Welders of INGO... I have a stupid question for you!

[maxwelhse]

Yes. OP you are overthinking this. Tens of thousands of people do just fine across the country using this method. Welding gas should be easy, there are lots of other things in life to make more complicated if that is your wish. Im willing to bet that most of the people with horror stories are only telling a part of the story. LWS wants you to be happy, weld, and use gas and hopes you buy your supplies, helmet, and new welders there.

You're almost certainly right. Nobody gets on the internet and raves about completely normal and routine experiences so I'm just seeing the worst of the worst when I go digging for it.

I mean.. What's the worst than can happen? A tank looks to be about $100 + gas. If everything goes all sorts of screwed up at some point, I'm out $100, right?

 

[Clay Pigeon]

I already have some flux core, but I'd like to avoid the spatter. I'm doing primarily sheet metal stuff. I imagine the first victims will be exhaust system stuff.

First don't let anyone tell you cored wire in inferior to solid wire, in most cases you can get better penetration with cored wire.
If you are having loads of spatter you need to check the polarity on your machine, I would bet its on positive polarity, if so change it to negitive polarity.
Always make sure your metal is clean clean clean, if you are pitting you dont have enough stick-out when you are welding and hold the mig handle up higher to lesson tha angle and better flux flow when running an arc.
Also if you are still having some spatter issues work on fine tuning your machine settings. Some machines need to be set and the knobs held in place with a piece of good tape so they dont move,, LOL...
You also could take some of your work to your local welding shop and ask for opinions, when you ask someone for help most folks will gladly offer their opinion..

I weld for a living and all of my mig machines run a cored wire with gas, I either run esab 7100 wire in .035, .045 or 1/16th inch. depending on material.

 

[Clay Pigeon]

I looked into this a little and it looks like getting a tank hydro tested is about $20 every 5-10 years, depending on the tank. I think I'd like to keep my freedom in the future and just pay up when I have to every several years. Of course, that also depends what I find out when I go to the LWS. This is almost certainly all less of a big deal than I'm making it out to be.

Thanks for the tip on shutting the tank off!

If you lease a tank you never pay the hydro fee.
If you buy a tank and exchnge it at your local provider a reasonable amount of times you will not pay a hydro fee.
If you sit on a tank for years and it goes out of date and the local provider sees the out of date tank and you havent swapped in years, your gonna pay the hydro fee.
If your local provider likes you, , he will not charge you....

 

[maxwelhse]

First don't let anyone tell you cored wire in inferior to solid wire, in most cases you can get better penetration with cored wire.
If you are having loads of spatter you need to check the polarity on your machine, I would bet its on positive polarity, if so change it to negitive polarity.
Always make sure your metal is clean clean clean, if you are pitting you dont have enough stick-out when you are welding and hold the mig handle up higher to lesson tha angle and better flux flow when running an arc.
Also if you are still having some spatter issues work on fine tuning your machine settings. Some machines need to be set and the knobs held in place with a piece of good tape so they dont move,, LOL...
You also could take some of your work to your local welding shop and ask for opinions, when you ask someone for help most folks will gladly offer their opinion..

I weld for a living and all of my mig machines run a cored wire with gas, I either run esab 7100 wire in .035, .045 or 1/16th inch. depending on material.

I'm sure I'll be back for more helpful insights like yours once I actually strike the first spark! haha... I've welded, at all, like 3 times in my life and none of them were pretty experiences. That's actually why I finally just broke down and bought a little MIG. I was obviously never going to do it any other way since I haven't in the last 40 years already.

My gut feeling, based on internet research and not any actual experience, is that my tiny little 110 mig isn't going to care for running flux core, but... since I have no real idea what I'm talking about, I'm certainly open to trying it (and I did buy some).

If this insanely cold weather keeps up I'll probably be trying it sooner than later since 1,000 degrees of welding heat actually sounds nice at the moment. It'll end up on my YouTube channel when I do. I can't wait to see the comments...