please critique these welds

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I know they are not good, so not looking for an "atta boy", just any insights on how I can improve. The stick welds are 7014, 1/8th inch on a 3/8ths plate, at 130 amps DCEP. I started out rough, ransome that look better in the middle and finished rough. The mig welds are on my HH190, .030 ER70s-6 hobart wire, voltage setting 4, wirespeed setting 50, C25 gas (when I remembered to turn it on, there are 3-4 welds without gas ...embarassing) on 1/8th inch plate. Again, started bad, and seemed to get better, especially on the second coupon. I do see some cratering at the end of the weld beads.interested in any constructive criticism or advice. thanks. Attached ImagesMiller Multimatic 255
Reply:Dude I have seen way worse at school! Not too badOne thing though. When you practicing surfacing make each bead overlap the previous by half. The object is to be able to machine it flat easily.  Getting good at surfacing is important for two reasons. It will help with future weld techniques requiring multipass stringers and it gives you time under the hood.When you master surfacing move on to lap joints and then t joints. And then try open root butt joints.
Reply:Keep in mind when running bead after bead like that that you have to cool the plate fairly often or the excess heat build up will F with you. Really long lengths like that are pretty hard to cool down unless you have a deep drum or trough sink. It also helps to work on running longer beads than those I see with the mig. With a 3" piece ( guessing that's roughly the width of the 1/8" sheet) it's not to hard to run a bead without having to shift your hands. If you go to 6" or longer beads, you will almost always have to set yourself up so that you shift constantly as you do the weld. I see a lot of students who can make really nice short beads, but as soon as they have to shift their hands to run a full bead, their consistency goes all the he11. Also doesn't hurt to work with longer material with stick also. On average you get about 6-8" of weld from a full rod. If you work on a 12" piece on occasion, it forces you to do a restart either in the middle or 3/4 of the way thru. Working on tie ins with both processes isn't a bad idea on occasion,Overall they don't look too bad. The stick it looks like you could slow down a tad. If you are getting significantly more or less weld, adjust your speed accordingly.  You need some work on your consistency. Puddle size varies throughout most of those welds. You mig welds look a bit more consistent in several examples, but you could still use some work on many of them as far as getting those nice smooth even edges. Doing individual beads like you did makes it a lot easier to give feedback on individual beads and point out problems. Running pads ( ie overlapping the beads by 50%.) is usually what we have students go to next after they get individual beads down well. I see 3 or 4 nice mig beads I'd find acceptable enough to move you on to pads with, but I'd prefer to see you do 3 in a row to show you have it down vs just blind luck. Your stick beads are close, but with 7014 you can do much better, so I'd want you to keep working on them. The 4th from the top is probably your best of the stick bunch. If you gave me 3 in a row like that I'd accept them, but only barely. I'd like to see you slow down just a tad and clean up the few hiccups where you changed your consistency here and there on that one..No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! Ronald Reagan
Reply:Thanks both for the feedback. I am not making excuses here, but one thing I am having trouble with is seeing the puddle clearly, to help sort out where the edges are, etc. I use an Auto Arc brand auto darkening helmet, with a 2.0 cheater lens installed.I have it turned down to a shade 9. when arc welding I can see the puddle but am still missing some of the detail, particularly the leading edge. if I use a darker shade, then I can't make out the puddle I just see the arc. When MIG welding it is even harder for me to see and I am kind of guessing where the edges of the puddle are, as i can only see the far back end of the puddle. Do I just have a crappy helmet? all lenses and clear covers are clean.Miller Multimatic 255
Reply:Couple o'things which might help you (if you try a different helmet)1) A new cover lens. Even though washing off all the smoke etc makes your lens look "clean", they apparently get "cooked" from use (UV I suspect), not just "dirty", and loose enough optical clarity to make replacement a virtual necessity. In school, the ones I bought for $1 each at the LWS lasted about one evening. The cheaper ones even less!2) If you use a standard green lens, try a gold one. It will definitely seem "brighter" than the green one, but to me anyway offers a much wider peripheral vision. If 9 is your green shade, you may want to go up to a shade 10 in gold.XMT304 (school)SP125+ (home)HF 4x6 BandsawGood judgement comes from experience and much of that comes from bad judgement.