welding course

drifter17a

i welded a body panel and it melted through

i used arc welding with lowest amp of 40 and 1.6mm 6013 rod.

Looking around, people say I need mig welder for car and thing metal

the mig welder has an amp rating of 30-150 so how is that different from what I have (40)?

does mig run cooler generally ? what do proper bodyshop guys use?

vqmismatch

I gave up looking for courses after a while as none could fit with my other commitments and bought some 1980s tuition DVDs from ebay and taught myself. I can now get most things I want to done to a standard I am happy enough with, but the difference between my work and the coded boys who do it for a living is huge.

MIG is an awful lot easier and more forgiving than arc welding, especially on the thin stuff (forget gasless mig). Arc can be a lot of fun and quite effective with higher currents and larger rods on thicker material, whilst it is possible to do beautiful body work with arc welding (I have seen it done but the chap was simply doing it to prove a point) for those of us who don't do it for a living it is more or less a non starter.

If you are absolutely stuck with the arc set up a good copper heatsink (crush some copper pipe) clamped very well to the back of the workplace if you have good access may be enough to get by. The bare metal must be absolutely spotlessly well prepared, and if not welding a flat surface from above expect life to be difficult unless using specialist rods with a lot of practice. With mig by comparison you can get away with all manner of sins, even running on pub CO2.


As my mig set up is in England I just have a small arc kit for relatively minor jobs whilst working away. Body work I have been sending to someone else to do whilst I have stuck to simple fabrication and trailer repairs.

On my to do list is to try and use the inverter on my arc unit to make a primitive tig set up, then I would consider going for body work again. This may be an option if you have an inverter rather than transformer arc welder and a bit of money to throw at it. If on a rock bottom budget you might be better off going for a used mig (not gassless) and selling on once you complete your project.


EDIT
The bodyshops I have dealt with will mostly use mig with argosheild, but will have oxyacetylene and tig available for use where appropriate. Most things can however be done adequately with MIG, and a lot of lower end cobble it together places will have just MIG.

drifter17a

Many thanks

I bought a clark mig with gas / gasless setup

At the moment it is gasless with an option of converting it by buying the gas and regulator

I didn't want to spend £300 on gas version

The cord is 0.9 flux cotted which i understand will do the job

How do i fill the massive hole on the panel?
Just build weld on it or i will need a metal sheet?

It is about two x £1 coins

I guess the question is, can one use welding instead of metal

For instance, i am installing hydro handbrake but the center console is bumpy, can i use weld to create a flat surface fot the hand brake by doing layers of weld on top of each other?

drifter17a

Here is my practice

I know it is very messy but what am i doing wrong?
It is gasless using flux cord but i get no where close to shiny welds on youtube

I have also revered the polarity and have spent all day playing with wire speee

agentk

Brazing is another option blow torch and a handheld rod but another dark art :rotfl: The previous poster did warn you about going gasless and i agree! Second hand one!gas i mean. should be able to fill a hole just do it bit by bit cleaning off as u go.

drifter17a

I can do lines better than this but this was on 2mm panel so it would quickly melt

I bought a gas/ gasless so all i needed was regulator and gas which i bought both to turn it into a gas mig

With flux it was difficult and you could see all that sandy or corrotion shaped stuff on top of it as per the picture and had to constatly brush it off

Sort of like flux with arc welding

Are you supposed to get flux layer on mig like you do with arc ? Is it only if you use mig with fluxcore?

drifter17a

I also figured put i was using a 0.6mm tip which i read as 0.9mm tip

This was causing all sort of issues as the wire would suddenly not come out despite roller tension or wire speed or posotive lead keep straight( no bends to hold wire up)

I changed it to 0.8 which is closet to 0.9mm fluxcore i had

The roller is also on 0.8mm which seem to work fine with 0.9mm fluxcore

agentk

Are you supposed to get flux layer on mig like you do with arc ? Is it only if you use mig with fluxcore?



Do you mean after welding on the top! Its called slag and yes u get that with both chip clean off after welding and before welding on it again if you are going too. . I was told the sign of a good weld is penetration and if the slag comes away in good large pieces upon chipping or as cooling.Cant help with mig i was a fitter working with the welders and on occasion used their arc. And at home too.they mused both .My feeling is as mig feeds the wire to the work its a lot easier than keeping the optimum distance to the work than with a rod if that makes sense.

The metal you are welding on needs to be rust free and paint free before you weld on it.Your pic looks like rusty metal.