Thread: Welding Gal Tube

Originally Posted by incisor

from my link...



mate.. go try one instead of talking...

time served and indentured

funny that..

me too

I found these to be great when welding gal:

*3M Particulate Welding Respirator 8212 N95

It is really nasty stuff, and worth the $50 or so I paid for the box of 5.

Still grind the gal back though, it will be much cleaner and easier. Touch it up with some cold gal when its cooled off, and rust won't be a problem.

Politics aside,

Use a GP6013 "13" rod, and grind the gal back as others have mentioned. Zinc vaporizes at 700 degrees, the weld pool is upwards of 1200 degrees, hence all the fume and spatter and crap weld.

110A would be right for a 3.2mm rod, you would be best with a 2.5mm and between 70-90A- suck it and see how it goes. Learn how to read a weld to fine tune your amps.

Iron powder rods 7024 grade are high deposition for thick section-4mm and upward. They are not an all positional rod like gp's, so you'll get into strife with the out of position sections of the job. The only people I know who buy 7024's are guys in structural production- think roof support beams manufactured in a workshop-places you need massive weld penetration and fast weld speeds... which is realistically the domain of MIG.

Originally Posted by Toxic_Avenger

Politics aside,

Use a GP6013 "13" rod, and grind the gal back as others have mentioned. Zinc vaporizes at 700 degrees, the weld pool is upwards of 1200 degrees, hence all the fume and spatter and crap weld.

110A would be right for a 3.2mm rod, you would be best with a 2.5mm and between 70-90A- suck it and see how it goes. Learn how to read a weld to fine tune your amps.

Iron powder rods 7024 grade are high deposition for thick section-4mm and upward. They are not an all positional rod like gp's, so you'll get into strife with the out of position sections of the job. The only people I know who buy 7024's are guys in structural production- think roof support beams manufactured in a workshop-places you need massive weld penetration and fast weld speeds... which is realistically the domain of MIG.

in fact iron powder rods were what we used before mig welders were around, and used as you explained, do not use them often now days. maybe for a very fat cosmetic weld, noting looks as sexy as a good iron power weld.

no politics involved, seems just a lack of comprehension

13's are fine if you have time to for grinding and prep etc etc but don't always work as well as they should if conditions don't suit.

11's just burn thru it and the light flux just peels up and off if you have your amps right... quick wire brush, squirt of cold gal and your done.

if you ever do commercial quantities of galv handrails or welding rolled glav framing etc onsite you'll soon see the advantages of 11's over 13's.

we used to go through 8 or 10 boxes of 11's for every box of 13's we used when doing light galv work as the 13's were rarely used for the root run and only used for looks in tricky spots.

22's were my favorite rods....

in the late 70's / early 80's i used to weld underground mine switch boxes done in 25mm plate and they wouldn't allow mig welds or sub arc, so we had to use the long 5mm 22's on 1m square boxes... was fun in summer but nice in winter

even more fun watching them try to blow the odd one up in testing...


leave you with it...

Admittedly I've never used a 6011 rod, but going over the info I have, it doesn't mention that it is a suitable rod for galvanized materials. It's marketed as a pipeline rod, for root, hot fill, and capping passes on pipe.
Maybe it's a case of "your results may vary", but in my experience, for the average punter building sheep pens without pockets deep enough to stretch to China, a gp 6013 would be fine.

Might also be worth checking out a cigweld product called smoothcraft. It's a rutile-ilmenite flux rod which may be more suitable. Great edge wetting and particularly good for thin gal jobs. With your burn thru symptoms, you'll also be happy to know they do this rod in a 2.0mm which is smaller than most others.

Originally Posted by Toxic_Avenger

Admittedly I've never used a 6011 rod, but going over the info I have, it doesn't mention that it is a suitable rod for galvanized materials. It's marketed as a pipeline rod, for root, hot fill, and capping passes on pipe.

benefit of my experience shall we say...

the blurb also mentions high penetration, they were / are used in pipe welding and ship building which s where i came across them originally before i ended up in a job where they did galv in all sorts of things from handrails to rolled / formed glass house frames and used them extensively

like i said to the other fella that didn't bother to read the blurb and continued bleating that it was a high iron powder rod..

if you get the chance try one... they are cheap and in my experience great for what the op originally said he wanted to do.

in my experience