Harbor Freight Flux 125: Pointers for beginners

[Music] as a lot of you guys probably already know I'm not really trying to have a welding specific YouTube channel but as the welder prices at Harbor Freight get lower and lower I'm getting a lot more questions about how to do good weld with the least expensive welders so I figure today I'm gonna take a little bit of time just a little bit of scrap metal and we're gonna try to figure out how to get a good well out of the new Harbor Freight flux 125 check it out my welding setup pretty much never changes I always put whatever I'm welding directly into the vise and I put the ground clamp directly on to the handle no big deal typically I'm gonna run oh three five in one of these welders but since it came with o3o I'm turning the speed up a little bit I normally run it at four but since it's less metal I need to run it faster so I'm running at about five and four a 3/16 steel which is what we're welding on right now I'm gonna run it on max and it's not really going to penetrate if I don't do that so this is the weld straight out of a gun and so it's obviously really dirty and the reason it's dirty is because inside of the wire is flux and what that does is when it burns it creates co2 so it protects the weld but it makes it really dirty I think the first mistake that people make is if they have to make a second pass state as weld right over the top of this and so that just makes it more and more dirty and that contaminates your weld further so typically people are going to take a wire brush and clean this off ain't nobody got time for that so I use this meaty bastard [Music] [Music] so it's pretty clear that this is not TIG I mean the weld could be cleaner but it could also be a hell of a lot worse and we got to remember here this is using the Harbor Freight wire that came with the machine and we're using pretty much the cheapest welder you can get your hands on I think I paid 87 bucks for this one and it is doing the job just fine so let's talk about the finer points of how I got that done so just because this is one of the cheaper welders you're able to buy and you're pretty much doing the cheapest type of welding because you don't need shielding gas it doesn't mean it changes how you approach the weld so I've heard all kinds of different angles you're able to go straight on with the welder are you able to run it at a little bit of an angle overwhelmingly most people say you want to run some angle and you want to pull with the welder now I'm not saying that running straight on and pushing with the welder is wrong it really boils down to what you're comfortable with and what you're able to produce a good weld with but overwhelmingly the most important thing is controlling your puddle so when you start the weld what you do is you kind of hold it steady and you wait to be able to see the molten metal bridge the gap between the two pieces and then when that happens you want to carry that across the whole thing and if you're able to see that that gap is starting to open back up again then you want to concentrate the heat there until you see the gap closed and you want to carry it you want to keep it melted right in between the two pieces of metal and if you're able to do that you're going to be able to get good fusion between the two pieces and you're gonna make a cleaner weld it doesn't matter what kind of weld you're doing the puddle control is the principle behind all of them this right here is called the Phillip weld it's one of the easier welds that you're able to master now there's other welds that are more difficult like for example an outside corner well it's gonna be more difficult to get this down or if you're doing a lap joint it's gonna be a little bit more difficult to do that so let's give that a shot by the way if you're gonna use one of these things definitely wear eye protection because getting these little beads in your eyes really sucks especially because they're super hot anyway [Music] one of the things I don't really want to admit is that I've been telling people for years to just throw away the wire that came with their welder and honestly this is working out pretty well it doesn't look that bad at all so I got to eat my words in there maybe you can use it after all one of the things that's worth noting though is since it is smaller wire I know I told you guys this before but since it's smaller you want to put down roughly the same metal volume so I'm turning it up I normally run it at 4 and I'm running it at 5 one of the biggest problems that people seem to have with a welder like this is that when they're trying to do exhaust tubing since it's pretty thin wall stuff they're burning right through and part of the reason is I think a lot of people are just trying to do butt welds like this and obviously since you're trying to get these two pieces of metal together you're concentrating your heat in the middle the heat doesn't have anywhere to go so it burns right through and once you do that it is really hard to recover from it so what I recommend is at any time you can you want to make it so the two pieces can fit inside of each other so this one's smaller than this one and so that way you focus your heat on this piece of metal and you just occasionally flick bead towards the other piece and what that does is it makes it so you have a consistent bead and it still fuses the two pieces together now you're able to get these couplers at any auto parts store or you're able to get a flaring tool that makes it so you're able to expand out the inside diameter of the pipe and then that way you're able to fit the pieces inside of it [Music] I was really just trying to prove a point the one on the left was the lap joint and the one on the right was the butt joint and I actually didn't burn through but the truth is the one on the right I had to pay way more attention to what I was doing and I had to move as quickly as I could and otherwise it would have burnt right through the tubing and the one on the left is just so much easier and honestly it's so much stronger and I would trust it a hell of a lot more so whenever you have the opportunity you want to definitely have backing so this is the way to go and all else fails just remember keep it on men and you want to throw a wire at it because the higher the speed it actually cools the weld down faster the more metal is going down that direction it seems counterintuitive but that's the way I've had the best luck as much as I would love to just stand here and tell you guys that there's some kind of magic cure that instantly makes you a good welder it's simply not the case honestly the biggest thing is time with the torch and learning to control your puddle and a good start obviously with this welder 3/16 steel is a good sweet spot and that's running it on max on speed 5 with oh three oh it seems to work really well I mean I'm not upset with either of these welds it didn't even run any practice welds it just went for it and the welder didn't complain at all and honestly even with the wire that it came with it's not a bad deal it does the job very well especially for the money that we paid for this thing so learn to control that puddle make sure you have both pieces you could see them belting together and if you can see that you're starting to get some separation why don't you just hang out at that spot maybe flick towards the separation but concentrate that heat and keep it melted because that is where your sweet spots gonna be that's where you're gonna get your best Wells anyway thanks for watching I hope you guys enjoyed the video and thanks always for doing your part to help make this world a strange place if you're following my CNC build right now I'm hoping to have the next video up including the first cuts done on my CNC machine this weekend check it out [Music]

Channel: Strange Garage

Views: 603,397

Rating: 4.9145064 out of 5

Keywords: chicago, electric, flux, 125, harbor, freight, welder, 90, amp, core, wire, feed, vulcan, tig, mig, pro, steel, stainless, aluminum, aluminium, alphatig, lincon, lincoln, miller, hobart, everlast, harbour, argon, helium, arc, fcaw, basics, how, to, weld, stack, of, dimes, issues, problems, dirty

Id: B6UrExvcwaY

Length: 8min 16sec (496 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 14 2018