did some practice welds before I do some welding on my new crossmember I'm making and then I cut them in half to see what kind of penetration i got
So I did a tee joint between the straight up piece and the curved piece. Both sides are two different settings. You can see there is almost 100% penetration on that but that is from both sides and there are parts in my design where I'll only be able to weld from one side (box steel)
Now here is one that I did only from one side and if you look very closely on the left you can see a black sliver (I will highlight it if requested) because it has not penetrated all the way through, so my question is is this enough? And how do these look in general? Im using .030 flux core wire and the material is 3/16 steel
Normally I start with the recommended settings on the welder and then adjust by feel, but since nobody else has chimed in yet, I'll throw a dart at it.
Looks to me like you could use a touch more heat and a touch less wire feed rate.
Alternatively, it might help if you put a bevel on the lower edges of the upright. That would help you penetrate deeper underneath the upright, and the volume of bead you have with your current settings would fill out that void nicely.
Now I'll let somebody smarter chime in.
I don't know how you are seeing penetration with the cutting marks on the base material and weld. I cant see crap other than it looks like you could use more heat to stop the weld of being proud of the surface. Not much more heat, but more.
In reply to wvumtnbkr :
here is a edited version where i turned up the contrast and highlighted the area where there is no penetration
that black line is gap between the two pieces where it hasnt penetrated
In order to really get the most out of judging the welds from this perspective you need to linish the cut end with a flap disc and etch in acid. (Muriatic acid or even vinegar works to some degree.) Otherwise you can't really judge penetration.
Even without that, the left bead in the first picture has a small spot that looks like a lack of penetration or possibly an inclusion. Also the right side shows all the flux balled up along the bead which can mean contamination or too much heat had soaked into the part so the flux was being burned away from the weld.
There's a significant difference in the profile of the beads left to right. Did you cool the part between passes? Was the left side welded first? Did you remove all of the mill scale before welding?
If welded left to right that would explain the profile difference, and mill scale would contribute to inclusions, lack of penetration, and poor flux coverage.
An inside corner joint wants a bead of at least the width of the base metal (Measuring from inside corner to the edge of the bead in both directions.) and your beads look a little undersized for that size material. You'll never fuse the two seamlessly like your post implies you were expecting, but I agree with the earlier suggestion about more amps and less feed.
In reply to Crackers :
couple of questions and answers for you, the difference between the two is because I had different settings and technique on each one, and I did notice the hole on the left side.
One of my questions is when referring to bead size how do I increase the size? with feed or with technique? On that topic for this type of joint what sort of technique would you recommend? On the left side and on the single bead piece I just put the wire straight into the the middle of the joint and pulled, on the right side I did a C pattern alternating between both surfaces. Which would you recommend, or something else entirely?
Finally an additional comment on the increasing the the amps; my tiny Eastwood 135 is almost maxed out, although it does say it can weld up to 5/16. The thing that has me confused is, as with many welders mine has recommended settings for thicknesses and type of wire; the volts settings go from A-J and the wire feed speed goes from 1-10; for 3/16 steel with my size flux core it says to use D-4, but on that setting I couldn't even get a good puddle. I have mine set at I-6 right now, am I doing something wrong or is the placard wrong? (I assume its me)
I can't say for sure with your machine, but I run a Lincoln 140 which is very similar. 1/8" is really the max for that machine and single pass welding IMO. You can get away with doing a zig-zag pass in some cases, but ultimately to get enough surface area I'd probably do 2&3 passes. First one focusing mainly on the "bottom" and successive passes focusing more on the leg.
I'd max out the amps and run wire feed at like 3 on my machine otherwise the bead will get really fat like on the left instead of wetting into the base material more like on the right. You really need to go slow and give the machine time to develop a puddle. This usually requires moving the torch back and forth along the bead. Advance, let a puddle develop then go back and put some material into your bead, then advance and stretch out your puddle again. (I hope I'm explaining that well enough.)
Also, 120v machines really need a dedicated circuit with 10g wire minimum and ideally as close to the breaker as possible. If you're running on a long line with a lot of splices on 12g you're probably not feeding the welder enough amps once everything warms up and starts chooching. (A long run of marginally sized wire from a circuit breaker or an extension cord will act like a resistor.) So make sure you're not running anything else on that same circuit while you're welding.
I'd suggest trying to weld on some practice pieces and adjust the wire speed as low as it will go without losing an arc and sputtering then slowly increase wire feed until you get a decent bead that doesn't get overly round on the top. Then use those settings for your multi pass welds.
Are you using an extension cord? I purposely use one when welding thin metal to knock down the power.
It has a massive effect.
