Harbor Freight Flux Core Weld Strength Testing: Pt 3

hello folks I'm out here in the garage again and I'm getting ready to do yet another round of testing with the Harbor Freight flux core welder now this is their cheapest wire feed welder this is the one that costs around a hundred to one hundred and thirty dollars it used to be called a ninety amp flux core welder now it's called a 125 amp welder far as I know it's the same welder they have the same specs list they're both rated for 90 amp output at like 17 volts for 20 percent duty cycle so they both have that same actual rated output of 90 amps but the newer version that they call 125 amp version they're just using the theoretical max output as the spec that they put on the box instead of the 90 amp rated output that they used to put on the box now for part three it's not gonna be it's gonna be somewhat of a continuation of my previous testing but it's actually going to be a little bit more so start from scratch now I know this Walther is is you know it's popular they a lot of people purchase this Walther a lot of people use it so I mean you know I know that you know anytime you talk about the capabilities of a welder like this there's gonna be you know people that say I you know mine was better mine was worse whatever but I just want to give you know as accurate of a representation as possible of what this Walther can do and I'm not trying to knock the welder or anybody that buys it anybody that uses it anything like that I really do just want to you know just just do testing and just see what the capabilities of this Walther are and so for this round of testing I'm actually going to get maybe just a tiny bit more scientific about it I'm going to weld up different thicknesses of material and I'm actually going to cut an etch to see what kind of penetration I'm getting I made still do some some Bend tests and brake tests that kind of thing but I'm going to test different thicknesses of wire you know I'm just really going to try and see what I can get out of this machine what this machine can do and another big reason that this part is going to be quite a bit different is because my machine and you can see see it sitting here it really did not like to run Oh 35 wire in the first video I did I think I might have mentioned it but definitely in the last video part two I mentioned that it just really did not run Oh thirty-five wire very well and I did have somebody mentioned to me that they only run over 35 in theirs it runs great theirs has far and away more output power than what you know I was representing in the in the video and you know it's a 120 volt AC output welder so you know my expectations for it weren't you know completely and totally missed from the performance that I was getting so it didn't immediately occur to me that there was anything wrong with it but they're pretty convinced that there was something wrong with it and I don't want to you know show testing and show results that people are going to use as a purchase decision based on a potentially defective machine now unfortunately since this welder only has a 90 day warranty mine was well past the return date so what I did is I actually went out and I bought another one so for all the testing today I'm going to be using this machine the new machine because I don't want to take a chance on spreading information that people are assuming is indicative of the machine and have it just unfortunately be based on a defective machine in part two you had seen that this welder my initial machine was model number six three five eight three and when I went to the store they had multiples of both different model numbers on the shelf so they had a bunch of this model number on the Shelf and this is actually a slightly different model number and they had a bunch of these on the Shelf as well the box on the outside looks exactly the same the only difference on the box outside is the model number and if you can read it there this one is six three five eight two now the surprising thing to me was that there was actually quite a few differences on the machine itself now the spool system that holds the wire spool inside here is slightly different I don't know that it's better or worse but it is slightly different there's also a couple of extra stickers inside this machine showing how to load the wire the graphics on the front are slightly different this one actually says flux 125 versus this one just saying flux welder and the over temp light is slightly different you know it mostly seems to be cosmetic stuff however the big difference is actually the gun itself now this is the gun on the new the new one that I just got and it is quite a bit different it's quite a bit larger the trigger is quite a bit different compared to the previous one I got which is this one here so again this is the gun that is on the model number that ends in 83 and this is the one on the model number that ends in 82 I don't know if one or the other is more recent or better or worse or if they're just coming from different suppliers but I just wanted to point out that there are there are actually some at the very least you know cosmetic differences between the two but either way I pretty much got this one set up I have a roll of othor t5 Lincoln and r2 11 wire in here right now that's what I'm going to start the testing with just because you know I want to start right out with something that will pretty quickly give me an idea if this machine is running just far different than the older machine so if this machine is able to run the O 35 wire a lot better seems like it's putting out a lot more heat and I'm able to get a puddle going a lot quicker and stuff like that that'll pretty quickly tell me that this machine is doing a lot better than the old one but like I said either way I'm going to weld some different thickness materials I'm gonna cut an Etch check the penetration I'm also going to hook up some meters on this machine and I'm going to check and see what is the actual voltage and amperage that we can get out of this machine and then from the cutting tests we'll see how that translates into actual penetration performance on different materials so hopefully in this video we'll get to find out whether you know the performance is pretty much the same and you know it just takes some tweaking it's an dialing in to get the best results and those results are going to be maybe consistent with what I've been getting so far or maybe we'll find out that there really was something wrong with this machine maybe it'll turn out that this machine just you know has far more power welds better smoother just gets way better results and in that case you know maybe this machine just has a problem with it and needs to be put down so I'll start getting a few things set up and get some joints welded out and we'll see how it does all right so I did a little bit of testing to get things dialed in before I welded up this joint and just observations so far I don't think this new welder has any more power than the old one or at least certainly nothing substantial the one big thing I did being different is that I think the reason on the other welder why I couldn't turn the feed speed up very far at all before it started having issues is because I think that the knob speed isn't cut isn't calibrated the same as the new one on the old Wilder with Oh 35 wire if I turned the feed speed up above about - it would just sputter and pop and it just ran terribly you could tell that the arc would go out and the wire which is GM into the metal and try and push the gun away and then it would it would light again and it would sputter and it just basically wouldn't run it all with a 35 wire above about a two wire feed speed if I turn it down to like a 1 you know maybe one one-and-a-half it would run okay but the material would just pile up on the top and it was just running super cold and it just you know it didn't run very well at all so I found that putting a no 30 wire in it and turning the wire feed speed up a lot more had it run a lot smoother and and that was the bulk of the welds that I tested were set up that way with a new welder I put a 35 wire in it and I just cranked it to the max right off the bat put it right to 10 tried welding with it and it was stuttering a little you know the arc was going out a little bit it was running about the way the other welder did when set to 2 on the wire feed speed so I turned it back to about 9 and then it ran really smooth and again it ran about the way the other welder did on about a 1 or a 1 and a half so I think the the wire feed speed knob was just just way off on the first one or you know just all of the adjustment was between about 0 & 2 but either way I will just join out a couple different ways all with a 35 wire first I did Oh 35 wire maxed-out and then I did one joint kind of fast and then just to basically stay right at the leading edge of the puddle and not let things build up too much and then I did another joint going pretty slow but still with the welder set to max I was taking notes and scribble and stuff here but this was done on the max setting running slow with a 35 wire and you can see just just piling up big time you know just just a majorly crowned weld big huge valleys on the toes at either side and those valleys at the toes are going to be you know it's it's almost like having a crack already there it's basically a place for a crack to start you don't want those big valleys like that but either way you know it's not laying down flat big crown high crown weld now with that setting still Oh 35 next if I just went a little faster just kept the wire right at the leading edge of the puddle it ended up with a lot smaller weld much smaller profile but still just super crowned up just a just a really tall crowned B so then what I did and I'm kind of smearing it a little bit but I actually turned the welder down to speed six and ran slow and you can see kind of a similar thing here but not quite as crowned of a profile still you know still scoop valleys on the either on the toes top and bottom still a pretty darn high crowned bead you'd want to see it laying a lot flatter but it did lay in quite a bit flatter with the speed set to six just so you know this is 3/16 material here and then finally with the speed there with the wire feed speed still set to six I ran a little faster and again just trying to keep that wire right at the front edge of the puddle this little ball and this load bump at the end was just because I was running over attack but again you can see still just a really high crowned profile and you can even see this lag still kind of stuck down the toes cuz it's just a big V there one reason I used this big t joint like this is because for the last video I just had tiny little coupons and I actually arranged them like kind of corner to corner because that's you know where you're you're trying to put the heat into basically the edge of both pieces honestly that's kind of a best-case scenario for this I wanted to see a little bit more real world what will it do on 3/16 material so this is just 3/8 inch flat bar 3/16 material arranged into a tee joint so I'll get these all cut matched and we'll see what kind of actual penetration we got there all right I got the joints cut niched and I'll give you a look at them first we'll take a look at the that was run with the max wire feed speed and running pretty fast and that's this one right here and you can see there's not a ton of penetration but there is some there's a little bit of penetration on the bottom here it did go all the way into the root and there's a little bit on this this top joint here so even though this weld is a big ground you know it's it's not a great looking weld but there was at least some penetration some tie-in and I think that just goes to the fact that you know I was trying to stay ahead of the puddle so that that arc was able to you know drive right down into the root you know it's kind of hard to see now that I've scratched it up but right there there is a tiny little hole you know down at the very root you know I might find if I cut this in a couple other places that there are some points where it doesn't quite get all the way down into the root and then this was with the setting set at 6 and then it says fast travel speed but obviously I didn't go quite as fast as I did here so I didn't stay quite as well ahead of the puddle it did end up with a larger bead but you can see not nearly as much of just like a round crowned bead it did lay in a little bit flatter so I think that if I went just even a bit faster yet on this one I might have gotten down into that root a little bit better but it maybe not - because you know it was set a lot lower but on this one you can see almost no penetration maybe just the tiniest bit right there but right here it's pretty much just laying against the metal and the entire base is just laying against the metal so if you're going fast you don't necessarily get a better looking weld with it maxed but you do get you know what least appears to be just a tiny bit better penetration although again you know clearly I was going a little bit faster on this on this side now here's the to where I went slower and on this side is you have the side where I ran at max on this side where I ran at number six on the wire feed speed and it did run a little bit smoother on a wire feed speed of six but you can see I wasn't getting quite as much heat out of it now on this side with it run at max only run slow you can see that same just really tall bead profile only the difference here is that not even close to getting down into that root and maybe a little bit of tying on this top side here but very little down at the base here just you know really hardly any tie-in down here and on this side where I was running it a feat of 7 and running slow honestly other than just a very slightly flatter bead profile hardly any difference between these two you know neither one of these is gonna be a super strong weld I'm sure either one of these would break as easily as just about anything I've broken if I were to bend it you always want there to be a radius in things so you know anytime you have a sharp 90-degree edge that's a spot where a crack can start so you know I mean it may hold okay for a lot of situations but you know if it's in a you know an application where there's gonna be a lot of stresses a lot of back-and-forth loads over time this this sharp edge right here is where a crack could start a lot more easily than if this weld you know kind of just went ran straight across and didn't give you this this sharp valley you know so again this one gave must gave us the most penetration but it's still a not a great weld I didn't cut an edge any of the welds with the other welder but just based on how they broke and how they came apart I'm not seeing hardly any difference with this welder in terms of the amount of performance that I'm getting out at versus out of it versus what I would expect so I would say ultimate performance wise they're probably pretty similar so anyway that's how it did with O 35 wire I'll go ahead and switch to O 30 wire now and I'm gonna set up another t joint and weld out four little sections just like I did on this one and just see how the penetration compares alright so I have another joint set up pretty similar to the way I did the last one this time I used a thirty wire I did the same kind of thing where I would run fast and slow travel speed one time using the wire feed speed set at max and once using the wire feed speed set at seven on this one out with the O 35 wire it was set at about about six six and a half that's when I had it set at seven this was with it maxed and running slow travel speed this was with it set at seven and running a fast travel speed and on this side this was with it maxed and running a fast travel speed and this was with it set at seven and running a pretty slow travel speed so I'll get this one cut next as well and we'll see how it did with the O 30 wire alright so now I have the two of the cut an itch that we're done with a 30 wire first I have the one that was run fast on this side I have the one that was set at the max wire feed speed of 10 and on this side it was set at 7 and honestly neither one really got very much penetration this side you can see maybe it's just a little bit right there on this side can you view a little bit down towards the bottom you know just a little bit on this side but really not very much either way on both sides we have areas of lack of fusion and neither side got right down into the root and pretty much the same story with the slow travel speed on this side we have it with the setting of 7 on this side we have a setting of max wire feed speed and you can see really the only difference on this one is that on the setting of 7 you have a little bit less crown'd of a bead it went in late a lot flatter you have a lot less of those big deep valleys here neither one of them got quite all the way into the root and both of them have you know just very minimal penetration and just as a reminder with o 35 wire you know this was the best joint we got to wear just the teeny little bit of tie ins and again just these this really high crown with these these deep valleys at the toes where you know it just gives it a place for a crack to start so so even with a 35 wire wire feed speed set to the max just very very little penetration from this welder on 3/16 material now all of this welding was done with a very little preheat the only preheating that was involved was just the fact that the part heated up a little bit just because I kept doing the welds but I didn't do them all back-to-back I let at least a couple minutes passed between each one so that the the part wouldn't just get scalding hot because then otherwise you know the last couple welds would seem to have a lot more penetration in the first couple just because they were going into so much hotter over part but either way Oh 30 oh 35 different travel speeds different wire feed speeds these are the best results I got now I will move on and test some 8-inch material just see what kind of penetration I get on that and I'm also gonna test another welder just to show some point of comparison but I did test the output of this machine it does hit the specs that it claims and show the readings on the screen here that I was able to get I did these tests with a 35 wire first I tested with the machine just absolutely maxed out I actually got over what they say the maximum amperage output is it was it was showing close to like 140 amps the voltage was pretty low at only about 15 bouncing around to maybe as high as 16 volts that's pretty good now if I turn the wire feed speed down just a little bit to where it wasn't stuttering and and popping and stuff cuz it with that wire feed speed maxed on Ho 35 wire it does start to stutter a little bit it doesn't it doesn't run very smooth if I turn the wire feed speed down just a little bit to about seven or so with the O 35 wire that's where I was getting almost exactly the max rated amperage of about 120 125 amps and the voltage came right up and it was running like 17 volts so voltage and amperage within spec it's definitely putting out what it should again this is the new machine and so these results are all with that machine putting out what it says it can do and then some in fact just bear in mind this weld was actually with the machine putting out about a hundred and forty amps and about sixteen volts but one of the reasons why you're just you just get such you know crowned beads such minimal penetration such poor power output you know considering your pudding you know 140 amps into this part at at those voltages you would think you'd get a lot better results and I think it's just the AC output that's really holding it back because you have alternating current and you have the voltage you know cycling back between positive and negative you know 60 times a second basically half of the time the voltage is the opposite of the polarity of that flux core prefers to run at so that just really limits your output so basically despite the fact that this welder is actually putting out even more than what it's rated for you're still not gonna get as much power and penetration out of it as you would a DC welder that was running you know 120 540 amps so just bear in mind that is one thing that is affecting the output of this beyond just the rating because that you know as I showed there the machine is putting out a door above the rated capacity all right so just as a comparison here is a joint I welded up with a different welder now it's the dual voltage machine I had it running on 120 volts and I had to output adjusted to give me 16 and a half volts at about 130 to 140 amps pretty close to what I was getting out of the Harbor Freight machine maxed out you know it's as close to apples-to-apples as I can get in terms of the output of the Harbor Freight machine compared to a similar output in another machine the difference being that the other machine was running DC electrode negative which is what flux core it runs better on and just to give you a dip an idea of just how much difference that makes here is the joint and you can see very very flat you know the joint profile laid in there nice and flat you don't have though that big ground up weld with the big V's and valleys on the sides just went a lot smoother or less spatter it just lays in there so much nicer when you have DC output and in terms of penetration you can see quite a bit of penetration on the bottom plenty of penetration on this upright portion got all the way down into the root you know if you kind of draw a line there it's well down into that the root of that joint so again you know different welder running basically the same total output but it is DC output versus the AC output that you get with the Harbor Freight machine all right one final comparison and then we'll move on now I did another joint here with yet a third welder just in case you were thinking oh well he used a dual voltage machine it's way more expensive or whatever I did this with one of the least expensive DC capable welders out there and this machine is actually rated at it says an 80 amp rated 90 amp max so this walter is putting out a lot less total amperage than the Harbor Freight machine but it is a DC output and so you can see once again even with the lower output a very flat bead profile I mean just super flat laid in there nice and smooth but you can see here even with only 90 amps of output max we still are doing better than the Harbor Freight welder not as much as the other machine but again this Buena tis only giving 90 amps of output with 90 amps of DC we get a nice flat profile without those valleys at the toes that you know be a spot where a crack could start again it does have a tiny little hole down at the root but good penetration along both sides and again compared to the very best from the Harbor Freight welder you know where the Harbor Freight Walter was putting out a hundred and forty amps you know you can see just the just the really flat versus the high crown bead you know there was some penetration on the the weld from the Harbor Freight welder but really no more than there was here maybe you know maybe even a little bit less in some spots and it's a smaller weld overall you know if you take the distance from here to here you know you have a lot longer well Lake size here on this on this weld you know despite not having huge areas with no tie-in you know again just the fact that this is an AC output is really really holding it back because you know we are getting 140 amps output at this weld and it just really doesn't it doesn't seem to show it with the amount of performance you get and because I'm sure people will ask that last weld was done with this welder it's the Century FC 90 I just picked it up that was literally the first weld I made with it and I picked this up at Home Depot I've been wanting to review it for a while just because like I said it is one of the least expensive DC output flux core welders that that I could find so I'll probably be doing some more testing with this in the future and maybe do a review on it but either way that's the water I used for that last test and it has what they call an 80 amp rated output with a 30 percent duty cycle and a max of 90 amps and they don't give the duty cycle on for at 90 all right so now I weld the T joint on some 8-inch material with the Harbor Freight flux core welder and I went ahead and cut niched it and let's take a look at what we got here so I actually welded this side first and then I just unclamp the part spun it around and then welded the other side I did not let it cool at all so this side was done with the part already heated up from having welded that side so on this side you can see very very little penetration here but the line isn't perfectly straight across it's got a little bit of a belly to it so I think it is tied in on the base just not a whole lot but I don't see like a major lack of fusion there and then on this vertical member you know it is tied in a pretty decent now there still is a little bit of a spot right here at the very root of the joint that I'm not positive is tied in real well yeah I guess if I look at it from there I can see there is a there is a tiny bit of a hole there so not quite all the way into the root of the joint but definitely tied in so on the non pre-heated part this is what we got then I moved over to the other side and it did go in a lot better on that side you can see not quite as much crown to the weld these ones here they're they're tied in right to the toes and there's no no right angles going on there and on this one much more noticeable penetration down here on the bottom some definite penetration here on the side and now this one does seem does seem like it went all the way into that root again this is eighth inch material with the Machine maxed out non preheated part and then a part that was warm from the first world going in all right and just so we can get kind of an apples-to-apples comparison with the testing I did with the other welder I went ahead and welded up a small joint of 3/16 material and I'm gonna go ahead and bend it just like I did the other ones and I see how it goes again welded up with the new Harbor Freight welder Oh 35 wire maxed out all right and this thing is still pretty hot from welding I actually didn't really let it cool you can see it actually did about as well as the one that I preheated with the other welder you can see it was just starting to kind of Bend the material over a little bit even on this side it did Bend a little bit but if you look in here you can see pretty much the same story we saw before on this end you can see just a huge area where there's no tie in at all you can see just kind of a shiny bottom of the weld where there was a spot where it's just completely flat because it was just sitting on the base metal and didn't really tie in at all and again over here at the end you can see a line right there where you know there was a spot where there was no tie in you know down the route just just along the end so maybe just a tiny bit better than we got with the other welder without preheating but not a huge difference and now keep in mind it's not really that surprising when a weld breaks when bent in that direction you know compressing that weld like that you know it's kind of the worst case scenario for an inside corner joint it's stronger in the other direction I just spent the other ones that way to highlight the differences between the different methods like you saw before weather is you know pretty heating or not or multipass or whatever so really I just wanted to do this for you know as close to an apples-to-apples comparison with the old welder as I could and you can see maybe there's a tiny bit better on this welder running Oh 35 wire and just maxed out versus the other welder which was running Oh 30 wire and you know as hot as I could get it to run obviously you know this welder isn't drastically more powerful than the other one I don't think there was any you know defect with the first Harbor Freight welder I had that was causing it to have you know just massively low output or anything like that I do think that there might have been something odd going on with that wire speed adjustment just because you know it did get too fast for a 35 wire you know just hardly turned up at all and even with Oh 30 wire I couldn't turn it up as high as this one on the feed speed before it started having issues but having said that I don't think that was because the output was low I think that was just because the knob was giving me more wire feed speed for a given setting with the first welder so I don't think that it was actually limiting output I think it was just making it harder to set having said that of the two I do think this is the better welder the second one the gun itself is a little bit larger it has a higher amperage rating number on it it says it's a 200 amp gun the other one says 150 amps I don't really think either one of them would be a problem in that respect but I do think that the cable on this one is a little bit better really hardly any different at all but this one just seems like it's a little bit more flexible whereas this wrap on the outside almost seemed like shrink wrap that was shrunk tight around the other one so it made it a little bit less flexible and also the fan on this one is a lot quieter it's a lot smoother fan you know it really doesn't cause a lot of vibration or anything whereas with the other machine the fan actually caused a ton of vibration I don't think it was balanced very well and the whole machine rattled while it was running so that was kind of annoying and this one doesn't do that at all the fans really smooth so again overall I do think this is the better machine but I think you know output wise no major difference between the two and honestly just that issue with not being able to turn the wire feed speed up at all just made me question the first machine enough that I thought you know what I'm gonna get a second one just to be sure but to be perfectly honest I didn't really expect the drastic difference in the power just because the simple fact is it's 120 volt machine with AC output so I mean there's just going to be limitations to that now that doesn't make it a bad welder it's a very simple design I mean just just a transformer with a content that pulls in to initiate the welding current you know very simple machine probably pretty robust probably you know probably pretty durable hold up pretty well over time you know you sure it's low-cost but there's not a lot to it so there's not really a lot to go wrong and also in all my welding not that I ever did just a one continuous really long run but there was a lot of times where you know I was just putting pass after pass after pass in on different pieces with only enough time to you know grab the wire wheel wire off the the slag and then put more passes down you know what I was doing that for a little while and I never hit over temp the machine never acted up or anything so again I know it's probably a pretty durable welder I can understand why people like it it's inexpensive you know it's reliable it's durable but now the simple fact is the output is limited just due to the fact that 120 volts with AC output and you know the AC output I think is the big killer on this one and you know so that's really all I wanted to get across in this video is just what the capabilities of this machine are what the limitations of it are and what you can expect to get out of it if you do want to pick one up I think for 8-inch and under material it does fine on three sixteenths material for certain joint configurations you know or if you can do multi pass that kind of thing I think it's you can do okay you know but just bear in mind you're really not gonna get a ton of penetration on 3/16 now there are people who have modified these machines to actually make them DC output and it's really just a matter of ordering some components online you can get things from you know eBay and digit key and that kind of thing and really you just need to put a rectifier circuit in that is capable of the amperage output that this machine can do now if you're comfortable doing something like that or taking a project like that on and you already have one of these welders it might not be a bad option to look into now in terms of buying one of these welders with the intention of doing that maybe a little bit less value in doing that because you know you're gonna buy it you have to buy the welder factored in that cost and factored in ordering the components tearing a thing apart doing it yourself and you know you had to weigh that versus you know just buying a little bit more expensive machine but either way I think that's gonna do it for now for this video I did have some other ideas for stuff I was kind of thinking I would try but since this welder is essentially putting out about the same amount of power as the other one there's not a lot of reason to you know keep belaboring the point - you know to see if it'll do better than the last one but I still have the welder in fact two of them now so if there is any specific project or specific type of joint or specific thickness or anything that you want to see with this welder you know see me try and see what kind of results I can get out of it just post it up down below and if I if I can I'll do it but for now hopefully you know you got something out of this video hopefully it was helpful to somebody that's considering this machine or you know kind of had questions about how my last machine was running since it you know it wouldn't run Oh 35 very well and again I think like I said I think it mostly came down to just that odd adjustment ratio with the wire feed speed where it just seemed like that adjustment which just really stacked up down towards the bottom and also I kind of almost suspected that the liner in the gun was maybe just partly kinked or something to wear with the larger wire it was causing you know feed irregularities or something like that I don't know that that was for sure the thing but but it could've been something like that like I said you know this machine maxed out with a 35 wire didn't run that much different than the other machine did at about a setting of 2 or so with Oh 35 wire but anyway that does it for now if you have any questions post them up down below and as always thank you for watching take care

Channel: bigtb1717

Views: 35,243

Rating: 4.7297297 out of 5

Keywords: hf 90a flux core, cut and etch, weld strength testing, harbor freight, hf 125 flux core, hf 90 flux core, harbor freight 125 welder, harbor freight 90 welder, ac vs dc flux core, ac output flux core welder, dc output flux core welder

Id: tvc3j6r4-WY

Length: 33min 44sec (2024 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 06 2019