5 Tips To Better Flux-Core Welding

everyone Chad from man crafting again I'm still in my backyard I'm still welding but I I had a thought there's five things that I wanted to share with everybody that helped me well better now I'm not a good welder by any stretch I'm not a professional welder I don't weld for a living there's lots of YouTube videos out there that I've watched that are really good on technique and improving your welding skills but some of the things that I never saw out there that I just kind of came across over time are super simple but they've really improved my overall ability to weld so let me share those with you right after this okay so there's five things that I've used or done to improve my flux core welding and I want to share those with you - the first one super cheap it's like five six bucks a can anti spatter spray anti spatter spray so this spray say that ten times fast anti spatter spray so the anti spatter spray you spray it on the part before you weld and as you're welding flux core welding is extremely messy and it will throw basically molten metal onto your part and if you don't have something like the anti spatter spray on your part you're gonna end up having to grind that stuff off to get a nice smooth clean surface with this you just hit it with a brush or if you hit it with your grinder with a wire cutting sticks to the metal part pretty much any splatter just kind of wipes right away my second tip is it's actually a nozzle it's not a tip but it is a tip I'm giving you a tip so when you buy your welder typically it's going to come with a copper nozzle on it like this and the design is so that when you have it in your welding it's gonna trap gas inside of this nozzle so that when you're doing typical regular MIG welding you have a good amount of gas right there at the weld when you're doing flux core welding it seems like you're doing MIG welding but it's a little bit different and the flux core is what's actually facilitating the weld so all that's needed is this little nozzle and so on my actual gun you can see this is the flux cork nozzle then you have your tip and then your wire coming out so just imagine if you're trying to weld and you have this on you're not gonna see a whole lot that that nozzle actually goes right to the edge of this tip so you can't see your wire that easily on the part it makes it a little bit difficult because if you're looking here I've got more wire out than then I should when I'm welding it's actually going to be about half of that so if you want to be able to see where you're welding having the appropriate nozzle makes a huge difference okay so speaking of nozzles right this stuff right here nozzle gel so it's just this blue gel I think I've also gotten in gray but anyway it's a some kind of a petroleum-based gel and when you dip it on your tip prior to welding it's gonna put a little coating on there and just like the anti spatter spray it's going to prevent junk from building up on your nozzle I still wipe my nozzle off but it makes it much easier to wipe that stuff off tip number four standard in the industry is soapstone and this isn't a soapstone holder and basically it's just a stone if you're trying to mark a piece you can kind of see it almost looks kind of like a waxy coating where you've written it's really difficult to see where you've marked with that now if you look here with the Silver Streak somebody recommended this to me look how much more noticeable that is and even if you're writing through the greasy spatter spray it's still gonna show up where you've written I I find this thing to be indispensable it also allows me to I use a handmade jig or a homemade jig to mark repetitive a lot of this plate with a nut right here in order to get that centered I made a little jig and this pen goes into that jig and gives me a nice round well-defined area for setting up my part too well and the last tip is good lighting just like when you're doing video you want to have good lighting when you're welding I have pretty decent ambient light out here and if I was in the direct Sun it probably even be better but I just have a shaded area a lot of trees so I found it useful to put in a couple of hundred watt bulbs in my fan that sits right above where I well that gives me the ability especially when I'm actually welding to see the part very clearly because as soon as the welding helmet turns on you've got a very dark area to deal with so it's adjustable and you know having that adjusted properly as a smart thing to do so take the time to figure out where that adjustment is so let's recap anti spatter spray number one tip number two have the correct nozzle a gasless nozzle for flux core welding a gas nozzle for mig welding number three nozzle gel use nozzle gel to help keep the tip of your gun and the nozzle on your gun clean number four use Silver Streak by Mark Cal ma RK al use a Silver Streak ten versus a soapstone and last but not least good lighting illuminating your part when you're welding it makes a huge difference so that's it those are my five tips I'm not a professional welder I am an dream novice but between YouTube videos telling me how to get better technique and just a few discoveries on my own or somebody recommending these things to me I've been able to improve my welding substantially just in a few months if you're having difficulty flux core welding if you find you're getting spatter everywhere and it's difficult to clean up use the anti spatter spray if your nozzles getting filled with gunk and it's difficult to clean off use the nozzle gel if you don't find soap stones to be helpful in marking your parts if you find that they're difficult to follow the lines or to define a line using the Silver Streak by Marcal that's an excellent pen for marking on steel parts even if they're greasy and then of course the last thing was good lighting I hope you found this video helpful I was out here welding and I was thinking you know I've been wanting to do a video on this for a while let me just take a break let my welder cool down and share these tips that have made welding just a little bit more enjoyable a little easier for me I hope you find them helpful if you do please like this video if you have any questions please comment if you have any tips that would make me a better welder that I haven't mentioned please mention those in the comment section and lastly if you find the kind of videos that I'm doing helpful or useful or interesting please subscribe I do a lot of different things and I try to group them by subject matter so if you're really in a Yeti stuff and you could care less about welding make sure you subscribe because when my Yeti videos come out you want to make sure you see them if you don't care about yetis and you really like welding stuff then subscribe because I'm gonna be posting videos as I learn as I do projects that have to do with welding anything that has to do with man man crafting you know that's sandblasting that's grinding metalwork woodwork by no means is this exclusive to men man crafting was coined as a joke between me and my best friend when our wives were giving us a hard time for using it Cricut when I'm using my Cricut you know it's it's one of those things you go into Joanne's or Michael's and you buy a Cricut cutter and so sometimes yeah it's a little intimidating I'm a guy I'm probably the only guy in there when you're crafting and you're a guy you don't want it to sound foo-foo you sound manly so we're man crafting I hope you enjoy this videos I hope you're having a great day and thank you for watching my ramblings have a great day [Music] you

Channel: ManCraftingTM

Views: 710,154

Rating: 4.8110662 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, 5 tips, how to, diy, flux core welding, arc, welding, arc welding, mig welding, tig welding, how to improve at welding, backyard welder, mancrafting, how to improve at mig welding, better fluxcore welding, flux core, harbor freight, do it yourself, flux cored, fcaw welding, welding tips, wire welding, flux core welder, beginner welding, how to weld, wire feed welder, how to welding

Id: 26Mfs_nViC0

Length: 8min 43sec (523 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2016