Some MIG Practice.

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So i got some pretty good tips here and i decided that id practice some more and do some experimenting again and try to start developing a good technique.I found out that the wire speed was fairly high at the setting i thought it was so i turned it down a slight bit and turned up the heat because i was welding on over quarter inch steel plate. I got some thin stuff i will practice on next.anyway here are some of them:This was welded uphillFor these i slowed my travel a lot from before and concentrated more on keeping the wire pointing directly into the metal and less at an angle into the puddle. I still pulled it but i reduced my angle some for these runs. i don't know if this creates the best penetration or not.I think that they came out pretty good with the gun roughly on 230 ipm and around 120 amps (i dont know for sure but it was almost on full with 140 amp max.)Lincoln Power MIG 140c0.030" solid wire75/25 Ar/CO2Primarily used for automotive parts.
Reply:1/4" is too heavy to get good penetration with that machine. The welds may look pretty, but you will not get a good bond between the base and the weld on that thickness under normal circumstances. Under typical conditions you'd have to max out that machine to get satisfactory welds on 1/8" plate. I'm guessing part of the reason these look as nice as they do is because the plate was fairly warm and it acted like you had more power available than you really had. If I had to guess, I'd say that vertical weld ( 2nd to last pict) was made when the plate was cooler than many of the other ones from the taller bead. You took some nice detailed picts, but it would be nice to have some sort of reference in the picts or at least a larger view to get some sort of scale perspective. I'm thinking that with the plate size and what I see in some of the picts, the beads may be a bit large in width, but there's no way to tell for sure.Personally I'd like to see you tighten up your circles  a bit in some of the welds, but I'm being very picky to find this. Your consistency is very good. A few minor bobbles here and there, but nothing more practice won't fix. Try and work on longer beads and see if your consistency stays the same when you need to shift your hands as you move along. Nice job..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