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Jul 30, 2016 18:13:58 GMT
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My good god this is hard work! Really tedious and really really difficult.
My first attempt was on the back of my fairway taxi. I stupidly chose to do I bendy panel rather than an easy flat one. Like a fool. Still struggling with my welder settings too. There was a small fire but all a fine now
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Jul 30, 2016 18:18:21 GMT
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I gather you have watched some vids and stuff ? You can only do literally a spot before having to wait for it to cool down . Then the trick is to aim half at the metal and half at the previous piece of weld , so that the heat does not immediately melt the thin metal and burn it away .
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Jul 30, 2016 19:55:30 GMT
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I'm struggling with it. I need to be more patient. Shaping the body work is the biggest problem. Taxi body work is really bendy. I'm pretty I'm going to need to go over this all with filler too
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Jul 30, 2016 20:20:01 GMT
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I had same problem with my mig just cant get it to weld lol
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Jul 30, 2016 20:25:48 GMT
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I can get it to weld, it's just not perfect.
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Jul 31, 2016 10:15:05 GMT
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If the welding is curse word try it on some scrap pieces and try again. You need a good earth preferably near the weld area and the surfaces need to be bare metal, if using gas you need adequate flow and no wind to blow it away and the amps and wire speed matched to the work at hand. Practice on scrap to get the hang of it. Make sure your wire feed is smooth and not notchy, the wire spool should be free enough to turn easily but not so free that it wants to unravel and the feed roller needs to match the wire and not be too loose or too tight.
if you are blowing holes even on low amps (usually if the metal is thin from rust) do overlapping spot welds to make a bead, just pulse it on and off with the trigger and overlap the welds. Overlapping spots also helps avoid distortion on thin panels.
Post a pic of what your welds look like.
I am not a welder btw...
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Jul 31, 2016 10:18:39 GMT
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^^ Good advice.
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Jul 31, 2016 14:06:25 GMT
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How do you post a pic using an iPhone?
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Jul 31, 2016 19:09:11 GMT
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I'm just learning to weld too so can't give any real advice, but last weekend I chopped up an old wing into 4"x2" bits, stripped all the paint off it and spent the best part of two days welding it back together. I'm reasonably confident with it now but still going to do a bit more practice before I set about sticking new metal to the car. Practice practice practice :-)
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Jul 31, 2016 20:35:12 GMT
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I had a problem with blowing holes in metal - changed from 0.8 to 0.6 and never had the problem again. Don't forget 0.6 tips.
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Yes have been using 0.6 wire as I had anticipated this problem. Because its a taxi it looks like its been bodged alot. I only removed one bit of rust just to have a go at welding and went straight into filler.
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Welding bodywork is very difficult if you're just starting out - since welding thin metal is much harder than welding thick metal. I had exactly the same issues as you. In the end, I cut up and old door to practice one, and bought a decent welder (2nd hand Lincoln). I use 0.6mm wire for anything up to 3mm, mainly because I can't be bothered changing it. The welder is excellent though, has two knobs and a nice easy to use table for wire/gas/metal thickness so I just select what I need and away I go. Main thing is to ensure a very, very good earth. I still blow holes in thin metal though even after a couple of years on/off amateur work on various cars. It's not easy!
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Last Edit: Aug 1, 2016 14:40:32 GMT by chodjinn
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g40jon
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,569
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Good prep is key (not easy when the whole reason you are welding is due to rust, so finding clean metal that isn't waffer thin is a game in itself). Getting the welders setting right is another key thing. If you don't have a table to go by, then using similar thickness scrap metal to practice on is a good way to get the settings right. Gas vs gasless: Gas is a whole lot easier to work with providing you aren't out in the open with thw wind blowing the gas away. Gasless is much trickier, produces a hotter weld, which means more chance of blowing holes in thin metal. However is useful if you're working in a windy environment. Theres also the slag to deal with which needs cleaning off, which is a bit of a pain. A good weld should make a continuous crackle sound. If you get a popping sound the settings aren't right. worth a read: www.hobartwelders.com/elearning/
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Wilk
Part of things
Posts: 528
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If your welder has various settings and you're not sure how to set them for various thicknesses of metal, there's a few good free apps for phones out there that give all settings relevant the the task at hand. They give a decent base point to start at HTH
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If it can be fixed with a hammer, then it must be an electrical fault
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So I am now have the right settings for the welder will be grinder sufficently to get a great (not good) earth. and WILL be patient.
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Don't forget to clean the actual earthing clip as well, tends to get curse word built up on it.
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My good god this is hard work! Really tedious and really really difficult. My first attempt was on the back of my fairway taxi. I stupidly chose to do I bendy panel rather than an easy flat one. Like a fool. Still struggling with my welder settings too. There was a small fire but all a fine now You guys need to stop thinking of this as difficult. It is a bit of work, but the honest truth is that broken down it is dead simple work. You can only do 4 things with tin: 1-cut 2-bend 3-stretch 4-shrink Tons of ways to accomplish that lot with sheet metal ranging from free to 10 of thousands of $$$. Do a bit of searching on Youtube for tuck shrinks, stump metal shaping and sandbag metal shaping. Stop thinking of metal as a solid and more like a sheet of clay and you can envision where to stretch or shrink to get the shape you want. Also look up metal "shrinker stretcher tool" probably one of the most used tools in my arsenal. As to welding sheet-metal, it is dead easy and should not take you more than half a day to get the hang of no matter what welder set-up you have. Here is a tutorial I did for the Volvo crowd see about halfway down posted by "NOHOME". Same tutorial is on this board somewhere, but too lazy to go looking! forums.swedespeed.com/showthread.php?327681-Sill-replacement-Easy-for-the-most-partThe other side of the car required that I make the sill from a flat sheet, so might be worth a look: forums.swedespeed.com/showthread.php?333649-No-Sill-Panel-No-ProblemIf after looking around on Youtube, you still have questions, post them up, be glad to help you or anyone else who is freaked out by this stuff.
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VIP
South East
Posts: 8,293
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Watch your travel speed too. Even with the wire feed and amps right down, if you're lingering too long in one area you're going to melt right though.
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Last Edit: Aug 4, 2016 17:07:03 GMT by VIP
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Welding body work Deleted
@Deleted
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Clean both sides of the material you are welding if you can get to both sides. I have had it before that the weld somehow draws the curse word on the underside through the weld puddle and contaminates it. Sure someone like Skylinedave could explain it better than I could....
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Clean both sides of the material you are welding if you can get to both sides. I have had it before that the weld somehow draws the curse word on the underside through the weld puddle and contaminates it. Sure someone like Skylinedave could explain it better than I could.... This is very true: the backside of the weld is as important as the front. Do whatever you can to clean both sides and you will see better beads. This is me cleaning the backside of a seam. In this case, there was n asphalt sound deadening panel that would have played havoc with the weld had I not noticed. When welding sheet metal with a MIG there is no travel speed. You do a single one second dot aimed exactly over the last dot and you wait until the red goes away, move over one half dot distance and do it all over again; maybe 1/8" movement between hits? If you think that you are going to run anything resembling a structural metal weld bead on 20 gauge tin, you are in for a world of hurt. Most people who try that end up welding very cold in an effort to not burn through and that also makes for a curse word weld with no penetration. Believe it or not, you want to weld HOT when doing this. These are the settings for a Lincoln 185 220 volt welder using 0.035 wire (yeah I use the thicker wire but it does not matter, this works for any wire size) I use whatever wire was last loaded in the machine. If it were 0.023" I would have the wire speed up to 3.5 or so. Once again, pick a setting, any setting and use time as the variable to get a dot of weld with full penetration and no burnout. Once you get it to work once and create one good dot, you are set. You want the backside to look like this: ( this is not a welder setting thing as much as a trigger ON time thing) From the above, you can see where there is absolutely no "Bead" being run. I actually use a second hand to hold the copper cup and aim it directly at the front half of the last bead. Doing this one handed would be impossible for me. I also tend to flood the area with light and get my helmeted face right in there so I can see where I am welding. Front side of the same weld. The benefit of welding really hot is that you can cut way down on the grinding time and cost. These spotwelds will required no finishing:
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