02 with the dual shield, but my welder doesn’t have more than 26volts. They are saying 1.5 to 2 volts over c25 so that puts it at 27-28v. Once I get a replacement spool I will be running it on a buddies 250a miller to see what it does. I don’t have high hopes but that will definitely answer if the wire even has a hope of performing lol.
035 dual shield isn't really suitable for 1/4" material. It's limited to about 3/16". I learned this a while back when I decided to try it as well. I ran beautiful fillet welds on a couple T-joints, cut, polished, and etched them, and found a line of slag right down the root of every one. I consulted with an expert (Journeyman Iron Worker, CWI, CWE), and basically what he said is that the thick material sucks the heat out of the weld too fast, and the slag solidifies in the root instead of floating to the surface. One way to get around this is to run vertical uphill, if you can. To weld 1/4" you really need 045. In fact, 045 is only useful up to about 5/16" before it potentially starts doing the same thing. For 3/8" and up you need to go to 052 or even 1/16 wire.
That seems to be exactly what I found out too. It sucks that the performance is so limited with .035. The .045 I just picked up should solve the issues on 1/4. I will also try bigger wire in the future 😀. I really like the way the stuff runs.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg dual shield is a real joy to run. I always look forward to it
does this wire have a charpy v notch data
I looked it up and it doesn’t appear to list any. Which is somewhat surprising to me, and that’s any size of that particular wire.
Perhaps that spool is bad? You did mention the box was in bad shape, and looked like it was a return. Perhaps you should return it as defective and exchange it for a new roll, or different brand. Somehow, I think the results will be about the same with any 0.035 dual shield, for all the reasons you have stated.
Even if the costs were equal to standard flux core, I wouldn’t use it after seeing your results, and hearing what others have said. That has saved me from making an expensive mistake!
I’m afraid what you have there my friend is a lifetime supply of dual shield wire for thin plate only!
For the money, I would buy a decent cheap stick welder and go from there if I had need of welding thicker material. Even if I didn’t know how to stick weld, your stick welding series would have them up and running in no time with one of the easier to run rods, and they could get pretty decent penetration, and save money in the long run.
In one of the earlier comments, someone said “Canadian Welding Supply” had smaller rolls of dual shield, but I couldn’t find it. If it wasn’t too expensive for a smaller roll, it might be worth a try…. To whomever posted that, It would be great if we could get a link to that smaller roll please.
I am sending the spool back because it had some “issues” lol. The 3rd video that’s out tomorrow will show what I mean. Stick welding is definitely the way to go on thicker metal to get solid performance. With a 200+ amp mig machine 1/4inch plate can be safely welded with short arc, but that .035 dual shield is definitely a no go for me. That’s a real bummer since if it just had a bit more root fusion it could be a very solid option. Dual shield is far easier to weld vertical up and overhead than short arc.
I will also be testing .045 gasless flux core on 1/4 to see how it works, my bet is it produces cleaner welds than .035 and will post better bend test results than short circuit MiG.
You said you ordered the 0.045 V-groove drive roller.
To run that sized wire, Will that require a new larger liner?
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I would think you would probably need to make sure your whip was relatively straight, similar to running aluminum wire through a standard wire wound MIG gun liner.
It will be very interesting to see the penetration/porosity results!
I just looked into it earlier, and apparently for my machine I need a different liner, and roller than I have. That's all fine, but it appears as though there may not be a tip that can be used in my mig gun that is for .045 wire. So what I am going to do is stop by a buddies house in a week and use his miller 250 to see what happens😀 .
That will be very interesting, and I know many others will really want to know too. I think many people have been literally shocked and mystified at your dual shield results.
Wow, just wow…. I’m kinda stumped on this
Me to lol. I am not lying when I say I did atleast 14 other welds off film that I cut and etched (many on flat plates) and not a single one hit deeper than a whisper below the surface. You would think on flat plate I would have seen some progress. It’s running like it’s brazing.
I watched a couple old welding tips and tricks videos today, and with .045 dual shield wire he was hitting some solid penetration at 220 amps on 1/4. Jody and his friend also ran .035 dual shield uphill and that had solid penetration (but they were running it at 130 amps and taking their time). I tried running it lower and slower and that made it worse. Just wait until you see the fillet weld break numbers to the face in video 3 😅. Definitely not what I expected at all.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg I’ve never ran .035 dual shield, but with .045 the weld parameters are so wide like you mentioned. I’ve ran .045 at 28v all the way down to 21.5v and when adjusting the wire feed to correspond the only thing that really changes is the deposition rate. I wonder if it’s the wire that you have, or if it’s just the nature of .035? I can’t imagine they would produce an insufficient wire intentionally🤷♂️. I wonder if the Lincoln or esab produce the same inadequate welds.
I know it will fuse the root on vertical up better, but if that's all its good at its kind of a odd product. It makes no sense to use it on 1/8 to 3/16 steel when short arc or flux core will do a fine job on those. I mean it is easier to run uphill than short arc but considering how much more the dual shield wire costs over short arc and likely gasless flux core, I don't see much use for the .035. Pretty disappointing to me :(
Maybe try contacting JD Brewer from Apex fabrication to see what his secret is. I remember seeing a video of him on a welding tips & tricks video using a Lincoln 210 MP and .035 71m on some heavier stuff.
I watched that same video and I ran the same settings he was using without any root fusion. That made me suspect it’s the wire, but then after a 3 hour internet wormhole pit i fell in it seems that people have claimed to have the same issues I experienced with both Lincoln and esab wire. I distinctly remember him using the Lincoln 210 mp and saying he liked dual shield because “it’s in there” aka it has penetration. So at this point I am not sure what to think. If 25-26v at 400+ inch per minute can’t get any penetration on 1/4in plate, that’s crazy. Straight flux core in a harbor freight titanium 125 produces better penetration lol. I am going to try to move faster and deposit even less metal per some recommendations. I was moving so fast as it was it was yet it was difficult to have the wire hit ahead of the puddle. If I had seen some sort of penetration in any of the cut and etches it would give me hope. I could ride the puddle on gas shielded short arc and still fuse the root or atleast get some penetration on flat plate lol.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg yep, that's the video that convinced me to buy a spool myself...