55 gal drum of flux core

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hey guys.  have anyone of you welded or worked in a shop that runs the 55 gal drums of wire?  the shop i work at is looking into switching over from  60 lb rolls to the drums.  any advice in this would be greatly appritiated.A GRINDER AND SOME PAINT WILL MAKE A WELDER WHAT HE AINT
Reply:Hello rodburner04, the advantages to using the drums is totally based on less downtime for spool changes. I would probably site more disadvantages than advantages unless your facility is a really high-output sort of welding area. First point: you need to be consuming a lot of wire to prevent issues with moisture contamination of wire spools/drums. If your welding regimen doesn't consume those amounts over a relatively short period of time you might be subjecting the drums to moisture pick-up from the humidity in the ambient air. Next item: standard spools roll the wire off of the spool, drums uncoil the wire, wire cast can be much more noticeable when using drums of wire as opposed to using rolls. This can possibly present more challenges with feeding the wire. Additional item: since you are taking the wire from a drum and drawing it through a conduit of one form or another, you will likely need to have specific feeders designed for this purpose. This may entail using feeders with high-torque motors designed to pull a substantially long length of wire from the drum and then push it out to the end of the whip assembly in order to provide consistent and smooth feeds. In lieu of special feeders there may be requirements for synchronous primary feeders to help with pulling wire from the drums. These are my $.02 on the subject, I'm sure others will have varying opinions. Good luck and best regards, Allanaevald