Making panels

[Dendorssers]

Anyway I doubt that they make Jiffy bags so large, postage will also be a killer as always? I think you should make new tunnel to Belgium, that would save some postage

A tunnel to belgium would be cool, but that still woundn't mean that it will be that cheap! Filling on his own costs about 30 euro, that is not the cost i guess, it's those f*cking botles!
I'm just plain old lucky that i know a guy that knows a girl, that works in a filling factory... Cause else, i would have bought a 200 euro botle...I would have done it anyways. Good thing, when you trade in these botle (done welding) you get all your money back, or at least the money for the botle! So its like a renting thing...

I hope to get it soon though, been waiting on it for quite a while now and i really want to start my welding! Even more now i crashed my own ride the 6th of january...Grrr.
I got 2 car standing here waiting for welding, one with a lot of small patchwork and a with a lot of front end damage from the crash... And then there is an other with broken headgasket i bought for just 100 euro and needs finishing up and some small welding and there might be an other on the way just to replace my daily i crashed! 3 volvo's and not even one that is done! Shit! NOw all i need is time!

[Dendorssers]

Tomorrow i'm going to pick up my bottle, 63,5 € and according to my friend why scored them, they have been sandblased, repainted en filled! So although it were second hand bottles, they look like new ones!
SCORE!

I'll post a picture tomorrow, not to make any of you jealous, although! hehe

[Dendorssers]

Picture time:


My welder!

New bottle and reducer.

Bottle, low buget for standards, cause i only payed 30 euro instead of 170 euro and an other 30 for the filling.

Side vieuw from my welder! There is like 15kg of wire inside, guy from work hooked me up with that! But sssshhhtt, don't let the boss know about i!

Some welding excercise...

[jtbo]

I wonder, how are you getting so nice seams?

My welder is making sounds of fireworks and usually there is mostly single tiny dot or at best bit larger dot, sometimes there are dots all over the place but not where I wanted to, I don't have ampere setting, only one adjuster for power and one adjuster for wire. I have cleaned surfaces well and earth cable seem to make good contact, but any setting seem to do lot of same and generally welds are quite small, still car metal seem to get holes at times.

[volvodspec]

fireworks sounds are normal with MIG

car "tin" is something like 0,7mm thick
the metal on Karstens pics is aproxx 2 mm thick so that will handle a bit more amperage; though; as you can see on the pic the steel already warped due to the generated heat

the tins on body panels can't be welded really nice unless you have a very very decent machine. yet;
high amperage is too much heat and will cause warping metal, but.. welds themself are better
low amperage is very little heat so metal will stay mostly straight but the welds themself are weaker/uglyer

the best way to weld thin sheetmetal is setting up the welder for a max amperage spotweld (ie enough amperage to generate heat without burning through the metal; the spotweld makes sure the metal doesn't warp) and just weld it one small spotweld at a time, next spot about 8/10cm away and by the time you get to the end of the seam you have to weld clean the first weld with a wire brush and put another spotweld right next to it and so on

[jtbo]

That is what I have been trying to do, but when welding sounds should be trrrrr but I get tr tr tr tr which it fires here and there without really welding properly and I get welds that are like something exploded instead of nice melted weld that actually would hold something.

Might be of course that I don't have gas, but that gasless wire, however they say that it should work somehow too

[Chris_C]

I find it does this until I've built up the initial weld pool. Then again, I still suck at the welding and get others to help me mostly

[Ride_on]

Thats the problem with spotting or pulsing, the fire needs a little time to get going, get the gas (flux in your case) circulating right, clean off the surfaces and pool nicely. But I've never tried a no-gas type. Do leave huge time for cooling on cosmetic panels between pulses, or use a heat barrier putty.

That welder in the above picture is a proper job, mine is a £200 job, main problems seem to be me overheating the nozzle by welding too close and it gets sticky, it works ok, but I'd rarely get such a smooth weld. Continuous buzz is normally just a case of getting the feed rate right.

[macplaxton]

amperage

My English teacher wouldn't have minded either amperage or current. My Physics teacher would have skelpt me with his blackboard duster if I used amperage and not current. (can't remember why it bugged him that much)

Anyway, back to welding. I get good days and bad days. Sometime it's the mutt's nuts and sometimes it all pigeon poo. But a good sounding weld is like that of bacon frying.

[jtbo]

I'm having only bad days, back at school (nearly 20 years ago) I remember being lot of good days with welding, just can't remember much about it anymore

Over 37 minutes about basics of welding, haven't watched myself yet, but I guess there might be some tips.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzBGZaS1apw

[volvodspec]

amperage

My English teacher wouldn't have minded either amperage or current. My Physics teacher would have skelpt me with his blackboard duster if I used amperage and not current. (can't remember why it bugged him that much)

don't blame a Dutchman for his poor english

want anders lul ik voortaan gewoon altijd in het Nederlands en dan snappen jullie er al helemaal geen bal meer van


anyway, tr tr tr.. that means that the welding wire burns out from the torch to the metal each time; first check if you have enough gas coming out of the pistol and after that you could try a higher wirefeed speed. you could also try to hold the torch tip about 4 or 5mm off the metal surface

[macplaxton]

don't blame a Dutchman for his poor english

No, no, no, I wasn't. My English teacher would have been okay with it. Blame definition-mad scientists!

[jtbo]

Me have no gas, so it is probably wire speed. I have found out that wire speed is not too stable, sometimes it goes slower and sometimes faster kind of rollers slipping, but there is not much that I can do about that, it is bit cheap machine.

However after watching that ridiculous american video that I linked before, I remember now bit more how it was done back school, I have been moving nozzle around too much, also I have kept nozzle too far away, so if rain ever will stop, I try with better luck, probably will use lowest power and bit longer weld time too, so there is less hole problems.

I have also only 10A fuse for power socket of house so it limits wattage to 2500w or something like that, almost everything working against here, it is normal

Oh and I find it rather difficult to get that metal patch to proper shape, there is always small gaps, but I guess that sledgehammer will fix that, if not, then I just squeeze it close and weld it to tension.

This french crap will probably not see next MOT anyway, if I get it pass this time, that is all good for me, but it is good to learn bit of this welding so I could do it better to 360 Have had welder quite some time, but no time to learn how to use it properly, now I have time so best make good use of it.

Those americans might get heart attack if they see me welding as I usually have tracksuit, some gloves, well at least I do have welding helmet, even once I did weld bare footed, didn't do that second time

I don't think that it is possible to weld in garage really, too much flammable materials around there, also whole garage is made from wood, so I'm limited for welding only when it is not raining.