HF170 converted to gas: issues

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Good evening all,I took the steps to convert my HF170, which was previously used many times with flux core, over to gas shielded.  New bottle (AC25), new regulator/flow meter, all connected.  Pulled old empty FC spool, ran a new solid wire 0.030 spool.  Swapped polarity to electrode positive.  Set wire tension to bend against a wood block at 2-3 inches per the manual.Went to lay a few beads to test it out.  First bead was on Max/1 with the wire speed maxed out (mistake. I didn't reset after running the new wire through the sheath.)  Welded fine, albeit a bit hot because of the wire speed.  Realizing my mistake I made some adjustments, down to Min/2 wire speed about 5 and tried again.  Now i can't get it to hold an arc.  I get a pop upon first connection, goes out, wire appears to struggle(?) then another pop, repeat, repeat.  I'm also getting a fairly large glowing red/white ball on the end of the wire.  If I crank the speed back up to 10 on the min settings, I can hold an arc, but it sounds like a string of fire crackers going off rather than a nice hiss.I'm sure i flubbed something up in the swap, but i'm new to this so i'm not sure what.  Thoughts?
Reply:

Originally Posted by itgbudeev

Good evening all,I took the steps to convert my HF170, which was previously used many times with flux core, over to gas shielded.  New bottle (AC25), new regulator/flow meter, all connected.  Pulled old empty FC spool, ran a new solid wire 0.030 spool.  Swapped polarity to electrode positive.  Set wire tension to bend against a wood block at 2-3 inches per the manual.Went to lay a few beads to test it out.  First bead was on Max/1 with the wire speed maxed out (mistake. I didn't reset after running the new wire through the sheath.)  Welded fine, albeit a bit hot because of the wire speed.  Realizing my mistake I made some adjustments, down to Min/2 wire speed about 5 and tried again.  Now i can't get it to hold an arc.  I get a pop upon first connection, goes out, wire appears to struggle(?) then another pop, repeat, repeat.  I'm also getting a fairly large glowing red/white ball on the end of the wire.  If I crank the speed back up to 10 on the min settings, I can hold an arc, but it sounds like a string of fire crackers going off rather than a nice hiss.I'm sure i flubbed something up in the swap, but i'm new to this so i'm not sure what.  Thoughts?
Reply:Thanks for the input!  For my own sanity i'm going to remove everything and run it again just to be sure, bu thats really good to know.  So basically I should forget all my "common" settings from using flux core (i used to use this range regularly) and start from scratch?