VIDEO: How to Fix a Timid Weld

In this video, I'm going to show you how to troubleshoot one of several problems that you might run into with MIG welding beads that don't look so good

And this first one, I call it the timid weld. And I'm going to show you how to do it. Not that you should do it, but I'm going to show you the conditions that lead up to a timid weld

Now, come over here and take a look at this at the welder setting

So this is wire feed speed right in the middle of the green zone and voltage right in the middle of the green zone

One of the causes of a timid weld is when the voltage is too low

So there's not enough penetration power, not enough heat to melt the metal the way it should

And you get a thin and spindly bead. So I'm going to knock it way down here to, I don't know, 16 volts, we'll say

And we'll give that a try and we'll see how timid it looks when I'm actually laying it down, too

So if you've got a weld that looks like this, there's probably two things you need to do

One is to increase the voltage. There's clearly not enough heat here for proper penetration

The weld bead is fastened to the parent metal, but it would not be strong in any way

It has not penetrated deeply and it's not very wide. So increasing the voltage, definitely something to do

And then also slowing down and moving the wire in a kind of crescent moon shape to get a wider bead

A wider bead and more time for the heat to penetrate the parent metal

So that's the solution to something ugly like this, the timid weld