Greetings wire-heads (isn't that from Known Space?). Ernie Leimkuhler
gave me the advice that .035 wire is too big for my 115 volt wire-feed
welder. And if anyone knows, he does (Thanks Ernie). Well, the Lincoln
SP125 Plus that I recently bought came with a spool of .035 70S-6. The
wire has some rust in spots which leads to weld porosity. So I'm just
using it to practice technique. Last night I was welding hot rolled
mild steel angle, 2 x 2 x 3/16". When the clean part of the wire was
making the weld the penetration was just over 1/2 the thickness of the
angle. After welding a butt joint with square edges I beat the two
pieces apart and the weld nugget tore out of the angle. The weld
itself did not fracture. When the weld nugget came out you could see
that it had penetrated more than 1/2 the parent metal thickness. It
appeared that the weld had separated at the weld/parent metal
interface. If I used a smaller diameter wire will the penetration be
greater?
Eric