You know, I have no experience with flux core or MIG, but I have done a good bit of tig welding. It looks to me that you need to bevel your metal with a grinder or a flap disk, you'll never get good penetration with two pieces of metal butted up together with no gap.

On the T-Joint it looks like you did a little beveling, so that's good. Also you might want to clean the metal more, it looks a little dirty or maybe that's just post welding, i don't know. Clean metal will give better welds, plain and simple.

Another thing to look for on your Corner and T joints is for undercut, look along the edges, shine a light on it, if there is a shadow created by an overhanging edge, that is a weak spot that will tend to fail when stressed. Especially it will tend to wash out at the top of the weld and roll over at the bottom making an under cut. Practice makes perfect.

 

with a good weld you will not be able to break those pieces apart, they will bend first, that's what you're looking for. Keep it up man!

 

thanks for the tips. I do remember learning about the undercut years ago. thanks for refreshing my memory.

 

I have the 211 for a little over a year now and have been very satisfied with it until today. I pulled it out to do a quick job for a friend turned it on and started feeding wire on it's own. Pulled the gun apart to find that one of the spade connectors on the trigger micro swith had broken off. I ended up soldering the wires directly to the micro switch and that got back up and running. Later

 

Subscribed - this is great for those just starting out

 

Make sure to take off all of the crap thats on the metal. Theres a rust preventing chemical that needs to be taken off with a grinder. It will prevent you from getting proper penetration.

 

cool. there is more practice to come.

 

Good 120v welder. I have always enjoyed my Miller.

 

I have been enjoying it as well. more practice is coming soon.

 

Next time you butt-weld thicker pieces, 3/16ths and above, bevel the edges into a V shape on both sides.. This way youre welding the face of the two materials together, and not the edge. If that makes any sense...

\<---welding this area together--->/

 

That's good advice, but don't bevel it too sharply you want a shape kind of like this
\||
/||
if you bevel a sharp edge it will burn and not weld and cause contamination. Rule of thumb is leave a least a tad over 1/16th on the metal not beveled.