I feel like lately I've been chasing slags a little more than I like. Not sure if it's my welder or I'm sucking a little more lately.  Any tricks, raise/lower temp or feed? Smaller wire?

imracin68j wrote on 12/22/11 at 6:36pm:

Your married.................quit chasing slags!!

imracin68j wrote on 12/23/11 at 5:25pm:

What are you welding that is copper.....pray tell?

lots of variables.  you shouldn't be getting "slag" with any sort of shielded welding.  I'm going to guess you're using ER70S wire either .030 or .035?  what kind of material are you welding, what style of weld is it (Tee, fillet, butt, lap)?

Traditionally  I'm going to guess again we're talking about a fillet weld on tubing like a roll cage?   If you have to weld uphill then like was stated before me, lower the amperage a little, and lower the wire speed a little, on top of those two you need to increase the frequency of your whipping motion.   All that said, you can weld downhill, opposite rules apply, you can run a little more amperage and a lower the frequency of your whipping motion.  

In my experience I weld uphill very seldom,  it's almost always a structural weld involving dual sheild, flux core wire/electrode.  Reason for that is the burnt flux "slag" will run into the area not yet welded which opens you up for contamination and porosity of the weld, neither of which the inspector likes.  The other reason is that most structural type of welding wire/electrodes are call "slow freeze" which produce a weld that has some yield to it.  these  wires/electrodes will drip if you try welding downhill, whereas uphill it will stack on its self.

Lastly, this goes for any type of welding.  make sure your metal is clean!!!   this can be traced back to about 90% of poor welds where the set up is in the ballpark.   Use a high quality degreaser on the areas to be welded, make sure it's dry and clean of oil, rust, and mill scale.   if you're dealing with any rust of mill scale/carbon, then you can either grind it off or soak it in muriatic acid til it's clean, then rinse, dry, weld.

My last comment on the welding topic is a saftey concern which can benefit everyone:

DO NOT USE BRAKE CLEAN ON PARTS TO BE WELDED!!!

almost all brake cleans have derivatives of Tetrachloroethelyne which can turn to hydrogen chloride and phosgene gases when heated, both of which can cause serious nerve damage or be fatal in relatively small doses!

PBR has very good info and like he said make sure not to use brakeclean and if you do make sure it is completly dry before you weld the only other thing I have seen cause youre slag or dingle berrys is old wire or wire that is dirty i ran into this issue before I started using the smaller rolls of wire sense I dont weld that much only when needed

Make sure your gun angle is correct, using 110 an 220 could make a difference too, my welder at home is a miller 220 or 110, and uphill welds aren't ne'er as good as the 220 that I use at work..

I'll give you credit for being a try hard. Lol