In need of some advice

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Good morning to all, looking for some advice on my welds if you can call them that. I would love to take a class but none start up until August.A little background info on myself, I have been playing with my HF 110AMP 220V MIG for the last month. I have never welded anything previous having gotten my HF welder a month ago, all I have had to go off of has been reading a few old welding books and watching a lot of youtube videos as well as asking questions on my Vintage Mustang forum. I thought it was time and more appropriate to ask here.Looking for some advice on how to improve, if the photographs don't show what is needed to make a good assessment just let me know and I can get some up showing what is required ASAP.FWIW, I love to learn new things and take criticisms extremely well especially when it is educational.(Please ignore the welds towards the top of the photograph, I know now that there is very little if any penetration, I will be grinding those down and giving it another try soon)Thank you advance for any helpLast edited by abrahamfh; 03-16-2011 at 04:49 AM.
Reply:you have a significant improvement in the second and third pics over the upper and lower right welds in the first pic. beyond the standard get a better quality welder, i would recommend being more attentive to preweld cleaning. i try to have only clean bare metal within 1 inch of a weld in all directions. it looks like you are using a solid wire, possibly with a 75/25 mix gas, is that correct? using a good quality wire is 100 times better than using cheap harbor freight wire. i would highly recommend practicing on something not related to the suspension for a while first.Dynasty 200DXPassport plus w/ spoolmate 100victor 315c oxy/(act and prop)Miller digital elitemilwaukee power tools
Reply:As Turk said,clean things up.And keep in mind that a 110 amp welder will weld about .001 inch metal per amp.If you are welding angles or stacked pieces of metal,it is easy to run out of amps ,with a small welder.
Reply:Your flat position welds arent bad for a rookie, but you need to practice your vertical technique on scrap material. Actually, you don't have a technique, so I suggest turning your heat down to where you can control the puddle and try and mimic what you were watching in the videos. Be careful when choosing on-line instruction, youtube is probably the largest source of misinformation that there is.
Reply:I know it has been a really really long time but I will be getting back into playing with the welder again soon and wanted to thank everyone who replied for sharing their wisdom.Since my last post last year, I have moved on from my harbor freight to a amazing Lincoln SP 135-plus and find it to be far superior from what I was trying to learn on previously. Last edited by abrahamfh; 05-08-2012 at 04:09 PM.
Reply:Originally Posted by tackitBe advised  a mig weld can look beautiful but not have penitration,it's important not to weld things over a machines capabilities....Clean the steel but don't polish it until it shines like chrome....like with a blending pad ...polishing hardens the surface of the steel making penetration harder to achieve, especially so for 110 mig welding machines.