Small Welding Rods

[101RRS]

I just bought a small BOC Dc inverter stick welder to do light work on the cars. The smallest rods I have found are 2mm which are just a bit too big for some of the sheet metal I have to weld. 40 amps is barely enough to fire up the arc but more than enough to blow holes in the metal. I really need rods about 1.5mm or even down to 1mm so I can run about 35 amps to fire up the arc and not blow holes.

I have searched the net but cannot see any one that lists rods smaller than 2mm. So any one know if stick rods go smaller than 2mm and where you can get them.

Thanks

Garry

[debruiser]

2mm are the smallest I could get too.... Hence i went to a mig welder

[101RRS]

2mm are the smallest I could get too.... Hence i went to a mig welder

Thanks - I have a mig but it is just too expensive to use with bottle hire etc.

[scanfor]

Hi Garrycol

I too abandoned the MIG in favour of a DC stick inverter based on gas costs. I have also found that it won't reliably do the small gauge stuff that a MIG can handle, even with tiny rods.
I am reliably told that my technique could be adapted to better suit the inverter, and it may help to do short welds to keep the parent metal temps low.

[bretty15]

Welding Electrodes 1.6mm x 60 Stick Pkt E6012 GP Rods | eBay (http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Welding-Electrodes-1-6mm-x-60-Stick-Pkt-E6012-GP-Rods-/140590815874?pt=AU_Welding&hash=item20bbdd9a82)

[rovercare]

MIG for panel work, nothing else, ARC will NOT do the job well, unless you are an excellent welder

[mick88]

Instead of renting mig bottles which is an asolute fortune there are disposable bottles available. I have not tried them yet but a workmate recently got one and it was about $40 bucks plus a one off cost of about $45 bucks for an adaptor fitting. Basically the cost bottle rental alone will buy you five disposables a year!

Cheers, Mick.

[Carnut1100]

I've welded motorbike exhaust with 2.5 rods.......but it was ****ing hard!!!!
Also not terribly neat...
Stopped the bike being so noisy though!

Really arc is too grunty for panels.

[101RRS]

Instead of renting mig bottles which is an asolute fortune there are disposable bottles available. I have not tried them yet but a workmate recently got one and it was about $40 bucks plus a one off cost of about $45 bucks for an adaptor fitting. Basically the cost bottle rental alone will buy you five disposables a year!

Cheers, Mick.

I have them and are not worth it - just too expensive to run as the gas does not go very far. Is cheaper than renting larger bottles etc. That ebay link above also has larger bottles for $85 (nearly $100 with shipping) that may be better.

For the work I am wanting to do arc is fine if I can get smaller rods which it would seem are available on ebay.

Garry

[incisor]

switch the polarity and run gasless wire on the mig :p

[Bigbjorn]

MIG for panel work, nothing else, ARC will NOT do the job well, unless you are an excellent welder

Worked with a pommie sheetie first class who could arc weld 20 gauge steel perfectly and have the flux curl up and fall off clean. A true artist of a tradesman. No-one else in the shop could do this. He taught me to gas weld thin aluminium which I can no longer do not still having the eyesight and steady hands required (I am 72).

Smash repairers took to mig in a flash owing to the lower skill requirement. Many workers in this industry are not qualified tradesmen and could not make a guard or door skin to save themselves. Parts replacers, like many so-called "motor mechanics".

[ade]

I find wireless mig more than adrquate for all car panel welding and i have heaps heaps of it.

[flagg]

Most stick welders can be changed to TIG fairly easily with a gun.. Both of mine do TIG and Stick. You will of course need gas but for thin neat beads nothing beats TIG. A bit of practice and you will be laying dimes so neat you want to make them a feature :D

[101RRS]

Does a DC Inverter welder throw out more UV than Mig or AC stick. I normally do not get burnt but doing a couple small jobs even with a full face on the DC inverter gave me a bit of a burn. Normally don't get it.

Garry

[flagg]

Does a DC Inverter welder throw out more UV than Mig or AC stick. I normally do not get burnt but doing a couple small jobs even with a full face on the DC inverter gave me a bit of a burn. Normally don't get it.

Garry

Depends on amps maybe? Everything burns the **** out of me :(

[rovercare]

Most stick welders can be changed to TIG fairly easily with a gun.. Both of mine do TIG and Stick. You will of course need gas but for thin neat beads nothing beats TIG. A bit of practice and you will be laying dimes so neat you want to make them a feature :D

Kinda negates the purpose of not using the MIG though:D

[101RRS]

Even with the the 2mm rods the inverter works well on non body work on the car. When I get some smaller rods I will try it on the really light stuff and see how it goes. The light weight of the unit at a few kgs makes it easy to move around.

I have to do some rust repairs to body panels so broke out the old mig - I have a disposable bottle that I have had for a few years and hooked it up and did some test welds which came up OK. The bottle I have is straight Argon and the packaging indicates for mild steel and aluminium.

I went to buy another two bottles but most suppliers had none - there were a couple of Argon bottles but the newer packaging now only lists it suitable for aluminium and for mild steel (Tig Only) and indicated the disposable bottles containing the Argon/CO2 mix is to be used with mild steel. Off course there are none of these bottles available. So what is the preferred gas for mild steel MIG these days. When I had hire bottles I used ArgoShield and as indicated my current disposable bottle is Argon.

The difference in price is interesting - $28 at Gasweld, $32 at Total Tools, and $57 at Repco :eek:.

Garry

[101RRS]

Has any one bought Speed Gas bottles for their Mig/Tig gas - the price seems right $320 upfront purchase for a D size bottle with gas in the bottle and then $99 for a swap and go. The only issue is that suppliers are not holding stocks at the moment and I am concerned that if I do buy one of these that stocks will not be held when I run out.

But then BOC do not even have D size bottles to rent.

I have been using the small disposable Argon bottles (no ArCo2 mix available) and they really do not last very long at all - maybe 10 minutes on min gas flow so not real good and makes small jobs a bit expensive.

Cheers

Garry

[clubagreenie]

I find wireless mig more than adrquate for all car panel welding and i have heaps heaps of it.

WIRELESS!


**** me, where do I find this gem?

[101 Ron]

Argon and Argon Mix will both work with steel.
Straight argon will have less penetration than a Argon mix
Straight argon is intended for use on aluminium and its alloys.
As said before with great skill you can stick weld thin guage steel.
Going to a smaller diameter welding rod may in fact increase burn though.
Mig is the way to go because it is so much easier to weld thin metal with this system.
I also remember using oxy welding on my first cars doing rust repairs as did most car repairers before the 1960s.

[Disco44]

switch the polarity and run gasless wire on the mig :p

No answers to this .Isn't this method any good?

John.

[scanfor]

Gasless wire is OK for doing "outside" jobs, like gates and stuff, but it can be spattery and in my experience, the resulting welds don't seem to be as clean or neat. Having said that, I have no reason to think that it's anything more than cosmetic, and penetration seems to be as good as welds done with gas.
I have tried gasless on thin section metal, and found it blew out the parent metal more easily than with gas, so I wouldn't like to use it on panels.

[flagg]

With gassless wire you also have to be very careful with stop/ start stuff as the slag will contaminate the weld. Because of this i would personally use other methods for structural stuff. But I generally don't like MIG unless I'm using a really good one with good fresh wire.

[incisor]

like any weldment you should clean it before continuing on where you left off.

yes, it is a little messier to use, but any kitchen non stick spray applied before welding helps keep clean up to a minimum. using nozzle dip helps a lot as well.

used it on everything from oil cans to 110 foot ocean going catamarans...

i prefer it over normal wire most of the time because it penetrates a little more and is more tolerant of dirty metal.

i prefer .8mm wire for vehicle work and my old cig welder copes well with everything from 18 gauge to 5mm with out to much bother.

decent quality wire always helps and is quite economical when compared to gas and plain wire.

[Blknight.aus]

if you know where to shop you can get welding rods down to .75mm

Theres a local supplier here that carries 1mm rods. I think I still have most of a packet left.

[Hall]

I have brought awhile ago a dual voltage arc welder. Forty volts for heavier welding and seventy volts for light welding. The theory is the seventy volts has a longer cycle time than the 40 volts so the metal stays cooler or some thing like that. Is a bit harder to get the weld started, but I have welded some thin sheet with out too much trouble.
Cheers Hall

[sschmez]

Rental on my E bottle is roughly the same as a packet of smokes a month,
since I don't smoke a packet per day anymore SWMBO says its fine.:D

[101RRS]

I now have used two mig disposable gas bottles and really I would not recommend them at all - even for the occasional welder - you just do not get much out of them even with the gas turned down. At between $30 to $50 a bottle is an expensive way to weld.

Today I bought a D sized bottle from Gasweld - cost of the bottle filled is $340 and exchange is $99 so the actual cost of the bottle is $240 which I think is OK.

I thought that the gas mix for mild steel was Argon and CO2 but this also has oxygen. I really don't know much about shielding gases but I was surprised it has oxygen in it as I thought the last thing you would want is oxygen. Can someone explain what this adds to the process. Also I have long lost the instructions for my regulator - can someone tell me what hose pressure is used for the shielding gas??

Cheers

Garry

[roverrescue]

garry,
Trimix as in with o2 has two purposes
The gas companies get to market a flash trimix!
They get to use up some oxygen which is cheap,

Oh and they will tell you the o2 gives extra penetration in the weld. ? ? ?

Go to weldingweb.com forum and read the pages on welding gasses good info

With regards to hose pressure. For MIg you want run hose flow rate. Something around 10l /m is a fair starting point. ? ? ?

Oh and you wont be able to spray with that trimix, i run straight Ar for ally and heavy sections running in spray


Steve

[101RRS]

Oh and you wont be able to spray with that trimix, i run straight Ar for ally and heavy sections running in spray


Steve

Thanks for the information.

Spray??

Garry

[Blknight.aus]

instead of depositing the metal from the wire the amps are up so high that the wire is essentially evaporating from the nozzle then condensing onto the weld pool of the parent metals. Not fun to try on thin sheet stuff or stuff that hasnt been properly prepped, is porus or has freaky inclusions in the parent metal.

[roverrescue]

spray transfer is real MIG but as dave says not going to be used on light guage
Point being i guess, mig gas is never going to be one size fits all.

For light stuff i use the boc trimix you speak of because my local guy has it. It gives penetration, a nice flat bead and tidy wetted out toe.
On 10mm and up i run straight argon and significant herbs, and result in a full penetration spray transfer weld. If you run straight argon on light material at low power settings you get a ropey poorly wetted out weld.

In some ways, for the glueing that i do i should have bought a good tig unit at the get go

Mig is fast and versatile but for essentially small run work tig has many benefits

S

[worane]

Wot Incisor said.

[101RRS]

Having purchased a D sized Argo shield bottle I have recommissioned the old Mig which is now working OK. I still need a bit of practice and I need a better auto helmet as my eyes have been getting a little burnt when welding in low light - response time is good during the day but too slow at night.

I have had the Smootharc Inverter BOC - Smootharc MMA 130 (http://www.bocworldofwelding.com.au/smootharc-mma-130.html) for a couple of months now and used it with 1.6mm rods and the main issue is that the amount of amps to strike an arc is too large to weld effectively with thin metal so the Mig will have to do this. To be honest I really don't think there is much of an advantage stick welding with the inverter over my 40yo AC stick welder. Is much, much lighter though.

I have read a lot of negative comments about the TIG capabilities of the small inverter welders but I would be interested in comments on weather it would be worth getting the Tig attachments for my Smootharc as I wouldn't mind doing some lightweight stainless and aluminium work.

Cheers

Garry

[101 Ron]

Hi Garry.
Argo shield is good to use for what you want.
It will last a very long time and 15 LPM is the norm.

For rust holes and super corroded thin stuff I use the normal .9mm wire for the MIG.
Using thinner wire is OK for welding thinner sheet steel, but not for plugging holes or supper thin corroded stuff.
The thinner wire in the MIG will tend to burn though, whisle .9 mm wire will drop off the end of the tip as blobs and on the metal surface without burn though.
Quailty of the MIg and operator skill helps greatly here.
The stalwart I am working on is a great example.
First pic is previous MIG repair and new rust holes in thin corroded metal.
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/imported/2013/04/1530.jpg
This is my repair using MIG only and .9mm wire, argo sheild.
It was paper thin and with poor inside access.
The spot welding in place as a part of the cabin structure was not going to let me easily weld in a new piece of metal plate as was the access.

https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/imported/2013/04/1531.jpg

[101 Ron]

Naturally the rust is always worse than you think and you will be following the rust holes with the MIG and the MIG will find the the thinest metal.
I find if you get a blob of metal on the side of the hole, work from that blob as it is thicker that the metal it landed on.
Let that blob cool and add another blob to it, or to the side of it and slowly close in the rust hole.
You may have to place a series of metal blobs right around the hole even though you might make it larger in the process.
Once done you can then put the heat in a bit and fill the hole.
If the hole is really big you will need to find some metal sheet and cut it to size and weld it in.
Ron

[101 Ron]

Another trick I use is a air die grinder fitted with a large diameter tungsten carbide cutter.
It smooths the surface with alot more control than a grinder with less heat too..
A small diameter cutter can be used to rough out a rust hole for welding too.

[B.S.F.]

Back to the original question. 1.6mm electrodes are available on e-bay ,as pointed out in post 5. They are advertised as Zirconated, Thoriated or Lanthanated tungsten.Does it really matter what I buy ? Is there a difference if so what is it? .W.

[101 Ron]

Back to the original question. 1.6mm electrodes are available on e-bay ,as pointed out in post 5. They are advertised as Zirconated, Thoriated or Lanthanated tungsten.Does it really matter what I buy ? Is there a difference if so what is it? .W.

Zirc......Thoriated.....etc is tungsten electrodes for TIG ( for use on the welding hand piece)welding and not for stick welding.


Electrodes for stick welding form part of the weld metal .
Two completely different things and types of welding.

[clubagreenie]

I'd hate to think of the amps need to use those as a stick. And the bill

[woody]

With gassless wire you also have to be very careful with stop/ start stuff as the slag will contaminate the weld. Because of this i would personally use other methods for structural stuff. But I generally don't like MIG unless I'm using a really good one with good fresh wire.

use a pair of side cutters to trim the wire at an angle removing that little ball before each weld. This will help prevent slag inclusion at the start of the weld.

woody

[101RRS]

Back to the current question - has anyone used TIG on the small inverters - specifically the SmoothArc MMA 130?

Garry

[steveG]

Back to the current question - has anyone used TIG on the small inverters - specifically the SmoothArc MMA 130?

Garry

Can't comment on that the SmoothArc specifically, but I've got a slightly larger (175A) Mitec multi function inverter machine (MMA/TIG/Plasma).
TIG function is great and the most I ever use on mild/stainless is about half the current setting (welding 1.6mm tube) so I reckon you should be OK for grunt on yours for the thinner materials your talking about.

IIRC you posted about maybe welding aluminium. The SmoothArc is DC only so won't weld aluminium (you need an AC TIG for that).

Steve

[G Griggs]

I have a small Inverter TIG welder and it is brilliant, was worth the effort, especially welding up thin steel. I actually welded up the Stainless tub (about .4mm) in my mum's washing machine. Problem is you will need to swap your Argoshield for Argon. Argosheild will not work with TIG. Argon will work with MIG but it leaves a very "cold" looking weld that lacks penetration

[101 Ron]

Inverter TIG machines are the norm in the trade in all sizes.
Smaller DC machines work well with steel and its alloys.
The problem with TIG welding is the skill level needed and heat transfer to the job.
Garry if you are doing the Haffie????????, the MIG would be easier to use.
Panel beaters just love using a MIG.
If you really , really want to go that way I have a new TIG single phase with the works on it not being used.......you know where i am.

Come to think of it I have a single phase 180 amp MIG ...panel beaters spec doing nothing too.

[101RRS]

No not the Haffie - finished all that with the Mig.

The MMA Smootharc has the ability to do Tig and I assume the extra bits are not all that expensive so wouldn't mind giving it a try. My be build a few small tanks etc.

My concern is that I have read elsewhere that TIG on these small units is not very good and I don't want to waste money on something that doesn't work. Hence my seeking first hand experiences from people who have used these bottom end units.

Garry

[101 Ron]

I know of a chemical company who does most of there stainless steel pipe work with a small inverter machine like yours, as it is portable on site around the factory.
The maintance blokes have no problem with it.
How good is your eye sight ?
How good is your hand skills ?
To TIG well takes alot of practice and a bit of theory/knowlege.
It also takes regular practice too.
TIG welding to be done well is best left to people who do it all the time, especially if it is aluminum /alloys.
I am trade welder qualified in Stick /MIG /TIG.
I dont do TIG regularly and I would find it a bit of trouble to get up to speed so to speak. especially as I get older.
If really keen I would enroll in a TAFE course and it will fill in the missing holes of knowlege.........as in what tungsten to use, and how to grind it, torch arc gap, gas flow etc.
Feeding of the filler metal though your free hand in a way to get good welds takes practice too.
Ron

[flagg]

Hi Garry,

I may be able to help - PM Sent.

[goingbush]

Handy mig welder for roadside repairs

http://garagebulletin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Miller18v-600x450.jpg