A lot of the welding my students do here in West Africa is on thinnish metal. Our tube steel only comes in 16 ga wall, and often we're welding 18 or 20 gauge sheet against a frame of 16 ga square tube. The normal way of doing it here is by (basically tack) welding the stuff together, with 6013 stick. I've blown their minds by showing them flux cored welding, doing that same stuff with .030 fcaw wire.
No argon mixes are available here that are economical (a big 220cf cylinder is about $240). However, we can economically get CO2 refilled.
I know people have said that using CO2 on thin metal isn't a good fit because the CO2 makes a hotter weld than C25, so it wants to burn through. However, how does CO2 compare to fcaw? Will we have an easier time welding thin stuff (say, butt welding 18 ga sheet) with CO2 and normal mig wire, or with the fcaw wire we're using now? We can do it with the fcaw wire, but my suspicion is that since we could use .023 hard wire with CO2, that would probably be easier to use on thin stuff than the .030 fcaw we use now (I've never seen .023 fcaw wire).
Can anyone who's done both confirm this?
We're using miller machines ranging from MM180's to 250's.
No argon mixes are available here that are economical (a big 220cf cylinder is about $240). However, we can economically get CO2 refilled.
I know people have said that using CO2 on thin metal isn't a good fit because the CO2 makes a hotter weld than C25, so it wants to burn through. However, how does CO2 compare to fcaw? Will we have an easier time welding thin stuff (say, butt welding 18 ga sheet) with CO2 and normal mig wire, or with the fcaw wire we're using now? We can do it with the fcaw wire, but my suspicion is that since we could use .023 hard wire with CO2, that would probably be easier to use on thin stuff than the .030 fcaw we use now (I've never seen .023 fcaw wire).
Can anyone who's done both confirm this?
We're using miller machines ranging from MM180's to 250's.
