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Re: Worm tracks

Originally Posted by ferrret3238

I've ran a 44lb spool of 71A85 through my XMT with a 74dx feeder about a year ago. I was doing 1" plate to 8x8x40lb h beams for building columns for my new building. Not sure what my settings were but i ran 1" to 1-1/4" stickout. I got some worm tracks but mine were all surface and not porosity. Material wasn't very clean, a little paint in the grinder grooves and some light flash rust. When i got the tracks i took the spool off the machine and baked it in the kitchen oven for 30 minutes at 250. Just over 212 to boil the water and not burn the fiber spool. Threw it on the welder right away and it ran fine. Preheating the first weld with a little propane torch helped too. After that the welds helped with preheat around the column. Started the building about 2 years ago and lumber prices spiked so i stalled on the building. Will post pictures of the steel sometime soon. Going to have a bridge crane in this one... maybe two!!

Worm tracks & porosity seem cured, I guess by being indoors. Mostly I weld outdoors, as clearing an area of everything flamable is a job.

My wife has these space bags she put away summer clothes in. Seal them up & vacuum the air out. They are amazing! 80 LBS of clothing fits in the space of a white garbage bag, maybe 20 gallons. I'm going to try them for wire storage. I don't need Dual Shield often, so a reel lasts a long while.

Re: Worm tracks

I've ran a 44lb spool of 71A85 through my XMT with a 74dx feeder about a year ago. I was doing 1" plate to 8x8x40lb h beams for building columns for my new building. Not sure what my settings were but i ran 1" to 1-1/4" stickout. I got some worm tracks but mine were all surface and not porosity. Material wasn't very clean, a little paint in the grinder grooves and some light flash rust. When i got the tracks i took the spool off the machine and baked it in the kitchen oven for 30 minutes at 250. Just over 212 to boil the water and not burn the fiber spool. Threw it on the welder right away and it ran fine. Preheating the first weld with a little propane torch helped too. After that the welds helped with preheat around the column. Started the building about 2 years ago and lumber prices spiked so i stalled on the building. Will post pictures of the steel sometime soon. Going to have a bridge crane in this one... maybe two!!

Re: Worm tracks

And it's autogenous.

Re: Worm tracks

Attachment 1732496

Autonomous TIG cap on rectangular tube.

Attachment 1732497Attachment 1732498

I've got some cleaning up to do. It's a spattery mess.

Middle picture is vertical up, I don't know why it shows horizontal.

Both pictures are 71A85 a few years old, run with 75% gas.
New stuff seems a bit less saggy, & thus far, no birdnests. Running 50 CFH, no issues with porosity or worm tracks.

Re: Worm tracks

Originally Posted by Willie B

Attachment 1732489

The designator (I'm learning, though slowly) is 71A75. Turns out the last two digits are gas. The former manager at Maine Oxy was quick to admit he didn't have a wealth of knowledge. He said KD Welding, a member here uses a ton of it. The old roll was 71A85.

Lincoln's literature still says that the 71A85 is"Designed for welding with 75 - 85% Argon/balance CO2 shielding gas" so I would expect it would have still be good with C25, the one you have now is good for 25 or 100% Co2 instead of 15-25% Co2.

Re: Worm tracks

Originally Posted by ttoks

Now I'm even more interested to know what wire you were using, I know lincoln make at least one that can be used with 15-25% Co2, i've never come across one that is made for only 15% though.

What wire did you end up with?

Attachment 1732489

The designator (I'm learning, though slowly) is 71A75. Turns out the last two digits are gas. The former manager at Maine Oxy was quick to admit he didn't have a wealth of knowledge. He said KD Welding, a member here uses a ton of it. The old roll was 71A85.

Re: Worm tracks

Originally Posted by Willie B

Update:

I have another thread going.

Last weekend I was going crazy with Dual Shield birdnesting. I could run all the wire I wanted out into space, didn't mater if the lead was bent or straight. Strike an arc, within 30 seconds it birdnested just past the feed rollers. I probably cleared 50 birdnests. Threw away thousands of feet of wire, and got little or nothing welded.

Amazingly, I was indoors with little or no breeze, and porosity, or worm tracks weren't a problem.

I tried everything I could think of, took the liner out, inspected it, sprayed acetone down it & blew it out with compressed air.

I know I shouldn't, but in desperation, I gave the roll of wire a 1/2 second squirt of WD40. That helped, I was able to weld a few minutes before a birdnest. In my search for replacement parts I came upon a "Jump Liner" that came with my Bernard gun. I installed that in the gun end, that helped more. I was able to run 1-1/2 hour before I ran out of wire.

I went off to Maine Oxy. Young manager there informs me the wire I was using is made ONLY for 85/15 gas. I'm using 75/25. He sold me a roll of new Dual Shield made for my gas.

I tried this, it works great! Purely a spray process, it lays down beautifully.

Now I'm even more interested to know what wire you were using, I know lincoln make at least one that can be used with 15-25% Co2, i've never come across one that is made for only 15% though.

What wire did you end up with?

Re: Worm tracks

South Africa just became a power-house for helium production. Overnight billionaires, those gas rights/land owners.

https://phys.org/news/2021-10-helium...rica-gold.html


Hopefully it will ease up on the helium prices everywhere.

Re: Worm tracks

Originally Posted by ArcTan

Glad you figured it out. Which Maine Oxy do you go to?

Rutland is the only one I know of. Over on the NH border you have Haun also. In my early TIG days I got some good advice there.

It was at the beginning of the Dynasty days. I couldn't believe a lunchbox sized welder was better than Syncrowave. I bought a Diversion 180, the then manager at Airgas Bennington conned me into. In 2010, used Syncrowaves were going for $5000. I couldn't convince myself to do it. I then bought a Dialarc 250HF. It was a great steel TIG/ stick welder, & in its day, a great aluminum welder. Keep in mind, when it was built helium was the gas used. Your diesel wouldn't be much of a truck if you had to run it on gasoline. Manufacturers have scrambled trying to make welders that perform the way simple ones did when they had helium.

I have used helium...AMAZING!

Re: Worm tracks

Glad you figured it out. Which Maine Oxy do you go to?

Re: Worm tracks

Update:

I have another thread going.

Last weekend I was going crazy with Dual Shield birdnesting. I could run all the wire I wanted out into space, didn't mater if the lead was bent or straight. Strike an arc, within 30 seconds it birdnested just past the feed rollers. I probably cleared 50 birdnests. Threw away thousands of feet of wire, and got little or nothing welded.

Amazingly, I was indoors with little or no breeze, and porosity, or worm tracks weren't a problem.

I tried everything I could think of, took the liner out, inspected it, sprayed acetone down it & blew it out with compressed air.

I know I shouldn't, but in desperation, I gave the roll of wire a 1/2 second squirt of WD40. That helped, I was able to weld a few minutes before a birdnest. In my search for replacement parts I came upon a "Jump Liner" that came with my Bernard gun. I installed that in the gun end, that helped more. I was able to run 1-1/2 hour before I ran out of wire.

I went off to Maine Oxy. Young manager there informs me the wire I was using is made ONLY for 85/15 gas. I'm using 75/25. He sold me a roll of new Dual Shield made for my gas.

I tried this, it works great! Purely a spray process, it lays down beautifully.

Re: Worm tracks

I run a fab shop in Montana. We had a lot of problems with Lincoln elite 71 .045 wire. We had to do a pretty good job of weld prep to get away from the worm tracks. When we got on thicker material it really helped to preheat just enough to get the moisture out of the steel. My Brother runs another welding shop up here. He swithched from the Lincoln wire to Triple 7 made by Hobart. He works on a lot of old equipment, said he could weld over almost anything with out getting worm tracks.
I bought a roll of the triple 7 and tried it out. What a difference it made. We work with all new steel in my shop and now we do very little weld prep. This triple 7 wire is amazing. Production has almost doubled getting rid of the Elite 71. I changed out a year ago and never looked back. I have always been a Lincoln guy thats all I would buy. Still do except for the Dual shield wire. If it is not a high production setting why don't you get rid of the wire and just weld it up with some good old fashion stick?
Less things to worry about, no gas.

Trapper

Re: Worm tracks

Originally Posted by tapwelder

How could moisture be an issue flux cored wire? Does it wick through the metal? Surly it cannot travel any appreciable distance through the end?

Try clipping off 3 feet of wire before welding.

Are you wiping/cleaning it as it comes off the reel?

Does the flux have a shel life?

The first time I used dual shield I noticed how quiet it ran and how noticeable it was when millscale was hit. Just a suttle but noticeable disruption. I was surprised since it runs so hot.

water molecules are much smaller than the size of the seam, for seamed sheath flux-cored wires. They can easily make their way into the flux, as many have seen.

Re: Worm tracks

How could moisture be an issue flux cored wire? Does it wick through the metal? Surly it cannot travel any appreciable distance through the end?

Try clipping off 3 feet of wire before welding.

Are you wiping/cleaning it as it comes off the reel?

Does the flux have a shel life?

The first time I used dual shield I noticed how quiet it ran and how noticeable it was when millscale was hit. Just a suttle but noticeable disruption. I was surprised since it runs so hot.

Re: Worm tracks

Originally Posted by ArcTan

Any progress or improvements in the past year?

Last time I used it it worked fine. I have no good explanation. I usually weld outdoors. I live where I'm quite sheltered from wind, it is breezy on a day it's howling elsewhere. I set up plywood to shield from wind. One day good, another day not good.

Cranking up gas volume, long stick out seem to help. They recommend 5/8 through 3/4, I have better luck with 1".

Re: Worm tracks

Any progress or improvements in the past year?

Re: Worm tracks

I ran a lot of dual shield wire on construction and in shipyards and ran self shielded wire as well and still do to this day. You can get them work tracks in both types of wire and as long as they aint real deep it isn't a problem. Most of em are only 1/32 inch deep and aren't inside the weld at all. What I found works for me is either turn up your wire speed a bit or urn the voltage down a bit. It works for me anyway, maybe it will work for you as well Good Luck

Re: Worm tracks

Use that sh!tty wire and build you a wire baking oven .

Re: Worm tracks

Originally Posted by Oscar

No, it may not be the answer to your problem. But the percentage of CO2 does play a part as my empirical findings and livefast1's findings as well. If you look at the literature for your wire from Lincoln, it specifies only mixed gas, not straight 100% CO2. You can, of course, try it but there is no guarantee it will or will not have positive effects. At this point you either have to accept your spool of wire has indeed picked up moisture that you are probably unable to bake out, or the culprit t your issue has not been found. Remember, it's always the thing you don't think about [being an issue].

Thank you for all your effort. At present I surrender. This stuff is too fussy. It seems each possible fix is a few hundred dollars, with no odds it'll help. I will try in an enclosed building with little or no breeze. Being honest, I doubt that was the source of trouble.

Only time MIG behaved this way is when I forgot to turn gas on.

Re: Worm tracks

Originally Posted by Willie B

Co2? It's that simple?

No, it may not be the answer to your problem. But the percentage of CO2 does play a part as my empirical findings and livefast1's findings as well. If you look at the literature for your wire from Lincoln, it specifies only mixed gas, not straight 100% CO2. You can, of course, try it but there is no guarantee it will or will not have positive effects. At this point you either have to accept your spool of wire has indeed picked up moisture that you are probably unable to bake out, or the culprit t your issue has not been found. Remember, it's always the thing you don't think about [being an issue].

Re: Worm tracks

Co2? It's that simple?

Re: Worm tracks

Originally Posted by Oscar

Thanks for confirming my testing/findings.

Yes sir, that is our experience at least. I believe the argon causes gas entrapment but that's just speculation on my end.

Re: Worm tracks

Originally Posted by livefast1

We mitigated all of our dual shield worm tracking issues running ESAB wire by switching to 100% CO2. Immediate difference. And that ESAB wire runs beautifully in all positions.

Thanks for confirming my testing/findings.

Re: Worm tracks

We mitigated all of our dual shield worm tracking issues running ESAB wire by switching to 100% CO2. Immediate difference. And that ESAB wire runs beautifully in all positions.

Re: Worm tracks

You can get porosity on dual shield with too much gas, also.