[kermdawg]

I've been prepping some 1" sch.40 steel for a cart for my cutting torch bottles, and in the past I've had a hell of a time getting good, consistant welds on the stuff. I always end up blowing holes in it about halfway through the weld.

I'm thinking 3/32" 6010 at around 50 amps(I got a everlast inverter with a 6010 port). I wanna get good penetration and do it right, not just run a bead across it and call it good. I was thinking a real tight 3/32 gap, more on the 1/16" side of things, single pass, no bevel or land. Probably run half the bead and let it cool off, than the other side.

That sound about right, am I missing anything? Any other tips? Don't wanna do this twice.

[mcoe]

Personal preference here: When I weld small diameter pipe I like to bend the rod to where it looks like ) and then you can start on the back side of the pipe with the pipe between you and the rod. It should be like this: o) Basically you, pipe, and end of rod. This will let you weld half of it without moving around a lot. As the rod burns, the angle will change without you having to move your wrist a whole lot. Practice this before jumping into it though.

[Superiorwelding]

I used to weld 1-1/4" sch 40 pipe all the time with 1/8" 6011. I usually just left a little gap and ran it. This was field welds of hand rails which got the welds ground off and metal finished. Never had a problem with it. I think you are on the right track.
-Jonathan

[Antorcha]

For this: ye must sell your soul to NataS and delve deep into the pit of 6013 electrodes.
They will throw you a clean, pretty bead and do the project justice.

[DylanWelds]

Sounds about Good to me. Run a tight gap 1/16 imo if you're using 3/32 rod I agree with bending the rod to help with angle as you move along the pipe.

[GreinTime]

What is a "6010 port" pray tell? I'm just curious.

--Sam

[AKweldshop]

What is a "6010 port" pray tell? I'm just curious.

--Sam

From the, well, Everlast....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVkTYSHRXrY

[kermdawg]

The lower end everlast machines don't have a dig control on them. Instead, they have a port for cellulose rods (6010/6011) that basically has a hard-wired, preset "dig" setting. You can run 7018 rods on the 6010 port too. LIke I said, it's basically just a preset dig setting. Works pretty good. Obviously doesn't have the adjustment that you would have from a higher end machine but for 350 bucks what do you expect

[GreinTime]

I gotcha I gotcha. I was just thinking, I don't remember having a separate port on my PowerTIG250EX, but I could be crazy haha. I don't know that I'll ever stick weld with mine though.

--Sam

[AKweldshop]

Your 250 has separate adjustable arc force right???

[GreinTime]

Yessir it does. Like I said, I don't know that I'll ever stick weld with it, and I know Braehill didn't since we got the welder Tuesday I think, and I left on Thursday. I suppose I could try it, but I would be a terrible judge of whether it works as designed haha. I think I stick welded when I was 12, and then my dad went on an argon hiatus. I think it was more because my uncle borrowed his DialArc for probably close to 7 years than anything, but who am I to say

--Sam

[coldman]

In my industry, pipes are almost never welded with stick anymore except maybe caps on larger sizes and then mostly spooling in the shop.

But I have been around a long time back in the days when pipes were only stick welded. In those days small bore sched 40 pipe was only welded with 6013, 3/32", small gap and sometimes no prep bevel. Some of the boilermakers would use what they called "broken arc method" which would allowed the puddle to cool a little before re-stablishing the arc. This helped with blow through. We never had any leaks or failures, but in those days our code only required x-ray NDT on 4" and above, not like these days so I can't tell you how it would look on a slide show only that it worked consistantly.

[kermdawg]

What industry are you in? We still run almost everything in stick, cept for stainless (which is tig) and high purity/food grade thinwall stainless(which is usually orbital welded).

We had a mig process approved for the shop for some fab work on large bore pipe, but they had too many problems with it and I think they went back to stick.

6013 for the thin wall huh? I know a guy that would be stoked to hear that I was thinking about going to buy some 6013 this weekend but I said forget it I just ran it with 3/32 6010 at about 55 amps. Ran pretty fast, penetration was fine, and it looked great Blew a couple holes in em, but managed to beat the flux off an 1/8" 6010 rod and use it for filler and kinda stick-tigged it in there. It'll work fine for my little cutting torch cart. Probably would've been alright if I didn't get frustrated and get in a hurry and not let it cool down.

[coldman]

Refrigeration industry - ammonia pipework. In the old days, multi run pipe butts were 6010/11 root passes, fill and cap was all 6013. Don't ask me why 6013 was used instead of low-hy rods, I can only guess because it worked, no ovens required and lower cost rods. Leak test fails were very rare. The guys never complained about the 6013 rods (Satincraft 13) but some complained about the 6010 rod quality (Ferrocraft 11), they wanted 5P rods but the company would not supply them. Small bore pipes were done with the 6013 rods and usually single pass as I mentioned before. The trick here is to get around fast and control heat with arc breaking.
When the code changed, TIG became the most common process and has advantages for us:
- pipes are clean inside after welding, no slag etc
- refrigeration means coldstore panel construction, they don't burn down these days from pipe welding due to low risk tig process. They still burn down but mostly from structural stick welding.

It was determined that if you crank the amps up on a 26 torch (not some poonsey little 17 torch) and get motoring, there is very little time difference with stick after clean up and lead swapping, so most welders don't bother with stick unless they are spooling in the shop or tying into an existing system where oil is dripping out the butt they are trying to weld. 5P fixes this.

I've seen guys come on site with mig and dual shield. There seems to be alot of grinding out involved and tig beats them every time. You can probably tell I am a big fan of tig.