This stuff is like a unicorn, I searched a long time and never found anything available to me. Some process welders told me it was available to manufacturing but I could never find it.
For some reason I thought it was more common. When I made the video I tried to find settings for it and literally found nothing. Virtually no one makes the product and nobody has settings for it. The fact I got a roll is only half the issue, getting it to run right is the big part lol. The average person would have never tried dcep, 350+ in a min wire feed, and 21v on 1/8th material. A lot of things are weird about it. Honestly I suspect it might actually be a dual shield wire without gas shielding.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg When I was looking for this, it was at least 15 years ago. Back then I remember Blue Demon had information about working on this product but no more info for a while, and I gave up. Now that I see what it can do, it wasn't really the right product for me anyway.
I never knew welding ss removed its corrosion resistance at/near the weld. Thanks for this video Greg. Found this. Not my info. I am quite aware of what sugar is, and what it consists of. Please do not take this wrong, but I'm a Welding Engineer for Avesta Welding Products, and we are the only stainless steel manufacturer in the world that makes a pickling paste. There are "chemical" manufacturers that make a form of pickling, but we are the only stainless steel manufacturer that does this. Also, we have the world's largest Pickling and Cleaning research facility at Malmo, Sweden. I disagree with you about the "sugar" on the back of a weld as being Chromium Carbides. It is a chromium oxide that is definitely detrimental to the corrosion protection and strength of the weld. I would be more than happy to e-mail you papers that have been published and presented at NACE (National Association of Corrosion Engineers) and at the AWS Show in Dallas, Texas this past April explaining about exactly what we're discussing here. Apparently a lot of people have a wrong, or misinformed, preception of exactly what happens when welding stainless steel and the oxide layer that is formed when the unprotected molten weld metal meets the oxidation in the air. If you would like me to share some of this information, you may contact me at chuck.meadows@outokumpu.com and I will gladly send you a couple of papers that you might find interesting. Chuck
The article or post you quoted is correct to my knowledge. Here is a bit more information to clarify that. Most of the oxide layer on the welds in this video (and in most stainless welds) are basically superficial and not really detrimental. They can be easily removed via mechanical means, acid, or with electric cleaners. They aren’t chromium carbides, which they are commonly mistakenly called that. If they do rust it’s superficial surface level. When you get into the grey (and flat red) rough looking welds (typically inside of something not back purged) now you have bigger issues. Grinding this down often won’t remove the compromised material easily, since it’s far more than surface level deep. The material generally isn’t that much weaker than the base material, however the rough nature and often poor fusion due to oxides (like the inside of a pipe that wasn’t purged) make great places for cracks to form. Most of this is actually oxides and not carbides. Pickling, passivation, and electro cleaning help restore surface finish to maintain corrosion resistance. Those do not restore chromium in the material that has left. Carbide precipitation is primarily used to explain what’s going on inside of a weld or solid chunk of stainless where the grain boundaries have had chromium more or less leave/depleted. Stainless steel requires consistent chromium Inorder for the material to be actually “stainless”. If it’s heated enough and allowed to cool too slow, the thought is the chromium can more or less move/be depleted and you’re left with areas in the grain boundaries of low chromium. This can’t be fixed by passivation, electro chemical, or mechanical means because the material itself is compromised. In the case of stainless it’s not necessarily weaker, it just has worse corrosion resistance. In the case of titanium the welds will be super weak and brittle. When it comes to cooked grey welds (sugaring) the corrosion resistance is generally worse than the base material in the heat affected zone, and it’s very difficult to do anything about it because the surface is rough. Mechanical grinding it about the only thing that will take care of it. Again the problem being the oxide layer is not just superficial/surface deep when the stainless is cooked. Even if you passivated the surface, when that wears through the material under it is still oxided. This is a serious problem on thin material, simply not back purging a pipe could compromise the corrosion resistance of the whole thickness and you can’t just grind it down to clean it up (both due to the impracticality because it’s a pipe and due to fact there isn’t enough material to grind). Any lack of fusion on thin material is a big problem because there isn’t much metal to work with in the first place. Sometimes (from force of habit due to common welding speak) I may call the oxide layer carbide precipitation, but that is technically incorrect. Carbide precipitation is the depletion of chromium at the grain boundaries, chromium oxide is the reaction of the material with oxygen. I would imagine carbide precipitation could happen inside of stainless that is welded, but I wouldn’t imagine that is what you’re seeing on the surface. On thicker stainless (like what dump truck boxes are made out of) the surface corrosion from poor welds is of little concern. If they rust the base material has plenty of “meat” to still stay together. On thinner stuff there isn’t enough “meat” and a loss of corrosion resistance can easily cause failure. Hopefully that cleared up a bunch of things regarding stainless and welding it 😀.
my dad gave me a 25lb roll of this 20 years ago when they shut down the 'Wilson' line, they made medical sterilizers and such. I tried it once and tossed it upstairs! The trick with austenitic stainless is weld it hot and fast, then quench. The longer it stays between 800-1600 degrees the more chromium carbide precipitation occurs. Get it hot then get it cold! Now I have to go find that roll of 308core and try it again-LOL
I used this same product to weld a stainless steel wood stove kit onto a 55gal stainless barrel. $150 Harbor freight flux mig. Worked like a charm. I think I used the .030. Super ugly welds but I can't break them so I'm happy :)
I forgot to mention but stainless steel tack welds are stupidly strong. I didn’t break test anything but I could tell the welds were strong. No doubt even an ugly looking weld with the stuff would likely hold.
Many moons ago I use to work at great Dane trailers doing overhead stainless.. they didn't give us anything for protection other than leathers and that slag will burn straight through those lol.. they did send us once every couple of months to get respiratory capacity test. Same when I worked on the axel line with the high carbon
That slag is an absolute nightmare lol. It stays so hot for so long. The slag can pop off and it’s guaranteed to land where you don’t want it lol. 309 stainless rods get me every time. You get real lax with 7018 that you think a chunk of slag is no big deal lol.
Good points at around @24:25. You're right about the corrosion resistance, but I agree with you this stuff but maybe .030 or .023 wire would work good on 409 exhaust systems. Because 400 series stainless steels have much higher heat resistance than 300 series, but the trade off is slightly higher risk of light surface rust versus 304/308 stays bright and shiny even out in the weather. I see old 409 exhaust pipes and furnace heat exchangers all the time, and they get that really dark grey/brown color and get some light surface rust after a long time in use. However using 304 or 308 for exhaust pipes is a really bad idea too, in that those metals don't tolerate heat very well, and if cooked really badly, not only do they lose the corrosion resistance like you said, I've found they get this weird kind of brittleness, kind of hard to explain, but they get quite crumbly and tend to just disintegrate and the cracks look like a broken piece of hard foam, but we're talking about extreme heat abuse. Every type of stainless has it's pros/cons and it's important to select the right alloy for the purpose, or like a welding process, you'll have really poor results. There isn't a "best" alloy of stainless steel, but I like 18/10 high nickel content stainless for things like silverware, the higher nickel content really stands up well to repeated cycles in a dishwasher, and excellent chemical resistance. Incaloy is another good choice for high temp exhaust piping and things like that, but welding it is a challenge and it's very expensive. $$$
No problem 😀. I had high expectations it would work on the small 125amp machines but there isn’t a hope and a prayer. Too high of wire and voltage is needed to make it work. For what it is the wire actually works pretty good. Stick welding is still the king of affordable welding stainless.
Have been using 0.8mm SS flux core wire with my cheap EUR 140 welder. And everything you said is true :) It needs to be welded on positive and I need to turn the voltage knob to +2 when doing so. While I am able to weld up to 6mm steel with that machine, for stainless I have to crank the machine to 140A (Maximum) and can do 3...4mm thick materials. It's fun and amazing what those sub 200 EUR/USD machines are capable of...
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I would have thought it would take the same voltage as Gasless steel flux core, but clearly it doesn’t. Must be partially due to the polarity. Glad to hear you have had good results with a 140a machine. With no amp clamp it’s hard to say what the actual amperage output was on my machine, since it’s a 200a machine and there was no settings chart I could find to estimate amperage.
No problem 😀👍. Luckily stainless doesn’t loose much strength when it gets cooked, many other metals (like titanium) are completely shot when oxidization happens. I also didn’t mention it much, but with stainless headers and thin tube that’s exposed to high heat/vibration, the oxidation on the inside will cause perfect places for cracks to start and propagate from. Not to mention there could be poor fusion between pieces due to how much the inside (of say non backpurged pipe) reacted with oxygen. For most repairs it wouldn’t be a huge issue. I will definitely cover all this in depth more in a future video 😀
Interesting. Here’s what the OSHA website says about forming hexavalent chromium from stainless steel : “Hexavalent chromium can also be formed when performing “hot work” such as welding on stainless steel or melting chromium metal. In these situations the chromium is not originally hexavalent, but the high temperatures involved in the process result in oxidation that converts the chromium to a hexavalent state.”
Nice Video! In my area this type of wire can be found by one seller afaik. There are two benetits of this wire is (in my opinion): the Process is fast. Especially compared to tig. And you don't need a other gas-mix. For solidwire "stainless" we commonly use 98/2 Ar/Co2 in home and small Workshops, helium is being used in the industries (becaus of price I think). But this means that for "stainless MIG" you would need a 3rd gasbottle besides the 82/18 for MIG-steel and 100% Ar for TIG or you mix your own blend out of the 82/18 and 100% Ar which may be some how inaccurate. This wire, in my opinion has it's place where welding stainless is done only occationally.
100% agree. It makes total sense for what it is and it has to be easier on thinner material than 308 1/16th stick rods. MiG welding tends to be cheap upfront but the gas bottles and spool of wire costs will get you. Like you said, you really need 3 gas bottles to be able to weld most things, and those could cost as much as the welder lol.
This was a great start, but I'm looking forward to more on stainless welding. For instance, if you haven't taken the next step into TIG, what is best to use for stick and, if even doable, MIG? There is so much different stuff out there in the marketplace it just gets confusing (for me anyway). Don't mean to diminish this vid in anyway 'cause it was another great one --just trying to throw my hat into the ring for more vids on welding stainless. 🙂 Many thanks for sharing!!
I will be covering stainless with tig as part of the tig series I am editing videos on right now. I can tell you this when it comes to stainless: there are many ways to weld it and none of them are cheap. As expensive as a spool of the wire in the video is, or 308l stainless rods are, that’s only half the cost. A great example is 304 stainless exhaust. To get the full corrosion resistance you must purge the inside of the pipe with inert gas. Otherwise the inside will have thick grey oxides that will be a great place for a crack to form and/ or could rust from the inside out. So to maintain stainless properties something must be done to protect the whole area exposed to heat. This is why tig has the utmost advantage with stainless, you can deposit super small welds and have a ton of shielding gas coverage. Stick welding’s slag will protect welds significantly as well but not outside of the heat affected zone and not on the backside of the weld. MiG welding of stainless typically requires 98-2 argon/oxygen or trimix with helium shielding gasses. That means purchase of another gas bottle combined with a fairly expensive spool of wire that’s required. Stainless mig also requires its own unique settings and skills to weld decent. So it is doable but an expensive way to do it on a small scale. On a larger scale the cost savings is significant because of the time savings over tig. For most home hobby type stuff tig is the best because the same tank of argon that’s used to weld steel works, and it welds near identical to steel so little work is required to be able to weld stainless over steel. It’s far more cost effective due to those reasons with tig. Now if you went and built 3 stainless trailers with tig over mig it would easily cost 2x as much for a tig trailer because of the time it would take. When it comes down to it what is needed comes down heavily to what the expected result will be. Brewery piping is 100% tig with a back purge. A dump truck box is 100% mig with the cheapest gas that works, and get it out the door. Many stainless repairs are done with tig and stick.
Very informative stuff here Greg. I bought this wire about a year and a half ago for an exhaust job for my buddy that I ended up not even doing. I watched a video on this before I purchased it. I think it was Bob Moffat running this wire.
I never saw that video, I wonder if he had the same fairly high wire feed and voltage. I am suspecting it might be an actual dual shield wire and not some specific for Gasless flux core wire. The fact it runs on the same polarity as dual shield, seems to love higher voltage, and virtually no companies make the product is quite interesting. If I had some thin material I would have liked to try it out on that. I bet it would work great on exhaust.
In my area, lots of people want stainless steel for their fence, because we're so close to the beach. So this might be an idea for repairs, instead of TIGging in someones yard.
Great use for sure. Tigging stuff like that would be tough. 308/309 1/16th diameter stick rods could also work, but those don’t exist locally/are hard to find. The flux core wire would be by far easier than those rods.
I got some for an exhaust repair but had a hard time getting the setting correct, and I did have the correct polarity. Like you point out, my machine could not get enough voltage so it was a struggle.
I wish I had some exhaust pipe to try, I might buy a piece to give it a shot. Due to the real high voltage on 1/8th I have a feeling it would be a challenge to run on paper thin. It’s probably a very narrow window of what works and what doesn’t.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Is this wire available in .030. With lower wire feed settings and .030 wire, maybe 16ga would be doable. Even better would be .023, but if the .035" wire was hard to find, something tells me finding .023 flux core wire would be just about impossible, never mind that most machines only have drive rollers for .030 or .035, and maybe .045 flux core wires.
It seems to me that you would want a cartridge filter rated for VOC's to protect your lungs welding SS. That is what I use. I also stack on a P100 on top to keep the dust out of the expensive VOC cartridge. Greg, could you possibly do another video on the subject of VOC's? There are other metals besides stainless that give off harmful fumes and I know ton's of guys that weld "dirty" parts saturated in oil and paint etc. Bad practice. Just another reason for VOC protection IMO. Great Video!!!
Great idea and I have added it to the queue of videos I will make. You are 100% correct, a normal welding p100 filter will not remove much of VOCs. This is why many welding PAPR setups put the filter on a persons back, so a lot of what might be in the weld zone is not blown into the hood. Even though they technically don’t filter more than a normal p100 vapors are far less likely to find their way into your lungs due to the intake location.
I’ve seen this on eBay when looking for wire, but I’ve never had a reason to try it. I generally use 309L for most everything, unless I’ve got a good reason to use something else. For 309L, the standard settings for low carbon steel work best. If you try lower setting for stainless, it’s garbage. I don’t use trim is. Frankly, 75/25 works well. You can get a grey surface if there’s not enough gas. You need a bit more than for standard steel wire. But when you do, it goes away with some quick brushing. Now, something controversial. I also use this on cast iron. I’ve made things that way, and I’ve repaired things that way and there’s no problem. I wouldn’t use it for a hollow casting where there’s a crack. Maybe it would be fine, but I haven’t wanted to try. But for everything where the parts are not constrained, it seems fine. I’ve been doing it for some time.
309 works pretty good on many cast iron materials. Because it doesn’t become brittle via absorption of carbon (carbon embrittlement) like er70 does, it makes it possible to weld cast iron with higher carbon content. I find that 312 tends to work better on things like spring steels and tool steels than 309, but 309 is far easier to get and cheaper.
The downside is I think a lot of people (myself included) had an illusion of welding with it using a small portable 125 amp flux core machine. The wire feed and voltage that makes it start to work right pretty much eliminates that possibility lol. No doubt it worked better than expected for the little bit of testing I did. Far cheaper than a bottle of Trimix and a 10lb spool of stainless wire for mig lol.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg the exact machine that I use with the stainless steel wire is the Harbor Freight 125 it works great I used the same Harbor Freight 125 to professionally build heavy equipment from scratch a tracked articulating driving 66 horsepower stump grinding machine that you drive on all custom specs only 33 inches wide drive right through the gate with rear bulldozer push blade there are videos of it on here on UA-cam
@@makingmistakeswithgreg do you have to spend a lot of time with the wire the stainless steel wire is the complete opposite of the Steel type wire it welds completely different the stick out has to be extremely far I think it is G position one only meaning welding down from above or from up top downward the Wilding wire melts into individual drops that drip into the weld pool for me the very slow wire feed maybe like a four add Full Tilt on the amps the starts and stops are also tricky I had to use this wire for my oil company business I had to repair conical drain tanks stainless steel
Awesome review, Greg, so much useful information! I've been searching for this stuff on and off for a good long while now, it just doesn't exist where I am. More out of curiosity, I don't have much application for it. Very occasional repairs on light duty domestic stuff. Might just stick to sticks, or upgrade to TIG...
I think the wire could be a great tool to have in the tool box for oddball repair jobs. A bunch of people suggested great ideas such as stainless railing repairs. It’s far cheaper than buying a whole cylinder of special gas and a 10lb spool of stainless wire. The alternative on the cheap would be 1/16th 308 rods which would be a bastard to use I bet lol. Tig is far more useful (indoors). All you need is stainless wire and you’re mostly good to go.
Good info. A friend asked me if I could fab a bracket for a kicker boat motor out of some SS square tubing. It will be in fresh water. I'm thinking the low tensile strength with this wire might be a problem with the forces involved.
It is indeed lower. Depending on the thickness of material I don’t think it’s low enough that it would be an issue. Normal 304 stainless is in the ballpark of 73k to 90k, so it would be on the lower end. A36 steel (what people commonly use) is 60k to 80k and most er70 products are in the area of 75-82k tensile. If steel wouldn’t fail in that situation I don’t see the flux core stainless failing. Also, I did some reading and finally found some suggested settings, which was 375 and 25volts. In the video I had mentioned it likes higher voltage, and that’s true. If you are thinking about giving it a try make sure your machine can output that voltage. Many machines can’t output more than 22-23volts.
You can use co2 gas together with that flux core. The CO2 helps getting the puddle hotter and flow better with less current, it also protects somewhat the heat affected zone from oxygen. CO2 is pretty cheap compared to helium.
The issue with co2 is it lowers the corrosion resistance of stainless. Trimix, and stainless gas blends have very low co2 for this reason. You must also remember that the wire in question is designed to run Gasless. It’s possible it’s nothing more than a dual shield stainless wire. I don’t believe it’s a AWS spec wire which means its test results to begin with are a big unknown. It doesn’t have lower tensile strength than 308l stick rods and dual shield wire. It’s possible that adding gas would change its tensile strength for the better, but I doubt it. Universally the higher co2 the more loss in tensile strength with steel. I have a feeling the same would carry on to stainless. To me the big issue is the unknowns. The product itself is fairly uncommon and not well tested. Adding things like gas blends into the mix can change test results but with unknown results. That’s why it’s hard for me to suggest doing it because I have no idea what might happen.
Great suggestion and you’re correct. Solar flux used with methanol could be used to shield the areas around the weld to reduce the base metal reacting with oxygen. The only downside to this is it takes time for the stuff to setup and it’s one more thing to clean.
I had huge expectations that the wire would run on a portable flux core machine, but literally everything about it won’t work, which is a huge bummer. Needs opposite polarity of normal wire, and it needs high voltage and wire feed. Anything less than that and it will weld terribly. Stick is still the cheap way to weld stainless with good results.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg That's like the first time I borrowed someone's flux core machine and tried to repair a fan hub with it, there was spatter everywhere, and it looked like small BB's and buckshot all over the place. I realized later that guy probably never switched the leads inside the machine, a lot of those little welders come set up for MiG welding, and you have to use straight polarity for mild steel FCAW. The welds looked a little bit worse than that first weld you tried with this blue demon wire, lol.
Been welding ss for many decades and did not know that about stick welding it. Always something to learn. Normally for my projects (mostly marine bracketry, etc.) I stick weld but I do have a roll or two of that Blue Devil in the drawer. Haven't used it a great deal. Good information. I do a lot of 316 which has a higher resistance to corrosion. Is it the same in the heat zone? I am wondering if muriatic acid would cook the ss.? I am guessing not but might have to try it at some point in an etch. Most of my welding is outside to avoid fumes but I did not know how toxic ss was. Thought it would be relatively inert and didn't give it much thought when grinding and welding. Thanks for the information. Have a good day.
With stainless the heat affected zone is varying in levels of corrosion resistance. Colors up the blue (so gold, light red, dark blue) are generally capable of being removed with simple surface prep work. The grey, black, and dark flat reds indicate the material is cooked beyond the surface and a quick polish won’t cut it to bring the corrosion resistance back. Many things made from stainless (such as dump truck boxes) don’t have that great of corrosion resistance around the welds due to how much oxide was formed. The back side of the welds are also commonly completely cooked (because they don’t shield the backside of the welds with gas or solar flux). For a dump truck box it’s not a big idea. For something more critical like brewery piping it’s a significant issue.
Thank you for another great video, Greg. May be a stupid suggestion, but I wonder if some of that chromium burn out could be mitigated if you used an inert gas along with it. I know the purpose is to be gas less, but if you used your normal mig gas, might that help reduce the chromium burn out? Maybe worth trying an experiment on.
The problem with using shielding gases is a complex one. The first one being the wire is designed to produce a weld without shielding gas. I am not entirely sure but it’s possible the wire is just a form of dual shield. Well the test results (such as tensile strength) are as the product is (without shielding gas). Adding gas may actually change its strength. The problem is we don’t know what’s affected and by how much. That isn’t a good situation. I have ran Gasless steel flux core wire with c25 gas and saw no noticeable visual difference from what I remember. The actual strength wasn’t tested so that would be open to possibilities. Back to stainless steel. Universally stainless must be welded with gas blends that don’t contain much c02. High levels of co2 will actually drop the corrosion resistance of the base material. On normal steel high levels of c02 tend to reduce the tensile strength, I would assume the same would be true with stainless. Where things become interesting is if pure argon was used. I don’t believe it would work. Pure argon would likely cause a required increase in voltage setpoint. I believe it would affect the stability of the process as well. The only safe way to maintain full corrosion resistance is to avoid running multiple passes fast, use chill bars (material that is clamped near the weld to help the material cool fast), and if needed use solar flux which protects the material from oxidization. This becomes super critical on thin material because there isn’t much material that can be lost to corrosion before there isn’t anything left.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Wow, thanks for the detailed reply. This is where your experience comes in. I agree, no need to test, everything you said makes sense. 👍
If you are really dirty- maybe just weld up the stainless exhaust with normal 70/6 wire ? Could be interesting to see how corrosion resistant these welds really are. keep them outside and let us see in a year or two. Oh didn't know 3mix was that expensive...
You can weld stainless with er70 and it works. The welds will rust as fast as normal steel welds. In a high heat and/or high vibration environment like on exhaust systems the welds will likely fail, but outside of that it will likely last. As far as trimix it’s mostly helium so it’s pricy. Last I checked it was 2x most other shielding gasses, and I believe it’s far above that now 😕
Hello Greg, interesting wire. Thanks for the video. Question: what would the most common type of wire to be used on Stainless Exhaust Systems with shielding gas? Also what type of gas is recommended with this stainless type solid core wire? I was given a exhaust system recently and will likely be welding the saw cut inlet pipe of the muffler to my cat outlet pipe of my F150 or expanding and clamping it. Will also likely be welding bent mild steel rods onto the stainless tailpipes for the hangers. It’s a 1 input 2 output type steel Magnaflow muffler with short stainless input pipe section and the two dual stainless tailpipes already welded into it. My machine is a Hobart Handler 190 with C25,gas. Your thoughts, thank you.
Great question. There are a lot of answers, I will give them and you can choose what will work. 409 can be welded with 409, 309, 312, or 308 wires. If it’s welded with those series wires it will have excellent corrosion resistance and be far less likely to develop cracks (due to heat and/or vibration cycles). The problem is it’s difficult (and expensive) to get many of those wires for mig. Once you have the filler chosen the gas issue comes up. I have a ton of experience repairing stainless exhaust systems. The most common failures happen in the 1st 3rd of the exhaust. Due to high heat, high vibrations, thermal cycles, and people often not “back purging” the inside (or using the wrong filler) the welds themselves or toes of the weld crack. A lasting repair on the first third of the exhaust system (headers, cats, crossover pipe, etc) requires clean welds and preferably a back purge during welding. The gas used plays a role in this. Many people don’t know, but c25 produces more brittle/weaker welds with stainless. To avoid this trimix (mostly helium) or 98/2 argon/oxygen generally should be used to weld stainless. Trimix is stupidly expensive. Considering you’re talking a muffler and that isn’t nearly as hot as say the headers or cat, your ability to weld it and have the weld last with defects is far greater. C25 tends to cause the weld to have poor penetration, which isn’t a huge issue since the material is so thin. The welds won’t likely have the corrosion resistance of the base material. If it’s 409 stainless that’s of little concern. That’s why I really like tig welding, it gives the ability to weld oddball stuff for more reasonable cost. You should be able to have decent success with 308l wire.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Wouldn't the 98/2 be more like a MaG welding? Metal active gas from the oxygen? I've seen some stainless mixes that list a small amount of oxygen in the mix, I'm not sure what the oxygen is there for. 100% pure argon I'm familiar with, that's what's used for TiG welding, and some people like to use a helium mix when TiG welding thicker stainless, they say it makes a hotter weld, I guess because the helium has a higher arc gap voltage than argon?
For purge 100%Argon is fine, better is Argon with a small amount of hydrogen. That binds the oxygen left because of higher affinity. I personally would not try to mix this gas myself, becaus of the "boom-facto" of hydrogen😅.
Dual shield flux core wire uses gas blends such as c100 and c25 (75argon 25% co2) to aid in shielding. Self shielded wires are designed to run without shielding gas. Introduction of shielding gas could have undesirable results such as brittle welds. I have a feeling that wire would probably be minimally affected by conventional shielding gas. In the case of pure argon, that would require even higher voltage setpoints and my guess is it wouldn’t work very well.
I did a video on that in a round about way. Preheating it would probably help wet it out better at lower settings. I would worry about how the weld pool would react to warm material. Stainless likes clean cold base material.
I think most of it would. Cooked grey tends to be below the surface so simply passivating it would likely not fully work, it would need to have the material mechanically removed. If the settings were dialed in and the travel speed was fast, i would think it would produce acceptable welds that could be fully passivated.
Do you have any experience repairing tool steel parts, whether by TIG or another process? I'd love to see an "in the weeds" video if you've got any pointers.
I definitely do with tig. I will definitely cover a video on that. In the mean time the best solution to welding tool steels generally is a preheat of 150-350 (or higher depending on the steel), letting it cools between passes (interpass temps need to be controlled within a specific range, generally sub 400), and welding them with appropriate filler. 312 stainless tends to work good as a repair filler. Many tool steels have higher carbon and are heat treated. Mild steel welding fillers tend to become very brittle via carbon absorption, which 312 stainless doesn’t. Keep in mind too that any heat treatment will be null after welding.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg That's some great info! Looking it up always seems like black magic, although WeldMold has some pretty good resources for their particular rods. I ended up fumbling a repair for the tool room and caused some hairline cracks in a bottom die. Luckily it wasn't high load, just used moreso for abrasion. Definitely felt like a dumbass the rest of the day. 🥲
I will test it in some thinner material. I can tell you it likes higher voltage. It easily needs 5v over normal flux core just to start to wet out. For more powerful welders that’s not an issue, for 140a and under machines that’s an issue.
Good video but if I have a negative comment it would be that you didn't test push. Your welds were all drag and you didn't try push. It would be good if you did a follow up on this video using the push method. Maybe I'm wrong but I would like to be proven wrong.
Pushing with a self shielded wire will produce undesireable bead profiles more than likely. Normal Gasless flux core can be pushed, but its slag is thin and dust like. This wire has thicker slag that would likely cause slag inclusions. Pushing also limits penetration, which is an issue since its penetration is less than conventional steel Gasless flux core wire. If pushing would work it probably would be closer to straight in than an actual push angle.
This stuff is like a unicorn, I searched a long time and never found anything available to me. Some process welders told me it was available to manufacturing but I could never find it.
For some reason I thought it was more common. When I made the video I tried to find settings for it and literally found nothing. Virtually no one makes the product and nobody has settings for it. The fact I got a roll is only half the issue, getting it to run right is the big part lol. The average person would have never tried dcep, 350+ in a min wire feed, and 21v on 1/8th material. A lot of things are weird about it. Honestly I suspect it might actually be a dual shield wire without gas shielding.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg I have done a fair bit (maybe 250lbs) of dual shield SS.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg When I was looking for this, it was at least 15 years ago. Back then I remember Blue Demon had information about working on this product but no more info for a while, and I gave up. Now that I see what it can do, it wasn't really the right product for me anyway.
I never knew welding ss removed its corrosion resistance at/near the weld. Thanks for this video Greg.
Found this. Not my info.
I am quite aware of what sugar is, and what it consists of. Please do not take this wrong, but I'm a Welding Engineer for Avesta Welding Products, and we are the only stainless steel manufacturer in the world that makes a pickling paste. There are "chemical" manufacturers that make a form of pickling, but we are the only stainless steel manufacturer that does this. Also, we have the world's largest Pickling and Cleaning research facility at Malmo, Sweden. I disagree with you about the "sugar" on the back of a weld as being Chromium Carbides. It is a chromium oxide that is definitely detrimental to the corrosion protection and strength of the weld. I would be more than happy to e-mail you papers that have been published and presented at NACE (National Association of Corrosion Engineers) and at the AWS Show in Dallas, Texas this past April explaining about exactly what we're discussing here. Apparently a lot of people have a wrong, or misinformed, preception of exactly what happens when welding stainless steel and the oxide layer that is formed when the unprotected molten weld metal meets the oxidation in the air. If you would like me to share some of this information, you may contact me at chuck.meadows@outokumpu.com and I will gladly send you a couple of papers that you might find interesting.
Chuck
The article or post you quoted is correct to my knowledge. Here is a bit more information to clarify that. Most of the oxide layer on the welds in this video (and in most stainless welds) are basically superficial and not really detrimental. They can be easily removed via mechanical means, acid, or with electric cleaners. They aren’t chromium carbides, which they are commonly mistakenly called that. If they do rust it’s superficial surface level. When you get into the grey (and flat red) rough looking welds (typically inside of something not back purged) now you have bigger issues. Grinding this down often won’t remove the compromised material easily, since it’s far more than surface level deep. The material generally isn’t that much weaker than the base material, however the rough nature and often poor fusion due to oxides (like the inside of a pipe that wasn’t purged) make great places for cracks to form. Most of this is actually oxides and not carbides. Pickling, passivation, and electro cleaning help restore surface finish to maintain corrosion resistance. Those do not restore chromium in the material that has left.
Carbide precipitation is primarily used to explain what’s going on inside of a weld or solid chunk of stainless where the grain boundaries have had chromium more or less leave/depleted. Stainless steel requires consistent chromium Inorder for the material to be actually “stainless”. If it’s heated enough and allowed to cool too slow, the thought is the chromium can more or less move/be depleted and you’re left with areas in the grain boundaries of low chromium. This can’t be fixed by passivation, electro chemical, or mechanical means because the material itself is compromised. In the case of stainless it’s not necessarily weaker, it just has worse corrosion resistance. In the case of titanium the welds will be super weak and brittle. When it comes to cooked grey welds (sugaring) the corrosion resistance is generally worse than the base material in the heat affected zone, and it’s very difficult to do anything about it because the surface is rough. Mechanical grinding it about the only thing that will take care of it. Again the problem being the oxide layer is not just superficial/surface deep when the stainless is cooked. Even if you passivated the surface, when that wears through the material under it is still oxided.
This is a serious problem on thin material, simply not back purging a pipe could compromise the corrosion resistance of the whole thickness and you can’t just grind it down to clean it up (both due to the impracticality because it’s a pipe and due to fact there isn’t enough material to grind). Any lack of fusion on thin material is a big problem because there isn’t much metal to work with in the first place.
Sometimes (from force of habit due to common welding speak) I may call the oxide layer carbide precipitation, but that is technically incorrect. Carbide precipitation is the depletion of chromium at the grain boundaries, chromium oxide is the reaction of the material with oxygen. I would imagine carbide precipitation could happen inside of stainless that is welded, but I wouldn’t imagine that is what you’re seeing on the surface. On thicker stainless (like what dump truck boxes are made out of) the surface corrosion from poor welds is of little concern. If they rust the base material has plenty of “meat” to still stay together. On thinner stuff there isn’t enough “meat” and a loss of corrosion resistance can easily cause failure.
Hopefully that cleared up a bunch of things regarding stainless and welding it 😀.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg thanks Greg!
my dad gave me a 25lb roll of this 20 years ago when they shut down the 'Wilson' line, they made medical sterilizers and such. I tried it once and tossed it upstairs! The trick with austenitic stainless is weld it hot and fast, then quench. The longer it stays between 800-1600 degrees the more chromium carbide precipitation occurs. Get it hot then get it cold! Now I have to go find that roll of 308core and try it again-LOL
I used this same product to weld a stainless steel wood stove kit onto a 55gal stainless barrel. $150 Harbor freight flux mig. Worked like a charm. I think I used the .030. Super ugly welds but I can't break them so I'm happy :)
I forgot to mention but stainless steel tack welds are stupidly strong. I didn’t break test anything but I could tell the welds were strong. No doubt even an ugly looking weld with the stuff would likely hold.
Many moons ago I use to work at great Dane trailers doing overhead stainless.. they didn't give us anything for protection other than leathers and that slag will burn straight through those lol.. they did send us once every couple of months to get respiratory capacity test. Same when I worked on the axel line with the high carbon
That slag is an absolute nightmare lol. It stays so hot for so long. The slag can pop off and it’s guaranteed to land where you don’t want it lol. 309 stainless rods get me every time. You get real lax with 7018 that you think a chunk of slag is no big deal lol.
25.2k subs!! Congratulations man, been watching the whole time. Very much enjoy your channel, Sir.
Thanks for being around for the long haul 😀
Good points at around @24:25. You're right about the corrosion resistance, but I agree with you this stuff but maybe .030 or .023 wire would work good on 409 exhaust systems. Because 400 series stainless steels have much higher heat resistance than 300 series, but the trade off is slightly higher risk of light surface rust versus 304/308 stays bright and shiny even out in the weather. I see old 409 exhaust pipes and furnace heat exchangers all the time, and they get that really dark grey/brown color and get some light surface rust after a long time in use. However using 304 or 308 for exhaust pipes is a really bad idea too, in that those metals don't tolerate heat very well, and if cooked really badly, not only do they lose the corrosion resistance like you said, I've found they get this weird kind of brittleness, kind of hard to explain, but they get quite crumbly and tend to just disintegrate and the cracks look like a broken piece of hard foam, but we're talking about extreme heat abuse. Every type of stainless has it's pros/cons and it's important to select the right alloy for the purpose, or like a welding process, you'll have really poor results. There isn't a "best" alloy of stainless steel, but I like 18/10 high nickel content stainless for things like silverware, the higher nickel content really stands up well to repeated cycles in a dishwasher, and excellent chemical resistance. Incaloy is another good choice for high temp exhaust piping and things like that, but welding it is a challenge and it's very expensive. $$$
Thanks for saving me from making things worse by trying to weld SS with my Harbor Freight flux core welder!
Now to find another solution!
No problem 😀. I had high expectations it would work on the small 125amp machines but there isn’t a hope and a prayer. Too high of wire and voltage is needed to make it work. For what it is the wire actually works pretty good. Stick welding is still the king of affordable welding stainless.
Have been using 0.8mm SS flux core wire with my cheap EUR 140 welder. And everything you said is true :)
It needs to be welded on positive and I need to turn the voltage knob to +2 when doing so. While I am able to weld up to 6mm steel with that machine, for stainless I have to crank the machine to 140A (Maximum) and can do 3...4mm thick materials.
It's fun and amazing what those sub 200 EUR/USD machines are capable of...
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I would have thought it would take the same voltage as Gasless steel flux core, but clearly it doesn’t. Must be partially due to the polarity. Glad to hear you have had good results with a 140a machine. With no amp clamp it’s hard to say what the actual amperage output was on my machine, since it’s a 200a machine and there was no settings chart I could find to estimate amperage.
Excellent insights regarding overcooked area losing its corrosion and chemical resistance, thanks for the excellent video!
No problem 😀👍. Luckily stainless doesn’t loose much strength when it gets cooked, many other metals (like titanium) are completely shot when oxidization happens. I also didn’t mention it much, but with stainless headers and thin tube that’s exposed to high heat/vibration, the oxidation on the inside will cause perfect places for cracks to start and propagate from. Not to mention there could be poor fusion between pieces due to how much the inside (of say non backpurged pipe) reacted with oxygen. For most repairs it wouldn’t be a huge issue. I will definitely cover all this in depth more in a future video 😀
Exactly the video I've been looking for!
Good information, thanks for posting.
No problem 😀👍
I learned a lot from this episode!
Thanks Greg!
No problem 😀👍
When it came to the USA helium reserve, our politicians did a "bad, bad thing."
This gonna be a straight hood classic, I can feel it. Thanks
Interesting. Here’s what the OSHA website says about forming hexavalent chromium from stainless steel :
“Hexavalent chromium can also be formed when performing “hot work” such as welding on stainless steel or melting chromium metal. In these situations the chromium is not originally hexavalent, but the high temperatures involved in the process result in oxidation that converts the chromium to a hexavalent state.”
So what I read here is that cutting or sanding stainless doesn’t release the hexavalent chromium.
@@scottsmith7080 I wouldn't say that about torch or plasma cutting though. The chromium becomes hexavalent at high temps.
Nice Video! In my area this type of wire can be found by one seller afaik. There are two benetits of this wire is (in my opinion): the Process is fast. Especially compared to tig. And you don't need a other gas-mix.
For solidwire "stainless" we commonly use 98/2 Ar/Co2 in home and small Workshops, helium is being used in the industries (becaus of price I think). But this means that for "stainless MIG" you would need a 3rd gasbottle besides the 82/18 for MIG-steel and 100% Ar for TIG or you mix your own blend out of the 82/18 and 100% Ar which may be some how inaccurate.
This wire, in my opinion has it's place where welding stainless is done only occationally.
100% agree. It makes total sense for what it is and it has to be easier on thinner material than 308 1/16th stick rods. MiG welding tends to be cheap upfront but the gas bottles and spool of wire costs will get you. Like you said, you really need 3 gas bottles to be able to weld most things, and those could cost as much as the welder lol.
This was a great start, but I'm looking forward to more on stainless welding. For instance, if you haven't taken the next step into TIG, what is best to use for stick and, if even doable, MIG? There is so much different stuff out there in the marketplace it just gets confusing (for me anyway). Don't mean to diminish this vid in anyway 'cause it was another great one --just trying to throw my hat into the ring for more vids on welding stainless. 🙂 Many thanks for sharing!!
I will be covering stainless with tig as part of the tig series I am editing videos on right now. I can tell you this when it comes to stainless: there are many ways to weld it and none of them are cheap. As expensive as a spool of the wire in the video is, or 308l stainless rods are, that’s only half the cost. A great example is 304 stainless exhaust. To get the full corrosion resistance you must purge the inside of the pipe with inert gas. Otherwise the inside will have thick grey oxides that will be a great place for a crack to form and/ or could rust from the inside out. So to maintain stainless properties something must be done to protect the whole area exposed to heat. This is why tig has the utmost advantage with stainless, you can deposit super small welds and have a ton of shielding gas coverage. Stick welding’s slag will protect welds significantly as well but not outside of the heat affected zone and not on the backside of the weld.
MiG welding of stainless typically requires 98-2 argon/oxygen or trimix with helium shielding gasses. That means purchase of another gas bottle combined with a fairly expensive spool of wire that’s required. Stainless mig also requires its own unique settings and skills to weld decent. So it is doable but an expensive way to do it on a small scale. On a larger scale the cost savings is significant because of the time savings over tig. For most home hobby type stuff tig is the best because the same tank of argon that’s used to weld steel works, and it welds near identical to steel so little work is required to be able to weld stainless over steel. It’s far more cost effective due to those reasons with tig. Now if you went and built 3 stainless trailers with tig over mig it would easily cost 2x as much for a tig trailer because of the time it would take.
When it comes down to it what is needed comes down heavily to what the expected result will be. Brewery piping is 100% tig with a back purge. A dump truck box is 100% mig with the cheapest gas that works, and get it out the door. Many stainless repairs are done with tig and stick.
I would suggest the 30 over the 35
Got the sticker the other day Greg, many thanks young man!
I usually only stick or tig stainless steel.
No problem, glad you got it 😀
Very informative stuff here Greg. I bought this wire about a year and a half ago for an exhaust job for my buddy that I ended up not even doing. I watched a video on this before I purchased it. I think it was Bob Moffat running this wire.
I never saw that video, I wonder if he had the same fairly high wire feed and voltage. I am suspecting it might be an actual dual shield wire and not some specific for Gasless flux core wire. The fact it runs on the same polarity as dual shield, seems to love higher voltage, and virtually no companies make the product is quite interesting. If I had some thin material I would have liked to try it out on that. I bet it would work great on exhaust.
Did he do some coopins?
@@makingmistakeswithgreg he was definitely smokin it in there. ua-cam.com/video/yx6weJurINc/v-deo.htmlsi=b6viA5d6p1D7qlq1
@@makingmistakeswithgreg he definitely smoked it in there hot. ua-cam.com/video/yx6weJurINc/v-deo.htmlsi=6a_S3JraNBhq9vg4
Been waiting a while for this.
It welds better than I expected but at much higher settings. If your welder can run the settings it worth buying for sure.
What about using it in my mom's basement? 😂
Another great educational video!
Moms basement is fine, it’s dads basement that’s a no go lol.
In my area, lots of people want stainless steel for their fence, because we're so close to the beach. So this might be an idea for repairs, instead of TIGging in someones yard.
Great use for sure. Tigging stuff like that would be tough. 308/309 1/16th diameter stick rods could also work, but those don’t exist locally/are hard to find. The flux core wire would be by far easier than those rods.
I got some for an exhaust repair but had a hard time getting the setting correct, and I did have the correct polarity. Like you point out, my machine could not get enough voltage so it was a struggle.
I wish I had some exhaust pipe to try, I might buy a piece to give it a shot. Due to the real high voltage on 1/8th I have a feeling it would be a challenge to run on paper thin. It’s probably a very narrow window of what works and what doesn’t.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Is this wire available in .030. With lower wire feed settings and .030 wire, maybe 16ga would be doable. Even better would be .023, but if the .035" wire was hard to find, something tells me finding .023 flux core wire would be just about impossible, never mind that most machines only have drive rollers for .030 or .035, and maybe .045 flux core wires.
Great information, thank you for sharing
No problem 😀👍
It seems to me that you would want a cartridge filter rated for VOC's to protect your lungs welding SS. That is what I use. I also stack on a P100 on top to keep the dust out of the expensive VOC cartridge. Greg, could you possibly do another video on the subject of VOC's? There are other metals besides stainless that give off harmful fumes and I know ton's of guys that weld "dirty" parts saturated in oil and paint etc. Bad practice. Just another reason for VOC protection IMO. Great Video!!!
Great idea and I have added it to the queue of videos I will make. You are 100% correct, a normal welding p100 filter will not remove much of VOCs. This is why many welding PAPR setups put the filter on a persons back, so a lot of what might be in the weld zone is not blown into the hood. Even though they technically don’t filter more than a normal p100 vapors are far less likely to find their way into your lungs due to the intake location.
I’ve seen this on eBay when looking for wire, but I’ve never had a reason to try it. I generally use 309L for most everything, unless I’ve got a good reason to use something else. For 309L, the standard settings for low carbon steel work best. If you try lower setting for stainless, it’s garbage. I don’t use trim is. Frankly, 75/25 works well. You can get a grey surface if there’s not enough gas. You need a bit more than for standard steel wire. But when you do, it goes away with some quick brushing. Now, something controversial. I also use this on cast iron. I’ve made things that way, and I’ve repaired things that way and there’s no problem. I wouldn’t use it for a hollow casting where there’s a crack. Maybe it would be fine, but I haven’t wanted to try. But for everything where the parts are not constrained, it seems fine. I’ve been doing it for some time.
Using ductile materials to repair brittle ones is pretty common practice. Nothing controversial about that
309 works pretty good on many cast iron materials. Because it doesn’t become brittle via absorption of carbon (carbon embrittlement) like er70 does, it makes it possible to weld cast iron with higher carbon content. I find that 312 tends to work better on things like spring steels and tool steels than 309, but 309 is far easier to get and cheaper.
It works great if you know how to use it it is single position only lots of amps and lots of stick out long distance from the workpiece
The downside is I think a lot of people (myself included) had an illusion of welding with it using a small portable 125 amp flux core machine. The wire feed and voltage that makes it start to work right pretty much eliminates that possibility lol. No doubt it worked better than expected for the little bit of testing I did. Far cheaper than a bottle of Trimix and a 10lb spool of stainless wire for mig lol.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg the exact machine that I use with the stainless steel wire is the Harbor Freight 125 it works great I used the same Harbor Freight 125 to professionally build heavy equipment from scratch a tracked articulating driving 66 horsepower stump grinding machine that you drive on all custom specs only 33 inches wide drive right through the gate with rear bulldozer push blade there are videos of it on here on UA-cam
@@makingmistakeswithgreg do you have to spend a lot of time with the wire the stainless steel wire is the complete opposite of the Steel type wire it welds completely different the stick out has to be extremely far I think it is G position one only meaning welding down from above or from up top downward the Wilding wire melts into individual drops that drip into the weld pool for me the very slow wire feed maybe like a four add Full Tilt on the amps the starts and stops are also tricky I had to use this wire for my oil company business I had to repair conical drain tanks stainless steel
When the chromium is being burned out guess where it goes. More than a dust mask required.
Awesome review, Greg, so much useful information! I've been searching for this stuff on and off for a good long while now, it just doesn't exist where I am. More out of curiosity, I don't have much application for it. Very occasional repairs on light duty domestic stuff. Might just stick to sticks, or upgrade to TIG...
I think the wire could be a great tool to have in the tool box for oddball repair jobs. A bunch of people suggested great ideas such as stainless railing repairs. It’s far cheaper than buying a whole cylinder of special gas and a 10lb spool of stainless wire. The alternative on the cheap would be 1/16th 308 rods which would be a bastard to use I bet lol. Tig is far more useful (indoors). All you need is stainless wire and you’re mostly good to go.
I learned some good stuff I can use here . Thank you
Glad to hear it 😀 and you’re welcome 😀👍
Good info. A friend asked me if I could fab a bracket for a kicker boat motor out of some SS square tubing. It will be in fresh water. I'm thinking the low tensile strength with this wire might be a problem with the forces involved.
It is indeed lower. Depending on the thickness of material I don’t think it’s low enough that it would be an issue. Normal 304 stainless is in the ballpark of 73k to 90k, so it would be on the lower end. A36 steel (what people commonly use) is 60k to 80k and most er70 products are in the area of 75-82k tensile. If steel wouldn’t fail in that situation I don’t see the flux core stainless failing.
Also, I did some reading and finally found some suggested settings, which was 375 and 25volts. In the video I had mentioned it likes higher voltage, and that’s true. If you are thinking about giving it a try make sure your machine can output that voltage. Many machines can’t output more than 22-23volts.
You can use co2 gas together with that flux core. The CO2 helps getting the puddle hotter and flow better with less current, it also protects somewhat the heat affected zone from oxygen. CO2 is pretty cheap compared to helium.
The issue with co2 is it lowers the corrosion resistance of stainless. Trimix, and stainless gas blends have very low co2 for this reason. You must also remember that the wire in question is designed to run Gasless. It’s possible it’s nothing more than a dual shield stainless wire. I don’t believe it’s a AWS spec wire which means its test results to begin with are a big unknown. It doesn’t have lower tensile strength than 308l stick rods and dual shield wire. It’s possible that adding gas would change its tensile strength for the better, but I doubt it. Universally the higher co2 the more loss in tensile strength with steel. I have a feeling the same would carry on to stainless. To me the big issue is the unknowns. The product itself is fairly uncommon and not well tested. Adding things like gas blends into the mix can change test results but with unknown results. That’s why it’s hard for me to suggest doing it because I have no idea what might happen.
Hi Greg. I wonder if its possible to use gas welding flux paste suitable for stainless on the outer edges to protect the material?
Great suggestion and you’re correct. Solar flux used with methanol could be used to shield the areas around the weld to reduce the base metal reacting with oxygen. The only downside to this is it takes time for the stuff to setup and it’s one more thing to clean.
Lol I got stuff like this and I was shocked about how bad it was (125 titanium) but now I know why
I had huge expectations that the wire would run on a portable flux core machine, but literally everything about it won’t work, which is a huge bummer. Needs opposite polarity of normal wire, and it needs high voltage and wire feed. Anything less than that and it will weld terribly. Stick is still the cheap way to weld stainless with good results.
Wish you had tried dual shield weld also to see if you could make it neater if needed
The wire itself is designed to be self shielded, and introducing gas could have undesirable consequences such as brittle/ weak welds.
Interesting
many hobart flux core wires are DCEP. they are generally the larger diameter structural wires.
Nice to know that. I have only ran dual shield (DCEP) and smaller self shielded on DCEN. The wrong polarity makes quite a mess of the process 😅.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg That's like the first time I borrowed someone's flux core machine and tried to repair a fan hub with it, there was spatter everywhere, and it looked like small BB's and buckshot all over the place. I realized later that guy probably never switched the leads inside the machine, a lot of those little welders come set up for MiG welding, and you have to use straight polarity for mild steel FCAW. The welds looked a little bit worse than that first weld you tried with this blue demon wire, lol.
Been welding ss for many decades and did not know that about stick welding it. Always something to learn. Normally for my projects (mostly marine bracketry, etc.) I stick weld but I do have a roll or two of that Blue Devil in the drawer. Haven't used it a great deal. Good information. I do a lot of 316 which has a higher resistance to corrosion. Is it the same in the heat zone? I am wondering if muriatic acid would cook the ss.? I am guessing not but might have to try it at some point in an etch. Most of my welding is outside to avoid fumes but I did not know how toxic ss was. Thought it would be relatively inert and didn't give it much thought when grinding and welding. Thanks for the information. Have a good day.
With stainless the heat affected zone is varying in levels of corrosion resistance. Colors up the blue (so gold, light red, dark blue) are generally capable of being removed with simple surface prep work. The grey, black, and dark flat reds indicate the material is cooked beyond the surface and a quick polish won’t cut it to bring the corrosion resistance back. Many things made from stainless (such as dump truck boxes) don’t have that great of corrosion resistance around the welds due to how much oxide was formed. The back side of the welds are also commonly completely cooked (because they don’t shield the backside of the welds with gas or solar flux). For a dump truck box it’s not a big idea. For something more critical like brewery piping it’s a significant issue.
Thank you for another great video, Greg. May be a stupid suggestion, but I wonder if some of that chromium burn out could be mitigated if you used an inert gas along with it. I know the purpose is to be gas less, but if you used your normal mig gas, might that help reduce the chromium burn out? Maybe worth trying an experiment on.
The problem with using shielding gases is a complex one. The first one being the wire is designed to produce a weld without shielding gas. I am not entirely sure but it’s possible the wire is just a form of dual shield. Well the test results (such as tensile strength) are as the product is (without shielding gas). Adding gas may actually change its strength. The problem is we don’t know what’s affected and by how much. That isn’t a good situation. I have ran Gasless steel flux core wire with c25 gas and saw no noticeable visual difference from what I remember. The actual strength wasn’t tested so that would be open to possibilities. Back to stainless steel. Universally stainless must be welded with gas blends that don’t contain much c02. High levels of co2 will actually drop the corrosion resistance of the base material. On normal steel high levels of c02 tend to reduce the tensile strength, I would assume the same would be true with stainless.
Where things become interesting is if pure argon was used. I don’t believe it would work. Pure argon would likely cause a required increase in voltage setpoint. I believe it would affect the stability of the process as well.
The only safe way to maintain full corrosion resistance is to avoid running multiple passes fast, use chill bars (material that is clamped near the weld to help the material cool fast), and if needed use solar flux which protects the material from oxidization. This becomes super critical on thin material because there isn’t much material that can be lost to corrosion before there isn’t anything left.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Wow, thanks for the detailed reply. This is where your experience comes in. I agree, no need to test, everything you said makes sense. 👍
If you are really dirty- maybe just weld up the stainless exhaust with normal 70/6 wire ? Could be interesting to see how corrosion resistant these welds really are. keep them outside and let us see in a year or two. Oh didn't know 3mix was that expensive...
You can weld stainless with er70 and it works. The welds will rust as fast as normal steel welds. In a high heat and/or high vibration environment like on exhaust systems the welds will likely fail, but outside of that it will likely last.
As far as trimix it’s mostly helium so it’s pricy. Last I checked it was 2x most other shielding gasses, and I believe it’s far above that now 😕
Hello Greg, interesting wire. Thanks for the video. Question: what would the most common type of wire to be used on Stainless Exhaust Systems with shielding gas? Also what type of gas is recommended with this stainless type solid core wire? I was given a exhaust system recently and will likely be welding the saw cut inlet pipe of the muffler to my cat outlet pipe of my F150 or expanding and clamping it. Will also likely be welding bent mild steel rods onto the stainless tailpipes for the hangers. It’s a 1 input 2 output type steel Magnaflow muffler with short stainless input pipe section and the two dual stainless tailpipes already welded into it. My machine is a Hobart Handler 190 with C25,gas. Your thoughts, thank you.
Great question. There are a lot of answers, I will give them and you can choose what will work. 409 can be welded with 409, 309, 312, or 308 wires. If it’s welded with those series wires it will have excellent corrosion resistance and be far less likely to develop cracks (due to heat and/or vibration cycles). The problem is it’s difficult (and expensive) to get many of those wires for mig. Once you have the filler chosen the gas issue comes up.
I have a ton of experience repairing stainless exhaust systems. The most common failures happen in the 1st 3rd of the exhaust. Due to high heat, high vibrations, thermal cycles, and people often not “back purging” the inside (or using the wrong filler) the welds themselves or toes of the weld crack. A lasting repair on the first third of the exhaust system (headers, cats, crossover pipe, etc) requires clean welds and preferably a back purge during welding. The gas used plays a role in this. Many people don’t know, but c25 produces more brittle/weaker welds with stainless. To avoid this trimix (mostly helium) or 98/2 argon/oxygen generally should be used to weld stainless. Trimix is stupidly expensive.
Considering you’re talking a muffler and that isn’t nearly as hot as say the headers or cat, your ability to weld it and have the weld last with defects is far greater. C25 tends to cause the weld to have poor penetration, which isn’t a huge issue since the material is so thin. The welds won’t likely have the corrosion resistance of the base material. If it’s 409 stainless that’s of little concern. That’s why I really like tig welding, it gives the ability to weld oddball stuff for more reasonable cost. You should be able to have decent success with 308l wire.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Wouldn't the 98/2 be more like a MaG welding? Metal active gas from the oxygen? I've seen some stainless mixes that list a small amount of oxygen in the mix, I'm not sure what the oxygen is there for. 100% pure argon I'm familiar with, that's what's used for TiG welding, and some people like to use a helium mix when TiG welding thicker stainless, they say it makes a hotter weld, I guess because the helium has a higher arc gap voltage than argon?
For purge 100%Argon is fine, better is Argon with a small amount of hydrogen. That binds the oxygen left because of higher affinity. I personally would not try to mix this gas myself, becaus of the "boom-facto" of hydrogen😅.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Thanks Greg
would the gvs p100 respirator work well for stainless
The gvs is the same as the miller and they state it will protect against hex/chrome particulate. I generally wear the gvs or Lincoln mask 👍
Could you use Argon as well, or does the flux require oxygen to do its thing?
Dual shield flux core wire uses gas blends such as c100 and c25 (75argon 25% co2) to aid in shielding. Self shielded wires are designed to run without shielding gas. Introduction of shielding gas could have undesirable results such as brittle welds. I have a feeling that wire would probably be minimally affected by conventional shielding gas. In the case of pure argon, that would require even higher voltage setpoints and my guess is it wouldn’t work very well.
would preheating the steel make any difference with voltage?
I did a video on that in a round about way. Preheating it would probably help wet it out better at lower settings. I would worry about how the weld pool would react to warm material. Stainless likes clean cold base material.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg I saw that video, but I was not sure about the properties of stainless, thanks
Id like to see how much of that you could passivate out
I think most of it would. Cooked grey tends to be below the surface so simply passivating it would likely not fully work, it would need to have the material mechanically removed. If the settings were dialed in and the travel speed was fast, i would think it would produce acceptable welds that could be fully passivated.
Do you have any experience repairing tool steel parts, whether by TIG or another process? I'd love to see an "in the weeds" video if you've got any pointers.
I definitely do with tig. I will definitely cover a video on that. In the mean time the best solution to welding tool steels generally is a preheat of 150-350 (or higher depending on the steel), letting it cools between passes (interpass temps need to be controlled within a specific range, generally sub 400), and welding them with appropriate filler. 312 stainless tends to work good as a repair filler. Many tool steels have higher carbon and are heat treated. Mild steel welding fillers tend to become very brittle via carbon absorption, which 312 stainless doesn’t. Keep in mind too that any heat treatment will be null after welding.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg That's some great info! Looking it up always seems like black magic, although WeldMold has some pretty good resources for their particular rods.
I ended up fumbling a repair for the tool room and caused some hairline cracks in a bottom die. Luckily it wasn't high load, just used moreso for abrasion. Definitely felt like a dumbass the rest of the day. 🥲
Our guy will put that on his machine and still try and pulse it, they never shut it off...
are your coupons too thick? perhaps like 6013 it is meant for sheet metal. try it on some SS sheet that a restaurant table would be made of....????
I will test it in some thinner material. I can tell you it likes higher voltage. It easily needs 5v over normal flux core just to start to wet out. For more powerful welders that’s not an issue, for 140a and under machines that’s an issue.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg looking forward to the video. thanks for your efforts
Good video but if I have a negative comment it would be that you didn't test push.
Your welds were all drag and you didn't try push.
It would be good if you did a follow up on this video using the push method.
Maybe I'm wrong but I would like to be proven wrong.
Pushing with a self shielded wire will produce undesireable bead profiles more than likely. Normal Gasless flux core can be pushed, but its slag is thin and dust like. This wire has thicker slag that would likely cause slag inclusions. Pushing also limits penetration, which is an issue since its penetration is less than conventional steel Gasless flux core wire. If pushing would work it probably would be closer to straight in than an actual push angle.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Ok makes sense to me and thanks for clarifying that.
THX for the reply.
lol If you fail to observe PPE recommendations, consult a mortician.
That’s right lol.
Shit. We are running out of helium because of all these stupid fucking balloons too
Looks like shit to me, but it probably does have the strength of a soldered joint at about,,,,,,,,5 times the cost?