Appropriate Wire Size for Machine

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Hi all. I have a cheap HF 90a machine. On it is says .30 wire, but it came (from a friend) with .35 installed. I have built a few projects with it and and works fine, but I did have to really tighten the feeding wheels thingamajggies to get it to feed. I had to buy more wire today and went with .30, but is there any reason I can't use .35 if it works?
Reply:90 amps ... I think I'd be moving the other way.  I'd suggest you try 0.023" wire, it's better suited to your machine's power output.
Reply:Hello wbsurfer1968, the main reason that you have had to possibly tighten the feel roll setting so much likely has to do with the feed roll size not being correctly matched to the wire diameter. If the machine has an .030 feed roller on it and you are trying to feed .035 through it there is a high possibility that the wire is resting on the edges of the feed roll groove and not allowing the wire to contact the faces of the groove, if this is a U-groove type roll then the correct wire diameter would yield almost a full 180 degree contact area, V-groove type rolls yield to flats for driving the wire. I have included a sketch to illustrate this a bit, the sketch shows a V-groove roll, but even if it is a U-groove the result is essentially the same. It sounds as if you are able to use the .035, but really there are likely a couple of problems with continuing to do that: first being the likelihood that you cannot find .035 drive rolls for it so you'll always fight the feeding issue and secondly, the machine really is designed for a maximum size of .030 wire. As I believe others have stated either buy some .030 wire to run in it or if you go with the smaller.023/.025 you will likely need to also upgrade your feed rollers to accommodate that size. I honestly know enough about your machine to know whether those feed rollers will accommodate different diameters without needing to be changed. Good luck and best regards, Allan Attached Imagesaevald
Reply:Thank you guys so much. I did get a roll of .30 for it last night. Your illustration explains why I had difficulty getting it to feed that .35. Will report back, thanks again.