New Welding Student SMAW 6011 Issues

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Hi everyone,                       Matt here in Illinois, new to welding and in a basic intro welding class through the local community collage. I'm having some issues with the SMAW 6011 on a thinner gauge metal. Roughly 12 gauge. Ive tried running AC on anywhere from 50 to 75 amps and DC in the same ranges with the 3/32 electrodes. The higher amperages are cooking the welds,getting arc blow and burn through and just look bad. The lower amperages give me a better puddle but striking and keeping the electrode lit is pretty tough and I already know thats just a surface weld with little penatration. My understanding of the 6011 is its a deep penatration rod. I have grabbed some thicker plate steel and ran some very good welds with 3/32 and 1/8 electrodes with good penatration. I just cant seem to get a handle on the 6011 on thinner gauge metals. I have tried the 1/16's too, they dont seem to penatrate the 12 gauge very well and build up.  I will say also this is our second excersise in SMAW, the first being 6013. This took some getting used to but in the end I had some very nice welds with those electrodes. Ultimately we get graded on running 10 or so welds down a piece of metal and this is my 2nd day using the 6011's and I'd like to have a better understanding/handle on these. Also Im finding a preference so far for AC current. It seems to me I can run a lower amperage on AC and get pretty decent results. Any input on this will be appreciated. Bear in mind our instructor is a great guy and very knowledgable he just doesnt get hands on with us just turns us loose and lets us figure it out for the most part burning up rods and metal untill we find out what works and what doesnt. After about an hour Im searching for results, not more metal!! Thatnks, Matt.
Reply:For starters I would drag that teacher of yours into your welding booth and get a demo!  You are paying for the course and the teachers teaching it should probably be teaching ya'll!  60xx rods can be stubborn, but like anything they take practice.  Once you get the arc started, they aren't bad.  (half the battle is striking them, the other half is just persistence!)  Unfortunately, most of my experience with 6011 has been on nothing thinner than 3/16" sawmill chuting downhand...I don't suppose you could post pictures!Last edited by mb_welder; 09-12-2012 at 06:17 AM.
Reply:It's not uncommon for instructors to "turn students loose". The only way you will learn is to do it yourself. One of your biggest issues right now is that you most likely can't read the puddle yet. 6011 is a bit easier since the slag is fairly light compared to other rods, but you still need to learn what is slag and what is molten metal. The biggest issue I usually see with new students is that all they see is the shinny light, and not the puddle. You need to learn to look "around" the arc and ignore it to see the puddle. There's no one who can really do this but you. It's like trying to explain "red" to a blind person. You learned "red" as a child thru experience, and learning to read the puddle is pretty much the same. Try and pay as close attention to the puddle as possible while welding. At some point you will have an "Ah ha!" moment and everything will start to make sense.Now the best way to get help from the instructor is to ask good pointed questions. "how's my weld?" isn't a great question.  Ask detailed questions much like you asked above, with examples that you can point to that shows the problems. Also don't just wait for the instructor to wander by and stick his head in the booth. If you having problems, go to him. Lurk outside what ever booth he's in and ambush him as he goes to leave with your examples in hand. Ask if he can give you a hand and run one so you can watch, or if he's got another student who's already waiting for him, if he'll come after that. Them make sure he does. ( many times they will get ambushed by another student and forget, so you may have to hang around to make sure he comes)A couple of general hints that might help. With stick, the closer you keep the rod to the material, the "colder" the weld will be at any given amp setting. If you hold the rod back farther, you will get a "hotter" weld. New students often don't pick up on that right away. See if holding the rod back slightly farther will help with penetration, or if you need to crank up the amps to get the rods to light easier, jam the rod in tighter to reduce the distance and bring the heat down. You are doing both of these if you are using a "whip and pause" motion with 6010/11. You whip forward giving you a long arc to melt material, then come back in tight and pause to fill and repeat. Some pick this up easy, others don't. A good instructor to show you how helps.Next issue for newer welders that's very common is that they move way too fast. Slow down. You should be getting about 8" of weld per rod roughly, maybe a bit less depending on joints like a fillet where you need to fill more. If you are getting 12" or more from one rod, you are going way too fast.As suggested, post up picts with amp settings, material thickness, rod size etc and we can comment on what we see. Good luck..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
Reply:Welcome to the forum, Matt.You're correct. 6011 is a deep-penetrating rod with a lot of "arc force." I'd suggest trying 6013 with sheet metal. I believe that's one of the things it was designed for. I kind of don't see a reason for using 6011 on 12 ga. unless it's all you've got. On the other hands it may be give you some good experience.Getting an arc started and keeping it at lower current settings is just part of the game. That is; developing good welding reflexes: that means experience and plenty of practice. It helps when you first get and arc started, pause for about 2 seconds and let the puddle grow a bit...before you start traveling.  Keep your arc just a bit longer too.The thing about using lower current is you need to check on the back side and make sure you're getting consistent heat input. If you see oxidation or melt-through in some spots but not in others you're not using enough current. this only applies to welding thin metal by the way. 12 ga. is quite thin to be welding SMAW. That's going to take a lot of practice. But it's do-able. I'd say about 15 ga is the thinnest you can stick weld under normal circumstances.Note: 6010 and 6011 are almost identical, except 6011 works with any polarity DC or AC, while 6010 is DC electrode positive only. So, if you're going to use AC you need to use 6011. AC tends to produce flatter welds with abit less penetration, so yes it helps reduce undercut and burn-through.Something else you can try is using DC electrode negative aka reverse polarity. Turn it up to about 70 A. DCEN  produces a "wandering arc." with an odd hissing sound. But it can help with sheet metal by reducing the heat input.Last edited by Joshfromsaltlake; 09-12-2012 at 07:22 AM.
Reply:Originally Posted by DSWIt's not uncommon for instructors to "turn students loose". The only way you will learn is to do it yourself. One of your biggest issues right now is that you most likely can't read the puddle yet. 6011 is a bit easier since the slag is fairly light compared to other rods, but you still need to learn what is slag and what is molten metal. The biggest issue I usually see with new students is that all they see is the shinny light, and not the puddle. You need to learn to look "around" the arc and ignore it to see the puddle. There's no one who can really do this but you. It's like trying to explain "red" to a blind person. You learned "red" as a child thru experience, and learning to read the puddle is pretty much the same. Try and pay as close attention to the puddle as possible while welding. At some point you will have an "Ah ha!" moment and everything will start to make sense.Now the best way to get help from the instructor is to ask good pointed questions. "how's my weld?" isn't a great question.  Ask detailed questions much like you asked above, with examples that you can point to that shows the problems. Also don't just wait for the instructor to wander by and stick his head in the booth. If you having problems, go to him. Lurk outside what ever booth he's in and ambush him as he goes to leave with your examples in hand. Ask if he can give you a hand and run one so you can watch, or if he's got another student who's already waiting for him, if he'll come after that. Them make sure he does. ( many times they will get ambushed by another student and forget, so you may have to hang around to make sure he comes)A couple of general hints that might help. With stick, the closer you keep the rod to the material, the "colder" the weld will be at any given amp setting. If you hold the rod back farther, you will get a "hotter" weld. New students often don't pick up on that right away. See if holding the rod back slightly farther will help with penetration, or if you need to crank up the amps to get the rods to light easier, jam the rod in tighter to reduce the distance and bring the heat down. You are doing both of these if you are using a "whip and pause" motion with 6010/11. You whip forward giving you a long arc to melt material, then come back in tight and pause to fill and repeat. Some pick this up easy, others don't. A good instructor to show you how helps.Next issue for newer welders that's very common is that they move way too fast. Slow down. You should be getting about 8" of weld per rod roughly, maybe a bit less depending on joints like a fillet where you need to fill more. If you are getting 12" or more from one rod, you are going way too fast.As suggested, post up picts with amp settings, material thickness, rod size etc and we can comment on what we see. Good luck.
Reply:I didnt bring any of the 6011 pieces home yesturday so Ill take some pic's tomorrow in class and upload.I do have one from last week of 6013's I ran. It got me an A at any rate, I can see some are a little fast where I sped up. If it doesnt show up in the post forgive me. Trying to figure THAT out too. Ok, so back to the original post ! The class is a free 8 week intro course to try and get people thats maybe interested in going into the 1 year course a little taste of what its like. I like it so far, would love to go on and enroll full time if I can figure out how to pay the bills and go to school. Also I have not ambushed Myron (the teacher) into showing me how its done hahaha I like trying new things on my own so point taken there. Next, I think the task is to run 6011's on 12 gauge to get a feel for it as a real world example. It kind of leads into this whole tensile strength issiue of 12 gauge with 6013's or 6011's. Is the 6011 overkill on 12 gauge anyway? (personal answer is YES) With it (6011) penetrating  so much more. Around here in Illinois we call the 6011's "Farm Boy rods" I guess there everywhere all purpose rods and my teacher is an AG teacher too, so go figure. As for lighting the rod, something Ive picked up on in conversation so far is arc lenght. I did not know a longer ard length translates into a higher resistance but it makes scence to me. When striking the 6011 off on the lower amp settings I'd stick it after a second because a little drop would fall off and short me out. You know, I was told to give it a 2 count to heat and penatrate. So I'll have to come back off the piece a little for arc lenths sake. It does seem the arc tends to dance around and is harder to control my puddles. The 6011 electrodes we have ( IM not sure what brand) are dirty dirty dirty!!! The slag is unbelievable and its in the undercut very hard to clean out. I did experiment on 6013's and found some way cleaner and I used them last week and got good results. No such choice on the 6011's. My choices here are electrode sizes, which I played around with too. I may have gotten that size thing wrong in my original post too. We have the 3 smallest sizes. And finally I dont think Ive mastered the difference in metal and slag when welding. Ive just gotten "Dont look at the light" down and focusing on the puddle. Man its so hard to see anything that isnt glowing red or blue!! Final question. If you had to do this 6011 on 12 gauge where would all of your baseline settings be? Electrode size included!! And thank you all for helping too, Matt Attached Images