Question about welder wire feed

[ollie76]

Evening folks,

Haven't welded before in my life, however, I'm in the process of learning on my new little 120v Mig/Flux. I just set up my wire and when I was mounting the reel, I messed up and the wire popped out of my hand when I should have been keeping some tension on it. It came unraveled quite a bit.

I wound it back up the best I could and continued the feeding process. Seems ok.....not 100% sure. What's the correct way to deal with this?

 

[lilredex]

Get it on there and tighten up the spool so it can't run away. Get it started and then set the tension.

Hope you have the facility to add gas, as flux core gets frustrating very quickly.

 

[ollie76]

Yes, you can add gas........I just need a bottle and a regulator. I have to weld outside, thus the flux core.

 

[lilredex]

Go for it, if you are happy with the welder.......it makes a huge difference.

 

[brownbagg]

no, you wont be happy with it, mig doesnt get fun till you get into the 220 machine, the little 120 will barely weld sheetmetal

 

[ollie76]

Lets not de-rail this thread with useless comments. I'm looking for troubleshooting advice, which Lilredex has kindly provided.

 

[Zeke]

If the wire speed is consistent, you dodged a bullet. Most times when the wire gets free like that it unrolls to the point of tangling (binding — known as a birds nest). When it does that the roll is useless unless you can remove the bunched up wire down to tightly wound wire.

 

[ollie76]

So if I have to unroll down to the tightly wound stuff, how can I do that without the tight wire starting to get loose as well? I actually tried to unroll a bit but it seemed I was making a bad situation worse.

 

[BD1]

Is this a small 2 pound spool ? Depending on how easily you get frustrated, it maybe easier to remove wire until you get to the factory tightly wound part. You could get lucky but usually it only gets worse when you try to use it.

 

[LumpyMusic]

Here's something that helped my wire feed a ton. Cost me a nickel.

The stock nut that came with the thing, meant to "adjust tension" on the spool was a plain wingnut. The way the spool rotated, it caused the wingnut to tighten as the wire fed out. Washers and other attempts to fix the "auto tighten" were not effective.

Replaced the silly wing nut with a nylock nut. Now I tighten it to exactly where I want it with a nut driver and stays exactly there till I want to remove it to change spools.

You can have a blast with a 110v MIG. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If it's pretty low duty cycle (most are) it can get frustrating if you're doing a large weld-out. But it'll melt metal together. Just don't try and build a submarine with it.


Sgt Lumpy

 

[ollie76]

Yeah it's the small one that came with the welder. Probably garbage stuff, it's a china welder.

So basically, run the wire out the gun until I get the tight wire? Makes sense. I guess you gotta be careful of that ground clamp huh? LOL

 

[LumpyMusic]

If you do choose to "run the wire out through the gun until you reach tight wire", then you could simply "rewind" it back through the gun and the hose. Turn the power off, wrap a rag around the nozzle end of the gun, reach the spool with your hand and simply turn the spool to rewind the wire. It's likely to lay itself down on the spool pretty smoothly.

Worst case - The birdsnest locks up the wire while you're welding. Not the end of the world. You'll get a little weld booger but you can then shut down, fix the birdsnest, re-feed the wire and get back to having fun.

When the wire tension device is set appropriately, it will try and pull the knotted up wire but won't be able to. Won't hurt anything, shouldn't break the wire.

It's not a monster of a problem.


Sgt Lumpy

 

[bodydamage]

You can weld 1/4 with a 110v flux core machine once it is set up properly. One thing that I've found that really helps a 110v machine run is to have it on its own 20a circuit. Dont run it off of an extension cord unless its a fat one.

 

[countryroad82]

no, you wont be happy with it, mig doesnt get fun till you get into the 220 machine, the little 120 will barely weld sheetmetal

Well seeing as how all my lowly 120 machine pretty much does is weld sheetmetal Ill never know what fun is. I've welded up a couple cages with it too and believe it or not they passed inspection for the dirt tracks and drag strips, but it's just a 120 machine. But that said I will eventually upgrade my welder to a larger machine when I kill this Hobart.

 

[evintho]

The 110v units are really only good for welding sheetmetal and steel up to 1/8" but they're great machines to learn on. I just picked up a cheap Lincoln Ebay special so I can weld sheetmetal and save my 220v Hobie for the bigger stuff!



And to the OP, no offense but flux core does truly ****. Gas is the only way too go! You can weld outside with gas, just don't weld in a windstorm!

 

[ollie76]

And to the OP, no offense but flux core does truly ****. Gas is the only way too go! You can weld outside with gas, just don't weld in a windstorm!

Yeah? You serious? Well that's good to know if true but I might as well get started with the flux core right because it's all I have at this time.

If I want to MIG, I'll need a bottle and a regulator, however, I have a quick question. I see the cheaper Lincoln MIGs they sell here at the big box stores have a standard regulator bundled with the complete package but I've been looking around online and you'll see mig regulators which include a flowmeter. What's the difference here?

In the end, I'm sure a standard regulator will be what I end up getting.

 

[evintho]

My Lincoln came with a regulator and no gauge. I didn't use it 'cause I plumbed into the bottle with the 'Y' valve so I could use my existing gauges. I'm thinking the 'no gauge regulator' is preset at a specific pressure so no gauge is necessary. Don't know. Just speculation. I however, like to see how much gas flow I have!

 

[jmarkwolf]

Evening folks,

Haven't welded before in my life, however, I'm in the process of learning on my new little 120v Mig/Flux. I just set up my wire and when I was mounting the reel, I messed up and the wire popped out of my hand when I should have been keeping some tension on it. It came unraveled quite a bit.

I wound it back up the best I could and continued the feeding process. Seems ok.....not 100% sure. What's the correct way to deal with this?

I have a funny story.

When feeding the solid wire spool into my brand new Millermatic 211 awhile back, the reel started to get away from me and unspool.

I was able to arrest the unspool but had my hands full getting it back on track, when my neighbor comes running over shouting that his clothes dryer is on fire and he needs to pull it out of his laundry room!

I had to make a split decision to either let go of the spool and let it unwind filling my garage with wire, and run to my neighbors aid, or somehow quickly secure the wire before running to my neighbors aid.

So I did what any good neighbor would do. I took the extra 10 seconds to secure the wire, then ran to my neighbors aid.

Turns out, there was never a fire in the clothes dryer. It was smoking and stinking badly. Motor seized apparently. He had expended a fire extinguisher into it, and needed help to pull it out of the house before filling the house with smoke.