Hi guys, Jim very kindly sent me his lead and I fitted it yesterday... Pleased to say it now works!
Just wanted to express my gratitude to all of you, I originally thought being an obsolete and budget machine (and myself being a complete novice) I would have no chance.
Really glad I found such a helpful & friendly forum!
Now to get some test pieces for some practice... My first welds are shocking!!
Would be interesting to see how well one of these power craft migs actually weld.always liked the fact they have a rotary switch for voltage.as for your first welds we have all been there upload some photos .....
Lol, well here's the photo for your amusement - more spattering than welding! I have some learning to do as I've only ever TIG welded before and that was more than 10 years ago!
So I'm definitely a long way off demonstrating how good well the power craft can actually weld!
This was using no gas flux cored wire, haven't tried the gas cylinder yet.
up your steel to thicker material then try from there at higher amps the light is bright and its off putting you think your burning through and your not so you speed up slow down would be right thing to do
What are your settings on the welder could be you need to turn the powere up or wire speed down gasless wireally is not great on thin metal so as gaz1 says get some thicker metal and turn up the power a bit play with the wire speed.
Hi guys quick update been away for a few days, now had another bash at welding. I made two major improvements... Bought an auto dimming mask instead of the handheld mask that cam with the welder.... And realised I had made a major rookie mistake previously and had forgotten to screw on the weld tip!Hence all the spatter in the previous pic!!
It's definitely a lot easier and neater now! Still using flux cored so hopefully when I use gas it will be better still.
Here's a few pics playing around with different power/speed settings and pulling/pushing the torch, after watching some YouTube guidance videos. Only had a couple of quick attempts but pretty happy with it so far.
If you are planning on using flux cored wire all the time, like I do, I would recommend fitting a new or making a new rectifier, made with Vishay diodes instead of the low quality automotive alternator diodes that the original rectifier is made of.
It improved the quality of the welds and greatly reduced the splatter when I fitted it in combination with the new positive link cable as mentioned before.
Since my last post my good news is that I feel I've really progressed with flux cored welding; My welds have got much neater and I've been successful in welding 1.4mm sheet and stitch welding 0.9mm sheet.
So today I thought I'll try switching to gas thinking my welds will only get better! Per the manual I've put the machine back to 'normal' polarity and installed the regular copper coated welding wire (a 0.6mm roll that came with the machine), and I remembered to install the 0.6mm weld tip this time!
However, for some reason the welds are terrible and I've played with various different power/wire feed settings/gas flow/metal thickness/torch movement speeds/torch position but it's the same story every time: The weld is really erratic (popping like a fireworks display), zero penetration (weld blob just forms on top of the base metal - the base metal barely even melts), and there's a load of black soot around the weld and inside the weld nozzle which I assume isn't normal? See photos.
Bear in mind I'm using a bottle of CO2 gas which was supplied with the welder 10 years ago - it's a small disposable bottle with a regulator. But it's capable of a really high flow rate and comes out of the nozzle just fine when I pull the trigger (I've played with various different flow rates but again no real difference).
Any thoughts what could the problem could be? I wonder if the gas has somehow gone 'bad', but given that it's inert, I dont see how... I'm thinking of buying a new gas bottle and weld wire just to eliminate these possibilities...
I've just watched a youtube video of 'common mig welding mistakes' but it didn't show anything that could lead to this!
I don't disagree with others, however, are you 100% sure the metal you are trying to weld is ok. There is evidence of rust on the edges, also I have had similar soot deposit from metal that was electroplated with some for of anti-corrosion coating.
Also have you checked the groove on the wire feed roller is the one for 0.6 wire?
Disposable cylinders are useless, for small jobs I still use gas less as it saves carting the 50l bottle round I have.
I don’t thinking that is the case, if you read the whole thread, this has only happened since swapping wire to gas shielded and polarity, if you mean loose +ve then yes this could also be the case.
Thanks all, yes got the correct wire feed roller and it seems to feed OK, and it's not the base metal as the same happens on pieces which are clean and which welded just fine with flux cored wire. I did try removing and re-fitting the live wires and they seem OK too.
I'll start by trying a new wire reel and see what happens.
Once again thanks for all the support!