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Half doors and blowing through sheet metal

stoney126

stoney126

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Hey all. Im attempting to make some half doors. The very first one I kept blowing holes through it and in frustration beat it to death with my mini sledge:mad: So im on attempt 2 I did a quick few tacks in different areas. One was fine the other blew threw. Im using a miller matic 251 .035 wire. I got it down to 14 volts(lowest it will go) and wire seed at 172-175.

Do I need thinner wire, or increase wire speed? Or try to overlay the metal instead of butt weld it.
 
howdiy said:
Stitch weld

tack tack tack
Click to expand...


X2 unless tacking is your prob, but you should be able to tack all the way down the line. It suck and is time consuming but it works.
Tack Tack Tack .........................................
 
Can I assume you are using shielding gas?

A typical mixture is 75/20 Ar/CO2.... I run a higher mixture of Argon 92/8 usually.

This gives a "softer" and less aggressive weld, and seems to work well for sheetmetal work. For thicker stuff, you really need to pump up the settings to achieve the same penetration as you'd get with a conventional 75/25 mix.

I'm certainly not a welding expert, but playing with the gas mixture (as well as heat and wire speeds) seemed to really improve my ability to weld 18GA without blowing through it...


EDIT: Oh yes, and there is no getting around the fact that you need to stitch weld thin stuff....it takes forever and will warp badly if you don't move around a lot to keep things from getting heat-soaked.


:usaflag:
 
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Oh ya im not trying to run any kind of a bead:haha: but even with just a simple tack it starts go right through. Unfortunately I cant get different gas ATM.
 
rivits?

post some pictures of what your doing. i been wanting to do some to my s10 but really havent got any idea how to do it
 
stoney126 said:
Oh ya im not trying to run any kind of a bead:haha: but even with just a simple tack it starts go right through. Unfortunately I cant get different gas ATM.
Click to expand...

You can always wait longer in between tacks too

It gets really annoying though because your helmet keeps flashing off and on
 
Use some .023" wire. It takes a lot less current/heat so it can be turned down even more for doing really thin stuff. As Greg mentioned a sheild mix with more argon and less CO2 will really help too.

rene
 
I also am in the process of making half doors I was thinking about using screws to screw a block of wood in the inside of the door then cover with vinyl and rivet it into place the outside looks like this H represnts just the chrome around the black button and the button itself to open from the outside it looks pretty sweet

H \ /
\ /
\______________________________/
 
ok, gonna go price a small bottle of gas and some wire and see If I have better luck. Thansk agiain guys for the info.
 
stoney126 said:
Hey all. Im attempting to make some half doors. The very first one I kept blowing holes through it and in frustration beat it to death with my mini sledge:mad:
Click to expand...

LMAO:haha::haha: I feel your pain and frustration.

Also, if the metal is not clean - paint, rust, etc - you'll have blowouts.
 
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well I think that is part of the problem. The disk I was using to clean off paint may have been to heavy of a grit and was taking some metal with it. Gonna pick up the new wire gas and finer disks tommorow
 
one other thing to do is watch what angle you are holding the gun at... angle it more towards the thicker metal (if you are welding it to tube) If you are modding stock doors then pay no attention to me.

gabe
 
You may want to try the wire brush to remove the paint rather than any type of sanding disk.
 
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