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Getting the gas hooked up is the main reason I want to decide upon which welder, they use completely different hook ups.

Now maybe when I get down deep inside the Century (which is believe is a store brand for a Miller or Hobart) I might find that I can hook it up the same way as the Lincoln.

I had to work ALL DAY LONG! so I didn't get to play with anything at all today, but tomorrow's another day - I promise!

I'm going to use the flux core to get my proficiency back and save the gas for the real stuff. I've got to go get me some larger scrap pieces to practice on. All I've got are short pieces of tube cut off and the heat builds up in the pieces too quickly.

Fortunately I have a scrap recycling place on my way to town so I'm going to stop in there and see what I can pick up.

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mobilito ergo sum
I drive therefore I am

I can explain it to you,
but I can't understand it for you.

By the way, your Century machine is made by Lincoln

As for gas hookups, screw a hose barb into the gas fitting on the one machine.

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Too much week, not enough weekend.

OOPS I did it again
http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=17496

Blood Sweat and Beers
http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=15216

An arctic blast has us down into the 40's tonight so I've had to move the plants that are in pots into the house.

NOW I KNOW WHAT I CAN DO TO PRACTICE MY WELDING!

Those plant roller stands you buy at the stores are junk and make it very difficult to move large plants around. So I'll design and manufacture a 3 wheeled stand using decent sized casters so that you can do things like navigate the door thresholds without tipping the dang things over.

And since I get free, or next to free, powder coating I'll make them pretty too. To make it so that my skills translate I might as well use 1" tubing to do it.

To be able to use large enough wheels I'll have to do a drop center and make it look a lot like a spider. That'll also give it a low CG so it will corner better. This way we can have plant races when we get bored with the winter weather. OK, I'm bored with the cold weather is it spring yet?

I know you are all sitting there with bated breath (JD that means you are holding your breath because of the excitement) so follow this space for the exciting solution to this age old problem.

_________________
mobilito ergo sum
I drive therefore I am

I can explain it to you,
but I can't understand it for you.

Carguy, if the wire ias pushnig into the puddle and you can actually feel it pushing thye nozzle back, the yep, your wire speed is much to high. I've got a Northern Industries MIG 135, and from the looks of things in the puics you posted, My your Miller and My NI are brothers, or at least very close cousins.

I had initially used the wire speeds shown inside the lid, but found those were not at all realistic and were pushing the wire out much too fast. Like Too Busy, I like it right on the cusp of "Plasma Spray" and have been able to find the sweet spot for both the 3 and 4 voltage settings (about 3 and 3.5 on my wire feed dial respectively) and marked them with a sharpie.

AS Ive said in other threads, a solid preheat is super helpful. when I built my MOD 2 control arms I pre-heated every joint red hot before striking a spark. so done, the base metal flowed like buttah right away.

FYI I routinely use .030 wire for everything.

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The B-3 build log: http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=13941 unfortunately, all the pictures were lost in the massive server crash

The beginnings of the Jag Special,
https://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=19012
Again, all pictures were lost.

this may be a problem with voltage and not the welder,

is the building supply addiquate for the welder, i have had this problem in the past working a long distance from the breaker box or in an old workshop.

the fact that the wire speed needs to be turned down can be looked at the other way, in that the voltage needs to be turned up to burn the wire that is being fed.

if there is a voltage/amp drop in the power supply wire, the welding voltage/amps needs to be turned up to compensate, giving an over high setting as compared to the wire speed but you might think that the voltage is correct and assume the wire feed is too fast if you have never had a good supply to the welder.

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this story shall the good man teach his son,
and chrispin chrispian shall ne'er go by,
from this day to the end of the world.
but we in it shall be remembered.

It's not that the wire speed is too fast, it's something wrong in the welder. Even at super low, burn through speeds I still get it. It just quits welding for a split second.

It's been cold here and I've only been able to get back out to the shop today.

I'm cleaning all connections I can find and see if that helps.

Unfortunately I've used up my time for the day and can't get back out till tomorrow afternoon or evening, but it's going to be a reasonable temp for the rest of the week and weekend so I should be able to find the issue.

_________________
mobilito ergo sum
I drive therefore I am

I can explain it to you,
but I can't understand it for you.

If it's skipping it can be any of a number of things
1. dirty feed wheel on the wire feed
2. loose connection to wire feed motor
3. wire feed motor just a piece of crap (110v Horrible Fright welders are notorious for this)
4. tangled wire. this is a lot more common than you'd think, especially on 2 lb spools
5. too much tension on wire spool to prevent over run
6. bent, damaged, crushed torch liner
7. worn tip. Again, more common than you'd think, but that replaceable copper tip is where the power leaves the machine and transfers to the wire... bad contact or worn produces erratic results
8. loose connection torch to machine or ground to machine
9. dirty substrate
10. poor ground

hope this helps

_________________
Too much week, not enough weekend.

OOPS I did it again
http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=17496

Blood Sweat and Beers
http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=15216

Since the feed is very consistent and there's no over run or tangling I think I'm going to change the tip first after I finish cleaning all the electrical connections. The ground clamp itself I cleaned first and I still had the problem. It looks like I'll get some more time in the shop tonight so I should be able to finish cleaning all the other connections.

_________________
mobilito ergo sum
I drive therefore I am

I can explain it to you,
but I can't understand it for you.

I would add one more to the list of [10] for wire feed problems.
11) Variation in Wire Diameter used by the drawing process. If the manufacture tries to draw down the wire to quickly you get necking which will cause wire feed problems. You see this a lot on the small diameter spools. They try to salvage the wire by loading the good sections from the run on to smaller spools.
If you can run the wire through your fringers and feel any variation, the wire is junk. Replace the spool.
I would also recommend that you clean your drive rollers as a regular part of your welder maintenance. [ use alcohol ] The typical 110V single drive wheel welders have a difficult time with any drawing lube that is on the wire surface, which causes the feed problems. Welding shops will seel you a cleaning pad that you can clamp in front of the drive wheels to help remove some of the lube.
Dave W

http://www.mscdirect.com/product/detail ... PLA+-+Test

I buy these through work. MSC supplies the majority of our maintenance needs.

_________________
Too much week, not enough weekend.

OOPS I did it again
http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=17496

Blood Sweat and Beers
http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=15216

So exactly how do you use these and what do they do?

It appears if you might just let them ride on the wire between the spool and the tip.

_________________
mobilito ergo sum
I drive therefore I am

I can explain it to you,
but I can't understand it for you.

I slip it on the wire before it goes through the feed roller

_________________
Too much week, not enough weekend.

OOPS I did it again
http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=17496

Blood Sweat and Beers
http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=15216

It's my machine. Which means it's worth the time to take it apart and clean all connectors and see if that corrects it. I cleaned all the easy to get to connectors, but since it's been sitting so long I'm expecting I have some minor corrosion on some of the internal connections.

I took my practice steel over to a friends house and without even trying and was able to lay down a clean bead one handed.

The dirty area up top is my flux core and the bottom is his machine running gas. The difference isn't the gas. I had a continuous arc on his and "arcus interruptus" on mine.

While I'm in there I'll try to change the gas connection to a standard hook up.

_________________
mobilito ergo sum
I drive therefore I am

I can explain it to you,
but I can't understand it for you.

Your gun cable may be messed up too. I had a bit of the problem you seem to be having and it was a big surprise to me. One day things just didn't seem to work as well. The position I was in let the cable take a sharp turn out of the machine and it couldn't feed the wire steady. You could hear the motor slipping on the wire. Just another thing to look at. You can get new liners for the cables, that's part of what makes me think you can have an issue with them.

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
SketchUp collection for LocostUSA: "Dream it, Build it, Drive it!"
Car9 Roadster information - models, drawings, resources etc.

I may go there just to be sure in my quest to be sure I have everything worked out before I am at the stage of modifying the chassis to fit the body, but the wire feeds very well on this machine. Much better than on the other.

I'm glad to see it wasn't me. I worked a couple of beads for real on another piece of steel and I'm confident now that with 30 minutes or so of practice I will be able to produce welds that I won't mind staking my life on.

_________________
mobilito ergo sum
I drive therefore I am

I can explain it to you,
but I can't understand it for you.