Travel direction

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I'm new to welding and have enjoyed looking at this forum.  I have a MIG welder and hold the torch in my right hand.  Some instructions show the direction of torch travel to be from left to right and others show travel direction as right to left.  Which is correct - don't want to develop any bad habits.  Thanks
Reply:both are one way you will put down a flatter bead and not get so much penateationChuckASME Pressure Vessel welder
Reply:For a right hander, right to left because you should be pushing the wire slightly.Stephen
Reply:I like the saying I heard on one of the other forums a short while back on this subject. The message was with slag you drag. I have used both while doing mig welding, I prefer the push method as it is easier for me to see what I am doing. Most will tell you that if you are pulling the weld you will get deeper penetration. If you are welding pretty thin metal ( car body thickness) I would use .023 solid wire and push the weld.  If you are using flux core then you want to be pulling or dragging the weld or going from left to right if you are using your right hand. Otherwise you are putting slag into your weld. What size welder are you using, and what thickness of metal are you welding, what are you using flux core or solid and if solid what are you using for shielding gas?Hope this helps.
Reply:Thanks for the very helpful information.   I'm using the Lincoln 175 plus welder, .30 wire and argon/co2 mix.  Most of the metal used is 11ga.  From the suggestions, it looks like I should practice both directions.  Thanks again.
Reply:And overhead. And vert. up. To become a  seasoned  weldor, you need all those skills.
Reply:jabrams you might get you a bunch of coupons and do a lot of practicing, will work best if you clean your metal so that it has a bright shiney finish to it before welding to it. After you get started getting the hang of it try a few projects, a lot of the guys have made them selfs a welding cart or welding table etc there are plenty of pictures if you do a search for them to kind of get you an idea. Once you get the first project pretty much done you will start realizing that you have a disease known as the welding bug. Only way to releive it is more and more welding and more and more welding equipment buying.  Grinders, clamps, hammers, band saw or chop saw, cutting torch, nice welding helmet, bigger welder etc. The list goes on and on.
Reply:We had a tech come in from one of the wire supplier's, I asked the same question about solid and cored with the pushing solid and pulling cored. His words where " someone filled you full of sh.t, both wires should be pushed."Since that day I've pushed all wire including cored and never had a problem.Stephen
Reply:His words where " someone filled you full of sh.t, both wires should be pushed."
Reply:With mig I just do whatever it takes to get good welds. Push, pull , whatever... ... However, with f/c its most always drag or pull. I have had situations where I have had to push and whip but they are rare.
Reply:If you were making beads on flat, with a drag you would probably see a nice oval bead (sorta high) with the penetration being about the same. Nice penetration in a semi circular area. With thicker materials this can be a good thing. You are keeping the heat into the puddle longer, insuring good fusion. For sheet metal it can be a bad thing. Dime sized hole drops out when you least need it to happen.With a perpendicular hold you would see a fairly wide bead with wide shallow penetration. This is not much use for heavy pieces and on sheet you are pointing the heat into close to the center of the molten puddle almost garuanteeing that you'll punch through. Nice for wetting out tho. With a push you'd see a flatter bead than with a drag, maybe a little back bone ridge in the center with deeper almost conical penetration, as in deeper and narrower than a drag. With the heat pointed away from the puddle the filler freezes faster. With a push you can get down there and see the wire digging in. Push is often recommended for sheet because the heat is being directed away from the molten puddle into new metal. But then how often do you just weld on a flat piece, right??  The drag method helps give the impurities time to float out of the molten puddle in the form of slag. With flux core this is even more important as there is also the flux and their by-products to deal with. A fast push with flux could very well leave a quite porous weld behind you. If you don't see much slag it's probably because you either did an excellent job of cleaning the base metal and burnt all the flux up OR it's still in the bead.  I'd guess the later. Rule of thumb is "when there is slag you drag". Solid with gas shouldn't have much slag if you've prepped the area properly.You will see lincoln recommend a push quite often with GMAW but then there is the consideration of the bead proportions of width to depth. If you could compare it to a triangle, an equalateral triangle would be ideal. Deep narrow beads are subject to internal cracking upon cooling.  Wide shallow beads or concave beads are subject to surface cracking. The heavier material you are working on the more this should play in your mind. How's that for a nice long blather.
Reply:Well Sandy, I've done a lot of the heavier section you talk about, right the way up to 6"  with flux cored wires. Also with wires with a 'iron powder' content in them. A good percentage of these have been NDTed and I've never had a problem.The push I'm talking about may not be much more than square, but never pulling. The main problem with pulling is unless your really onto it you get coldlap.  One outfit I worked for had a lot of trouble getting one weld through NDT. It was the final weld on a transom on rail wagons. I got them through and that was the end of it, I was always doing the bl00dy thing's.I soon got sick of it so watched one of the other boy's do one. I stopped him before he even started welding, because he was set to pull it. Got him to push it and hay presto! it went through. From then on there was no problems with that weld.If your doing any kind of multi-run weld I really do beleive the best way is to push.Another problem with pulling on multipass is the high ridge between welds causes a slag trap, now I hate grinders, so I aim for a weld with as little amount of grinding in it as possible. But if you drag it's something to keep a very close eye on because you will be grinding.Stephen
Reply:I have looked back at my Hobart manual, and also looked over on the Miller website and both suggested using drag method when using flux core wire. As suggested when running solid wire I use what ever method works best for me for the situation to get the job done.
Reply:Thanks for the info wirehunt.  I enjoy the input from full time welders. A lot of variables to consider sometimes.