First experience with Millermatic 212

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Hello everyone, new to welding, new to the forum. Just wanted to show ya'll after about 2 hours with playing with settings i finally got a mediocre bead going. I welded a bit as a kid back in my dads garage, but i recently decided to pick it up again. a buddy of mine rents a bay at a fleet shop to work on race cars and they let us use their equipment. at my disposal i have a millermatic 212, syncrowave 200 and a hypertherm plasma cutter. all the accessories, all the frills and gasses i need. looking forward to this. Im 23 years old, austin texas and work in telecommunications. race car enthusiast, specifically rally.  just bored and looking for a hobby.Some problems i ran in to were excess splatter in some places and i burned 2 holes through the material. that was frustrating but maybe it just takes practice.
Reply:Find some flat steel and start laying some stringers, but lay a stringer relavent to that thickenss of steel.Also look to aws.org and millerwelds.com/resources, and easb.com for weld info and parameters, weld types, joint types etc. so you know what a proper weld is, you can't weld if you don't know the weld parameters.Prep & grind your mill scale, and get yourself comfortable; before you lay your bead you should be thinking out what the throat, toe, symmetry, smothness dimensions of the bead required are.After that it is repetition.Try that and repost your bead again for crtique.Good Luck
Reply:Heres the link to the perimeters chart pistolnoon was talking about http://www.millerwelds.com/resources/calculators/_______________________OF COURSE I DON'T LOOK BUSY... I DID IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME
Reply:I went back to the shop last night after work. Dave and I plasma cut the rear bulkhead out of the Evo and then i went back to practicing. This is before i had a chance to read any of the stuff ya'll sent me, ill read it tonight and hopefully have a better understanding of what im doing. I'm also gonna go through the user manual (its a millermatic 210, not 212 as i previously thought).After tinkering with my wire speed and heat i found that 35 and level 3 worked best for me on this piece of angle iron, again this is my uneducated conclusion. (although the following pic i probably had it set at 40 and 2 if i remember right). i get excited and was going back and forth between a thin piece of tubing and this piece of angle iron, so my memory might be a little off.I did that within my first hour and practiced for about 4 hours total. my welds got a LOT straighter and clearly showed a little bit of improvement although i didnt snap any pictures. Im gonna read over these tonight and get back to it tomorrow after i get off work.Thanks again for the resources.
Reply:If it's a miller, there should be a setting chart inside the door that hides the spool of wire.  I usually weld with the next higher settings.  If I'm welding 1/8" and the fit up is good, I use the 3/16" settings.My name's not Jim....