MIG Welding 101 Different Machines, Set Up's and Techniques / America's Top Trails Part 2

You can't fish without tackle, you can't cook without a flame and you certainly can't build s 64 by fours without our favorite tool. No, not Ian. We're talking about a welder today on extreme mig 101. From proper shielding gas to wire to the right set ups. Then we'll bring you two more of America's Top trails. One even has the presidential seal of approval.

Now, there is no tool in the extreme shop that gets more miles put on it than the good old mig welder for good reason. Pretty much everything we bring in here. We're going to cut it up and do some welding on it, whether it's put a roll cage in it, bumpers, rock sliders or even just to change the frame. Now, a mig welder is a great way to attach two pieces of metal together. It's sometimes easier than bolting them. Then once you figure out how to set up, make water correctly, the job is very easy and that's what we're gonna do today. Mi welders come in all different shapes and sizes and all the colors of the rainbow, but we're going to focus on the 220 volt mig welder. We're gonna take you step by step through the procedures of setting one up correctly, using it safely and some little tips and tricks to make welding a lot easier. Now, the first thing we want to do is have a look inside,

pull the side panel off any mig welder and you'll see the guts of the machine. Now, although it looks pretty complicated, it really isn't. What's happening is we're taking ac power in through the power cord and bringing it over here to the main power switch. When you turn the switch on, the power is then diverted down this large power supply right here. Now, the power supply is there to boost the amperage of the input voltage. And that's very similar to a transistor for your electronics. Guys. A transistor takes an input voltage and uses a secondary voltage applied to another terminal to boost the

age output.

And that's basically a simple way to describe how a welder works. We're taking 30 amps worth of input ac power and boosting it up to over 255 amps of output power. Now that 255 amps travels down a metal wire inside the liner of this gun and then out the tip and is all energized right at the end of the mig welding wire as it touches the metal that the grounding clamp is attached to. Now, when that metal touches

the other piece of metal, it creates an arc. The big blue spark you see when you're welding, that's an electrical arc, the heat from that electrical arc actually melts the metal, the metal then melts and then it is joined back together with the aid of the filler wire that you're feeding out of the machine. That's why mig welding falls underneath the larger umbrella of an arc welding type of welder. And this is a shielded metal arc welding device. Now, when you get your welder for the first time, the first thing you have to do is set it up with a brand new roll of wire.

Big welding wire comes in a couple of different materials and a bunch of different thicknesses. Now, we're going to focus on solid steel wire because we have a bottle of shielding gas on the back of our mig welder. Now, inside the door, you'll see a panel that breaks down typical voltage setups. And right here we have the four most popular sizes of mig welding wire. We have 0 25 0 30 0 35 and 0 45. Now, the 0 25 you're really only going to see that used in maybe a body shop or a very light fab shop. Were you doing something like patching

defender where you don't need a lot of heat input? The 0 45? Well, that's your serious fab usually used on construction sites where you're working on 38 to half inch plate all the time and you need a lot of voltage. Now, we like to dance right in the middle 0 30. We run that through our tubing, maybe our roll cages, maybe some 316 plate 0 35 that's used for heavier things like axle housings or maybe differential housings, maybe welding on that inner c where you need that extra voltage or AMS.

Now we have two different types of wire that we use a lot and we've, I've tried a bunch for 0 30. I like the

esop,

er, 70 S dash six seems to handle really well in the overhead position and doesn't have a lot of droop in it. Now, the 0 35 we use

Murex four wire. It does the same works very well. Has very good voltage penetration into that thicker steel. Now, one tip here, a lot of guys forget to do this when they load up their welder for the first time or sometimes

up and back and forth between wire. They'll forget to check their drive rolls. The drive rolls are what pulls the wire off of the spool and feeds it up the liner and there's different size drive rolls depending on which size wire you're gonna use. Every time you swap your wire out, you wanna make sure that the drive roll is stamped for the same size wire. If you want a smaller wire through a larger drive roll in this case 0 30 with an 0 35 drive roll that will actually slip on that drive roll, give you sporadic welding and you'll have a bad weld

with the roll of wire on the spindle, feed it through the drive roll mechanism and into the liner,

adjust your drive rolls to the setting required. In our case a number five

and then run all the wire out to the gun, finish it off with a tip.

And the last step in setting up the mig welder is going to be to choose the appropriate shielding gas. Now, we've talked before about shielding gas but how it's there to protect the molten puddle while you weld as well as promote the initial arc strike. When it comes to welding mild steel, the most popular type of shielding gas is a mix of C two and argon and it's called Argo shield. Now, it comes in two popular mixes a 7525 and a 9010. That means it's got 90% argon in there and 10% CO2. Now the CO2 is there to give you a good penetration into the steel. So much penetration. In fact, a lot of construction guys looking to save money will just run pure CO2 on their mid welder. The downfall is it has a lot of spatter and you end up with a lot of slag and weld berries hanging off your tubing. So when it comes to the welding, that we do. We like to run the 90% Argon and 10% Co2 mix. We get good penetration, good protection for the weld and more importantly, a clean, finished weld

up next. How about this? For a rocky mountain high wheeling at 11,000 ft when Xtreme 4x4 continues.

So you're out in the garage wrenching on your junk all weekend and from inside the house you hear your significant other yell at you. Let's go.

Well, the only decision you have to make then is where you're gonna go. I'll help you out. We have a great selection of America's Top trails. The first one, it's gonna take your breath away.

If not by the scenery. Then certainly by the thin air,

this group of Colorado Wheelers are here to tackle the high alpine trails of Holy Cross City, Colorado.

It's on us. Forest service land located 30 miles south of the ski resort town of Vail.

But your lift ticket up, this part of the rocky mountains could cost you broken parts and a dented ego.

The only way up is an eight mile logging road that takes you to the trailhead at 8500 ft.

This is where most tourists park it for the two hour two leg hike to the top,

but not our buddies from the Colorado K Five Club. Hey, let's quit chat and go four wheeling

on the Holy Cross Trail. You're gonna see everything from just dirt rock road winding through the trees

to gorgeous high alpine views in some of these higher basins.

Most of it is rock. These are the rocky mountains after all

at 10,500 ft is the French Creek water crossing. It looks tame enough,

but the slippery granite leads to some obstacles where long wheelbase and big tires are. The ticket.

You're gonna need a rig that's gonna need at least 33 inch tall tires, lockers, front and rear and a wine.

Nothing like being a turtle on a fence post.

The,

the train out here is very rocky and it turns wet which

of course, limit traction

and of course ground clearance over some of the rocks is a big issue.

I'm a little challenged in that area so it makes a lot of fun for me.

They're all one time drive train,

a lot of chrome

moly

axle shafts, dual transfer cases,

pretty healthy motors

and it makes all this stuff, things that we can walk through easily in lesser equipped vehicles. We'd spend most of the day getting to this site

in these vehicles. It's lunchtime and we're here

at 11,000 ft is the old ghost town of Holy Cross City

built during the 1880 gold rush. A

few empty cabins still remain with bunks and shaker tables intact.

What we're standing on is the original road bed that was laid down to the mining town of Holy Cross City in the 18 hundreds.

And what they did in this marshy spot

is the roadbed, started getting beat down and they couldn't get through it.

So they made what was called a corduroy road.

And what they did is cut these large pole pines around here

and laid them down across the road

so that it created a road bed.

And it turns out it was durable enough for the use of this trail seas that it's still here. Uh Over 100 years later,

it's really tough to, to drive this and not have a sense of history. You know, you think about what it was like for an old miner to be riding a horse or, or coming up here in a wagon

100 and 50 years ago,

come mine gold or silver here.

And, uh, and especially this time of year, we're looking at getting the first real snow

in the next couple of days and these guys are up here in, in feet of snow and terrible conditions

just to, uh, to make their fortune pulling these minerals out of the ground.

After taking in the history,

you could try to take on Cleveland Rock. This would not be a fun place to have to bring parts back into, to fix something broken. I'm not afraid to take

is

your

wife

from the Colorado Rockies? We travel 1100 miles southeast to Hot Springs, Arkansas

and the boyhood home of our 42nd president.

Now, we're not sure if Bill Clinton enjoyed four wheeling. But if he did, he would have loved weekends at super lift off road vehicle park.

This place has it all from mud holes.

Our rock gardens,

the terrain is, is definitely, you know, very mountainous for this part of the world. Hot Springs is actually the country's first national park.

The, the city of Hot Springs, the town of Hot Springs is, you know, is built around the mountains and of course, the, the hot springs. So it's definitely a touristy

place to be. Uh, there's plenty of stuff in town for the wives and kids to do. So.

They're not stuck on the trail if they don't wanna be all day long.

So after you've sent your spouse to town for a hot soap,

you can enjoy any of the 100 trails that make up this 1250 acre property.

We certainly did, but we paid off our CJ A here

along with about eight dozen other scrambler junkies.

The nice thing is all the trails are rated one through five. So even owners of bone stock jeeps can wheel all day while getting a taste of why off roading is one of the greatest family activities on God's green earth.

You sure beats sitting on the couch all weekend watching TV. Get back

today. We're taking an in depth look at Welding Mild steel using our 220 volt mag welder. Now it's all set up, but before we tune it we wanna talk a little bit about safety. Now, the first thing you're gonna wanna get is a good set of mig welding gloves. Now, mig welding gloves are obviously all leather construction, but the backside of the palm has a thick insulation on it to keep you from getting a radiated burn on the back of your hand while you're running the torch, you want, get a good welding jacket. Now, this is a flame resistant cotton jacket. Now, it's a little bit lighter than a full set of leathers, but they will still keep the sparks and slag off of your arms and your skin and keep you from getting burnt. You want to get a good hat or small beanie to wear underneath your welding helmet. The same reason it will keep those sparks from landing on your head and burning you. And if you work underneath your rig a lot and you're working up overhead, go ahead and throw in a set of cheap disposable ear plugs. Now, these will keep the slag from falling down inside your ear, which is where it always seems to land when you're in the worst possible position. Now, welding helmets, there's a lot of different kinds out there price from anywhere from 100 bucks all the way up to $1000 but make sure you get a good auto darkening helmet because that'll help you when you need to tack weld. Now, here at extreme, we often break the rule all the time and you'll see us tack Weld with the helmet up.

Now, the reason we do that is because often we need to tack a piece in place and then right away, talk to you guys at home, but you don't wanna do that. You wanna always have the helmet down when you're tack welding because all of the safety equipment is not just here to keep you from getting burned, it's keeping you from getting a sunburn from the actual arc. It puts out enough UV rays to burn your skin and cause damage to your eyes. So when you're welding at home, make sure you have the helmet down before you attack. Well,

yeah,

do, as we say,

not as we do.

This outfit is also

very slimming.

The chart inside the machine is honestly just a guideline, but it's a good place to start.

0 30 wall on eight inch dom. We'll set the machine at 1930.

There can be a lot of variables just in your set up alone. You can have voltage drop across an extension cord or lower voltage out of the outlet you have in the wall if you want to run a small bead and then adjust your voltage and wire speed as necessary. This can take 10 or 15 tries once you get a good looking weld record the setting and write it down on the inside of the machine.

Now, the differences here are subtle, but it's well worth to tune in your machine like this to get a good looking and strong. Well, now the first one we have on this piece of tubing is the setting right off the panel. You can see it's not bad. It's got good penetration, but it's sitting up just a little bit too high in the middle. It'll actually be a little bit fat if you're doing a tube joint and the 2nd and 3rd 1, we're getting a little bit closer. The weld is starting to flatten out a little bit, but it's still too high for my taste.

Now, on this fourth one, we're still getting closer, but there's just a little too much wire speed in there. The last one is ideally what we want. The weld is wide and flat. It's got good heat penetration of the tube and yet it's not standing up on top of it in any way. Now, the difference between our first weld and our last is only 0.6 of a volt and only 30 on our wire speed. Now, we know that that is the setting for 120 Wdom.

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We're just about finished having our in depth. Look at mid welding mild steel tubing. Now we've already gone ahead and set up our welder and then we've tuned it for a 120 WDM. And now we can look at some tips and tricks on how to weld. One of the most common joints you're gonna find. And that is a notch piece of tube onto a flat piece of tube.

The first step is to lightly sand the tube. This will not only remove impurities from the steel but it will also remove the undercut bevel from the knot.

What makes welding a joint like this difficult has to do with torch position. Unlike a flat plate. When you're working the torch around a tube joint like this, it's very easy to get the head out of position and end up with poor penetration into this second too. Now, a good way to check to see if that's gonna happen is to go ahead and dry, run the torch all the way around the joint without welding. It'll give you an idea if you're gonna hit a spot where you need to stop and reposition the torch before you can keep welding. Now, if you need to do a joint like this in two steps, it's not that big of a deal. Sometimes you just don't have a choice. The object here is to pick a good start and stopping point on a joint like this. A good start point would be right here on the front weld all the way around the side and then stop on the back and then repeat the procedure on the other side of the tube.

You'll end up with a good looking weld a strong weld and you know, it will hold the tube in place because you welded it correctly. What you don't want to do is tack weld the tube together, doing a process that's called stitch welding. That's basically a whole bunch of tack welds stacked on top of each other working your way all around the tube.

A stitch weld might look pretty, but it's not strong because it has poor penetration into the steel.

So there you have it guys spending a little bit of time tuning your welder and then practicing complicated joints will make your welds, not only look better, but it'll make them stronger that way. When you're out on the trail with your cage and you roll your junk, you don't have to worry about dying,

make it home alive. Every time

I welded that to the table.