[BRAD] What's up, guys?
My name is Brad.
Welcome back to another video.
If you're new to this channel, we talk about welding and
fabrication, CNC machining, some Fusion 360 stuff,
and we're gonna dive into some really cool projects.
So if that sounds like fun, hit that subscribe button.
On this week's video, we travel out from Colorado
to Utah to talk with Joel and his crew at Overkill Racing and
Chassis about how to lay down a beautiful open corner MIG weld.
I'm gonna pass you over to Joel, Rodrigo, and Alex Brown.
These three guys are gonna give you the tips and tricks, the
techniques to be able to make this possible for you at home.
So stay tuned, hit that like button,
let's get into it.
[JOEL] One of the most common questions that we get is how
do we make our MIG welds look the way that we do?
What we're gonna do today is we're gonna answer those
questions one by one.
And it's not just a one step solution.
We've got our prep work.
We've got the fit up itself.
We got voltage settings, and there's a couple other
little techniques that you're gonna learn from two of the
best MIG welders that I know.
When it comes to welding in general, there's a lot
of people that feel there's a lot of trade secrets.
When it comes to MIG welding an open corner,
what we're gonna do is pull the layers of that onion back.
We're gonna give you guys all the tips and tricks that
you need so you can weld exactly like Rod and Alex.
All right, guys, so here it is, quarter inch open corner joint
for your social media shots, and you're looking to get
something like this.
We're gonna give you all the tips.
First things first, if you look at this part,
look at how clean it is.
It's not a bunch of mill scale.
It's not all dirty.
Rod, what did you do to actually clean and prep this part?
[RODRIGO] First thing I did was I hit all sides,
I mean every single side, with a DA pad.
And then I took my three-inch Roloc disc with
a Scotch-Brite and cleaned off all these inside edges.
So there's no mill scale, which just leaves a nice clean weld.
[JOEL] Once you actually get ready to weld the part,
so we've got it all prepped up and you got all the mill scale
removed, settings and stuff.
I mean, that's one of the biggest misconceptions.
You know, people are running a real, real thick diameter wire.
We're really only running an.030 diameter wire,
and it's a Lincoln L56 ER70 S-6 wire.
In terms of settings, we're running roughly about
18 volts, 18.5 volts, and just around 200 inches a minute.
And, uh, Alex, I mean, I know you do a lot of
pulse, um, spray work.
If you were to be welding this open corner, compared
to the settings we would use, how much would you change it?
[ALEX BROWN] Um, well, as far as the, the layout of the machine,
it wouldn't be a voltage and a wire speed.
It would be a wire speed and arc length.
So the machine setup's a little different.
The mode of transfer's quite a bit different.
The technique itself is actually pretty similar
to what I do whenever I'm trying to get that real,
uh, nice stack of dimes.
It's a really different process from what I'm used to,
and so I can't speak much to the short arc aspect of it.
But Rod did a really nice job on these.
These look as good as I've ever seen from
anyone, so I'm impressed.
[RODRIGO] So if you look here, you actually see that these open
corners are tic-tacked together.
And the reason I do that is 'cause when you're welding
over it, you don't get these massive lumps that just
make your weld look ugly.
So I start right here, and as I come forward, I'm coming down,
making sure my wire's in the center of that joint.
I come forward a little bit.
I start coming up, and as you come up,
you see this silica form, which is this, like,
brown substance you see here.
And as it forms, you see that it
gets darker.
And as, as soon as you see it gets darker is when you
start your process all over.
So with this Millermatic 252, we are running.030 wire
and 75% argon and 25% CO2 as a shielding gas.
So when I'm welding an eighth-inch open corner
joint, I will be around 16.5 volts and a wire
speed of around 150 to 170.
When I weld a quarter-inch open corner joint, I am
running 18 volts and anywhere between 200 to 220 inches per
minute for the wire speed.
And this is with.030 wire.
[JOEL] So what I'm gonna do here for you is I'm actually gonna
show a visual demonstration, basically what Rod
is talking about.
So here we're gonna use this piece that Rod
welded on the back side.
It's a quarter-inch open corner, like he was talking about.
And what we're gonna be doing here is describing kind of
what he was saying, but actually on the table itself.
So if we depict these lines as being the throat of the weld,
so basically the inside section, and these two lines here being
the toes, which are these edges, these are really what you wanna
focus on if you wanna have that nice, consistent looking weld.
So there's a couple of different ways that you
can go about doing it.
Some people like to do what's called a whip and pause.
So what that is is you're actually just moving the puddle
straight in between the middle of the throat and the toes,
and you're pausing for a second.
And what you're doing is you're letting what's called
the deposition rate fill up the joint with filler wire.
Once it's filled to make that nice, clean-looking bead,
then you pull back or whip, and then you pause again.
So as you pause again, it's going to start
stacking 'em up.
So there's another technique that people like to use,
and that Rod actually used specifically for this weld here.
And it's essentially doing a cursive E.
So what he's doing is he's working his way to the bottom
of that toe and quickly moving his way to the top,
and then pausing just for a brief second at the top,
and then working his way back down to the bottom,
working his way back to the top, and just repeating this all the
way through the entire joint.
And what that's gonna leave you is this real nice,
consistent looking weld profile.
As long as your Es are consistent every single
time, your weld will eventually look like this.
[RODRIGO] Don't be discouraged if you don't get it right away.
[ALEX BROWN] Yeah, I agree with that.
There's, there's no secret.
It's just practice.
[JOEL] Guys, and just remember, this is just a baseline.
The numbers that work best for Rod are gonna
be different from what works best for Alex that are
definitely gonna be different from what works best for me.
So it's one of those that this'll give you a great
foundation, but ultimately, with a little bit of practice,
you'll be able to fine tune your settings so that you
can produce what Rod has been producing this whole time.
Guys, I hope this tip helps.
Thanks for watching.
If you learned anything, hit that like and
subscribe button.
And until next time.