Finally got that tricky horizontal fillet weld to lay down clean

Spent 3 hours fighting a 6G position weld on a 12-inch pipe last Thursday and couldn't get it to stop dripping. Tried bumping up the wire speed by 15 IPM and it laid down like butter. Anyone else mess with wire speed before adjusting voltage on overhead passes?

2 comments

2 Comments

shane_clark12d ago

Whoa, careful with that approach. Bumping wire speed on an overhead pass is gonna increase your deposition rate, which means more puddle to fight gravity with. If you're having dripping issues, you usually wanna drop the wire speed or bump the voltage slightly to flatten out the arc. Sounds like you might have been a little cold before, and the extra wire speed just put enough heat into the puddle to balance out on that particular joint. But in general, adjusting wire speed alone for overhead is risky cause you can end up with a globular transfer that just falls out. I'd play with voltage first to get a soft, tight arc, then fine tune wire speed from there.

thomas_sanchez12d ago

Shane's got a good point about voltage vs wire speed... my buddy tried dialing up the wire on an overhead pass last month and ended up with a puddle that looked like a lava lamp falling off. Took him an hour of grinding to clean that mess up. But you do what works for your rig, I guess.