Welding thin steel

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Can anyone give me some pointers on how to flux-core weld on thin wall pipe and not make the steel deform. It looks as if the steel is shrinking around where I apply weld. Would I need to try another size wire to not dispurse as much heat? I am currently using 1/16" wire on all welds no matter the wall thickness as of recent jobs. The most deformity I am seeing is coming out of .325 waal thickness.
Reply:Originally Posted by ringoldCan anyone give me some pointers on how to flux-core weld on thin wall pipe and not make the steel deform. It looks as if the steel is shrinking around where I apply weld. Would I need to try another size wire to not dispurse as much heat? I am currently using 1/16" wire on all welds no matter the wall thickness as of recent jobs. The most deformity I am seeing is coming out of .325 waal thickness.
Reply:1/16 is HUGE for that size joint.
Reply:Darn, and all these years I thought 1/8" was .125".
Reply:.045 wire dude. I've done ~3/16 wall pipe with 1/16 dualshield in a pinch on something that did not matter and it never warped like you are talking about. But given the choice I would go with a smaller wire.
Reply:What kind of joint are you welding, tee, butt...?Regardless, you shouldn't be getting much distorsion with almost 3/8 wall pipe anyways.  1/16 wire is huge. but if 3/8 is "thin wall" for you then I can see why you have it.  Smaller wire=less heat, less heat =less warping. You need smaller wire for smaller material.But I for one would like to see what a weld on .325 wall pipe looks like with 1/16 fluxcore. Have we all gone mad?
Reply:We are usually using butt weld but sometimes there is an excessive gap that we have to deal with, sometimes 1/8" or bigger fixing mismatch in spiral pipe. Splices from one coil to the next where subarc is only applied to the inside. I am going to try using a smaller gouging rod next time to where we don't need as much weld to fill the gap but cutting mismatch out with a torch is primarily where we are getting the bigger gaps. We have welded on thinner wall pipe as small as 1/4" but I don't remember seeing this distortion in the steel. This may be a material issue also. I have to look into grade of steel.