Bought a welder, showed up yesterday.
 

https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...rmatic0037.jpg
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...rmatic0038.jpg

I have been planing on buying a welder for many years now. After doing much research for a very long time. I decided to perches the Miller 211. What do you think? I have not welded sense late 1998 and I am excited to get practicing.

Other then showing off my toy. There is another purpose to this thread. I would like to get impute from fellow YT members about my welding skills and or lack there of. I will be posting up future pictures of the practice welds that I will be making. Thank you for any constructive criticisms you may have.

Nice, I like my miller TIG machine a lot. Just started on millers at the community college, guess you just like what you learn on.

Welds
This thread I started a while ago to get some talk going about welds. Have fun with the new machine!

From everything I have read and heard, Miller makes a highly recommended machine.

Yeah, that thing will outlive you.

Nice buy, wish I had the money. That 211 MVP is so versatile.


:dj:

YES!! That is a sweet welder! I learned on one similar to that.

Shiny

I got a MM 251 :D

:wabbit2:

Mine's an old MM 200. My father was a welder/fabricator for nearly 45 years. If only knowledge were hereditary...

Nice Keith!

Now you can finally get to making some armor! ( or whatever else comes to mind )

Lemme know if you want me to save a few pieces of steel for your practicing. We have a few sch. 40 pieces of scrap at the house or in the office, im sure.

There was a guy on Craigslist not too long ago selling DOM tubing. not sure if he's still there though.

yes mike I am up for you offer. i could use more scrap.

Alrighty, They're probably only like 6-8" pieces of steel. should be enough for some practice though.

sounds good. let me know when we can get together.

Definitely.

Thats awesome, first step for that winch bumper you had drawn up awhile back

we have alot of steel pipe lying around at the shop most of the time

we just took alot of it to the steel mill last month so we dont have alot atm but it does pile up quick

Nice welder Keith I can't wait to see what you build with it!

I have plans to build front and rear bumpers, sliders and a roof rack that mounts off of the sliders and rear bumper. I have some plans in my head to use the roof rack as a roof top tent platform for my ground tent. In the end my longbed may turn out to have an exo cage.

Sweet!

first day of practice
 

So I finally got some welding practice today. It has been 13 years sense I last held a welder of any kind in my hands. I am looking to have my practice welds critiqued by some experts.

To start things off I will explain the details of the welds. I was practicing on some 3/16" hot rolled steal. I was using the 120v plug for the welder. I was using .030 flux core with a feed speed of 40 and the voltage setting of 10. I am not sure what the actual voltage is as the welder and chart do not explain or translates the setting into volts.

I started off with some spot welds. The first few I did not stay on it long enough to get a good bead. The later had a decent bead, but too me it did not seem to have good penetration.
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10001.jpg


I then started on a two inch bead. the speed I was going seemed to b a little fast and again I was not convinced of any penetration. I was happy at how smooth it did look for my first bead in 13 years.
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10002.jpg


This time I tried slowing down a little. I was happy with the puddle although it did turn out to weave over the join.
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10003.jpg


too slow vary ugly
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10004.jpg


I think more bad penetration.
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10005.jpg


here is the back side.
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10006.jpg


took some strong beating to break the joint apart. I placed one half in a vice and beat it from the bottom UN-welded side of the joint. For as crappy as I thought my welds were. I was surprised at how much effort it took to break the joint. My thoughts were confirmed, I had poor penetration as you can see.
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10007.jpg
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10008.jpg
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10009.jpg
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10010.jpg


My second attempt came out better in the end. I beveled the edges and welded the two pieces in a T shape. let me know what you think of these three beads and what may help out some. Also I was not able to break this one apart so I could not check for depth of penetration.
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10011.jpg
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10012.jpg
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10013.jpg


Here is the back side. It the best I could do to show the heat penetration.
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10015.jpg
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10014.jpg


as you can see I warped it. Shows the lack of attention in the past 13 years. LOL.
https://i119.photobucket.com/albums/...lding10016.jpg

Practice make "better". :hillbill:

I hate FC as it makes a mess. MIG is SO much easier.

:wabbit2:

I do not have gas yet. For what I plan at the moment, I do not really mind the mess of flux core.

Just giving this a bump. Looking for opinions