I also have had some bad results with Hobart rods in the last year. Last fall I bought a 20 pound box of 7014 for a small job and they ran perfect, A few weeks ago I tried welding with them and they wouldn't run worth crap. Up until this last year I have had good results with Hobart rods but I have no idea what they have been doing during the manufacture of their rods this last year.
I have never had a problem with lincoln rods, I won't be buying any Hobart rods until they fix what ever the problem is.

 

Buy LINCOLN , you know what you have then.

 

Need to get a nice rod oven then im gonna buy a couple hundred lbs of excaliber 7018 h4r

 

Which brand Hobart? Their is a retail brand Hobart that you would get say at Tractor Supply and then their is Hobart Brothers that is for industrial users that's available at welding supply stores. I haven't really used much Hobart but from what I have used the Hobart Brothers is better than Hobart retail.

 

Thanks for the clue in. I thought it was me. I bought some 1/8 Hobart 6011 at a local Fleet Farm and it doesn't weld worth a fiddler's f@rt. I really wanted 6010 so will have to head to the LWS.

Tim

 

Lincoln and Hobart both suck about the last 6-8 years.
I've been buying Inweld, Hilco and Esab lately. I haven't had to launch a box through the LWS front window YET !

 

A couple hundred pounds of rods, WOW. All the big shops in my area don't buy that much rod unless they have a big job coming up. I keep a small amount of different rods on hand for small jobs but to keep a couple hundred pounds laying around isn't practical.

In my experience rods laying around for a long period of time usually don't run all that well.

 

build a big enough rod oven and I dont think its a problem at all, at the nuke plant im currently at, They have 1000's of lbs of 3/32 7018 H4R Some of the stuff we get is probably 10yrs old and welds great. Most of that is Hobart commercial or excalibur. This consumer hobart stuff is **** though.

 

We buy by the truckload.Lincoln only for 103 years . Hobart is **** along with Esab.

 

I just bought two 10 pound packs of the Hobart 5/32" 7018 at Tractor Supply this weekend for a job. I've used it before, along with 1/8 and 3/32 with great results. This batch looks the same, flux uniform and smooth. But it doesn't run as nice as before. It may be my machine though, I noticed I had to have my amps a lot higher than normal for all rod sizes.

Over 20 years ago, we tried some Atom Arc 7018. If it wasn't the absolute worst rod I've ever tried to use it was a tie with the radnor junk that one of the guys picked up a couple years ago trying to save me a few dollars... if you tapped the rod too hard to strike an arc all the flux fell off... Anyway, I had a 50 pound can of Esab Atom Arc 8018 at the shop I acquired a couple years ago, so I decided to open it and try it on this project. Being sealed in the metal can (like welding rod SHOULD be), it was still in pristine condition. And I've got to say I like it. It ran as smooth as Excalibur. Beautiful beads. I wouldn't be afraid to try some more of it.

 

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one that has said the hobart rods don't run like they used to. I couldn't figure out if it was the rods, my machine, or me. Knowing others have been having problems makes me feel better. Guess I will have to spend more to get better rods now

 

The local junior college bought several 50 lb boxes of 6010. It was terrible stuff. I'm not exaggerating. This was about 4 yrs. ago. Arc blow city. When welding w/ it, you could see chunks of flux falling off the rod prematurely from the heat.

 

I hate Hobart's 7018AC rod. Lincoln AC rod welds nicer for me.

 

I recently ran out of Excalibur 3/32" 7018's and while waiting for some more to arrive, I finished the job with some Hobart 7018's from TSC as a stopgap measure...never again. The Hobart's from TSC welded... like Jody says....looked like Fido's butt.

 

yes they suck, restrike like ****. I been getting bohler rods or esab atom arc. Much better than linc or hobart.

 

I would drop down to a 3/32 dia rod and run it bout 90 amps. Duty cycle on that buzz box is probably pretty low @ 125 amps. I had one of those lever lock welders once I think it was a Century brand and every time I struck an arc with it, It would jump out of position to a lower amp setting. ...

 

We used to buy Hobart for students to use because consumables are so expensive. We'd hand them Excalibur to weld for tests and they were in love. We had about three pallets of Atom Arc donated by an energy company which ran fine.

All of it got plenty of rod oven time before use.

I suspect a lot of performance issues have to do with different batches of rod, but our Excalibur was always good.