Weekend trial and error on a 250EX. Warning long winded beginner!
Well, I started my journey Saturday learning to weld (this means any type welding as in never welding before) and learning a brand new machine. I received the machine about 2 weeks ago and started collecting everything I needed to get started. I didn't even own a pair of welding gloves or helmet. While at the local LWS getting the 125 cuft tank of argon I picked up some gloves, a helmet, and 2 pounds of 3/32 4043 wire. Wow I didn't know welding helmets could be so expensive! I even purchased about 10 pieces of aluminum (6061) from ebay to get me started. Early Saturday morning I assembled the welding table I purchased from HF late Friday night and set that up. I then wired up my 220 plug and connected all of the hoses and leads and powered up the 250EX. Everything seemed to work fine and now it was time for the fun. Earlier in the week I spoke to Mark on the phone and he gave me a few pointers and even told me to start with steel but I didn't have any scraps to use and I wasn't waiting to get any either(by the way thanks Mark for answering all my questions). After about an hour of trying I give up for the day and started looking for setting and tips on the internet. Sunday went a little better after watching a bunch of videos (man those guys make it look easy)so I decided to included a pic of my results but please go easy as this is truly the first time I have ever welded anything. If there is any one particular weld that is somewhat close please point it out to me. My biggest problem is feeding the wire as I use it up. I did not use any pulse but was at about 120 HZ and 30% cleaning with 2T using the trigger but had up slope set to about 5 and down slope set to about 5. Start amps and end amps set to about 10. With these settings I was able to somewhat control temp by just releasing the trigger and getting back on it when needed. ( I found these setting on Welding tips and tricks Saturday night and it really helped.) Later on Sunday I tried pulse but was getting terrible results so I went back to straight AC and just practiced until I used up 2 pounds of filler wire. Until next weekend!
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