VIDEO: MIG Welding in Practice
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Jan 25, 2024
VIDEO: MIG Welding in Practice
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0:00
In this video, I'm going to go through from start to finish the organization and setting up of the welder for a MIG weld
0:08
So just so you can see how it all works and how I go through the steps
0:13
So if you come and look here, I've got something set up here. It's a mock-up
0:18
It's not an actual part that I care about, but I have treated it the way I would a precious part
0:25
So there's two pieces of metal here. There's one that's upright and then one on the side
0:31
I've cleaned the surface where the weld bead is going to be, but can you also see I've put a groove in here
0:37
And that's by grinding an angle, 45 degree angle, on the two mating edges
0:42
That's going to give the weld pool a greater surface area to bond to
0:49
because we don't just have the flat surface, but we've also got the grooved surface
0:56
So we have more surface area for the weld, and also the weld is going to be a little bit lower, a little bit shallower
1:03
because now it has a depression to fit into. So I'm just going to pretend that this is a normal weld and this is how it works
1:13
My first step is to just get my cables organized. As you remember, there's two cables for every kind of electric welder
1:23
There's the ground cable and then the actual gun that's going to do the welding
1:28
Now I've got another piece of metal here too, because I never ever just jump in and weld a piece of metal that I care about
1:37
unless I test the welder, because there are settings, which I've discussed elsewhere in the course
1:43
they're crucial settings, and I want to see how this is going to work before I commit to this
1:49
because I want the weld to look nice. So my first step is to just put on the ground clamp
1:56
Now I'm going to switch on, and this particular welder, it's a little more sophisticated than the simple ones
2:07
and it can help you to decide if the settings are correct
2:12
This is step one, the MIG process with 25% carbon dioxide. That's the shielding gas I'm using, so I like that
2:24
I like that setting, and I press to select. This is the setup here, the positive and negative polarities on the various cables
2:33
So I rarely have to change that, so I'm going to press to accept
2:38
Now the diameter of wire that I'm using is 25 one thousandths of an inch
2:45
so that refers to the diameter of this wire here, the actual welding wire
2:51
So once again, I don't change that too often. Now is where we get into a more precise setting
2:58
So this thickness setting refers to the thickness of the metal I'm going to be welding
3:04
and you know, I can go quite thin, up to 5 sixteenths. So it's a quarter of an inch, so I'm going to choose that
3:11
And the machine, you can see, has already set itself up for 320 inches per minute
3:20
That's the travel rate of the wire out of the gun, and 19 volts, which has to do with the intensity of the arc, so how hot it is
3:33
We want it to be hot enough that we get good penetration of the metal, but not so hot that it burns through
3:39
or it causes the wire to melt faster than it's coming out of the gun
3:44
So notice here that there's a red sections and green sections, and both of these settings are in the middle of the green section
3:55
That's because that's the best guess of this machine for what I need
4:00
Now within those parameters though, depending on what I find here when I do my test weld
4:06
I can give it more wire speed feed within that range, or less, within the green range
4:13
And the same with the arc intensity, the voltage. I can crank it up, or I can crank it down
4:19
And technically it's supposed to be within the green range, and that works 99% of the time
4:25
Very occasionally, I will go a little bit outside the green zone when I'm adjusting
4:30
but right now this is good. We're going to start. Just before I go on, I'm going to grab a pair of wire cutters here
4:37
It's not unusual for a little bit of extra wire to come out. That's way too much to start with, so I'm just going to snip that off
4:43
and then we're going to lay down a test bead and see what it looks like. So here I've just struck the arc, and there's two things I want you to notice
4:51
First of all, I'm not rushing as I draw the welding gun across the workpiece
4:57
and I'm also going back and forth to make the bead wider than it normally would be
5:03
if I just pulled it along. And the result is a nice even weld that's complete and strong and ready to go
5:12
So now we're on to the real thing. So that went well
5:36
It's a nice neat weld. It's a little narrow here for my liking
5:40
but structurally there's no issues, especially since I did that that v-grooving before
5:46
Nice and clean, and if you take it out here, you can see there's good penetration
5:52
So it's a nice strong weld. If this was a part that really mattered and I had the opportunity
5:59
I would probably run a bead in there as well too, just to get it from both sides
6:04
But that's the MIG welding process in a nutshell