I watched this video last night and couldn't wait to try it today. I started with 6013 and mad really nice welds with no slag problems. Then I tried 7014 and even better. The problems that you had in your7014 video might be better on dcen. I didn't have any pinholes but that might just be beginners luck. I'm very happy to find your channel.
Appreciate the real live test. On the web many sites say that DCEP has MORE penetration...so much so that to help memory I figured P stands for PENETRATION. That was easy to remember but if you go on more websites there are expert welders that say the exact opposite and you are one of them.... think i'll stick to good old AC with less arc blow and more deoxidising
I researched 6013 a lot in the past and discovered that within the 6013 range, there are different formula mixtures for the flux. Some are more violent, others more smooth depending on what you are doing. The more violent mixture produces more of a cleaning action. I wanted to try some Hobart 6013
Very interesting. I have noticed a difference between the 3 brands of 6013 I have used. Far more of a difference than with 7018, that would explain a lot lol.
I took a 1 year welding course at a technical school almost 20 years ago while I was a senior in high school, ultimately I'm a journeyman electrician lol. Anyway, I remember most of the textbooks saying DCEP aka DC reverse polarity as having greater penetration, ironically GMAW is almost always performed using a DCEP, constant voltage welding machine. Some other textbooks mentioned DCEN, aka DC straight polarity, as having greater penetration since the positive pole has the greater heat concentration, and GTAW aka Heli-arc uses DCEN with the exception of aluminum and a few exotic metals and alloys use AC because the electrode positive half of the sine wave provides a cleaning action that breaks up oxides on the surface of the base metal, which form upon exposure to oxygen regardless of how much cleaning preparation is done, which should be one of the first goals anyway regardless of the metals your working with. All the textbooks however, mentioned AC as having medium penetration and being virtually arc blow-proof, which can be a major disadvantage of welding with DC especially with large electrodes at high currents.
So the interesting thing with welding is electron flow actually matters. A normal simple circuit doesn’t really care which direction a electron actually moves, but when you have a established arc whichever object the electron strikes (the wire/rod or the base material) more heat is input to it. In the case of mig welding it operates where the electron strikes the wire, which drastically increases the temp of the wire. Especially in spray arc where the wire never shorts out. With flux core wire it operates on DCEN which works due to the shielding gas it creates combined with thin hollow tube of a wire. If it’s run DCEP the tube simply can’t handle the current. With tig it operates on DCEN for a couple reasons. 1) the tungsten can’t handle the heat produced on pure DCEP, it would melt. 2) because the tungsten isn’t consumed or melted for filler, getting it super hot provides no benefit. And 3) the super narrow arc of DCEN provides great penetration. With A/c and tig you only run 65-75% EN and the rest EP. Even though most is still negative you lose a ton of penetration potential. The EP causes the arc to be wide due to electrons jumping from the area around the plate onto the tungsten, the heat is not focused. Like you said though the a/c breaks up the oxide layer and makes it far easier to weld aluminum. Interestingly enough aluminum can be welded purely on DC. It requires helium. I did a lot of reading on this (and I have actually done it) and it’s still a bit of “magic”. What I mean is helium itself is inert, however it’s documented that it has a cleaning effect on the oxide layer. Helium increases arc voltage (what’s required to maintain the same arc gap as argon) thus heat input is higher over argon, but the heat alone can’t be the only cause for the fact it works and argon doesn’t. DC with helium will provide huge penetration on thicker aluminum. This simply isn’t practical to use at home due to high cost of helium Anyway the hard part with determining what’s going on and what will have the most penetration is it’s entirely dependent on what welding process is used. Tig DCEN is the highest penetration, short circuit mig DCEP is, flux core DCEN, and stick is DCEP. Although DCEN and ac are close to the same as DCEP.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg very interesting. I've ran a TIG machine a couple handful of times but always used argon. I have read somewhere, maybe in one of the older textbooks at welding class I attended, that many old timers use the term Heliarc when referring to GTAW aka TIG welding is because originally, like back during WWII era or early 1950s when TIG was in it's infancy, Helium was the first shielding gas used and found to be widely acceptable, and the term sort of stuck later on as argon, or argon/Helium mix was used. Supposedly a 75%Helium/25% argon mix is far more common than pure Helium when welding thicker aluminum plates and repairing castings, because it combines almost all properties as pure Helium, with the benefits of argon. And the textbooks mentioned tungsten electrodes of up to 0.25 inch dia. suitable for up to 1000 amp DCEN. I would assume with welding currents of that magnitude, it would be an automated process rather than a hand held torch due to the heat and brightness. I'm guessing even a shade 14 welding lens might still be too light for 1000 amp TIG.
I've heard there is more difference when not running flat/horizontal. When flat it may be the sort of difference that needs machine-steady welding to make a real comparison so you don't subconsciously compensate the travel speed or arc length for differences in heat and deposition rate.
Here in South Africa we mostly run 6013 for general welding applications . I've actually found it hard to find decent 7018 rods ( Hell never found good ones ) . I have found a lot of difference between the various brands of 6013 . Some over priced and others just crap that left a yellow powder ( Ryobi ) . Have a couple of hours to kill tomorrow and will run a few DCEN ...
Doesn’t surprise me that there are a lot of differences in the 6013s. Let me know what you think of them on DCEN. Honestly I think the start of the weld is better looking and they seem to run good. The sound is definitely different lol. It’s too bad it’s tough for you to find good 7018s, they are a great rod with a very easy to see puddle.
@@harisyoung4110 For thin steel, I had some success running 6013 and welding in a series of tacks. Like tack, break the arc, wait until the metal cools a bit, another tack, and so on. 6013 because it restarts really easy. 7018 not so.
Great videos, you are an excellent presenter. I’m just a hobby welder of small projects in my shop, but I thought DCEN was suppose to have the heat into the electrode vs the work piece? Preferences for autobody thin stuff. How did your penetration be equal or better on the 1/4”? Was your arc force setting compensating or something. Thank you
Thanks for the kind comment. There is a ton of confusion with polarities and welding because welding is opposite of what most people are taught. In “conventional current” aka what’s taught in schools (and how things like car wiring diagrams are depicted), power (or current) flows positive to negative. The truth is this assumption was made before anyone knew what a electron was and was basically a guess. Well it was a wrong guess because electrons (and thus current) actually flows from negative to positive. This isn’t a issue for most things, however in the case of welding it plays a huge role. When you weld on DCEN electrons collect at the tip of the rod and jump the arc gap to the plate, and the electron striking the plate puts most of the heat onto the plate. On DCEP (electrode positive) the electrons strike the tip of the rod thus more heat is generated in the tip of the rod. DCEP is supposed to have less penetration than DCEN but in my own testing it’s not a huge difference. On auto body it’s been a trick for years to run rods DCEN to get better performance. In my own testing in the past I never noticed much of a difference. I do find you can run slightly less amperage on DCEN which will help. Honestly I despise welding super thin material with stick so much that i never do it lol. Tig or MiG is so much less frustrating I use those.
None of that ever made much sence to me. All of the heat on the rod still gets dumped into the puddle regardless of polarity. What I can see is the effect it may have on ionized atoms being pulled one way or the other in the plasma (which also effects redox "cleaning action" in the contect of AC balance on aluminum), and how it may give the molten metal globs a static charge which pulls them to the other side. With all the old timer slang that gets tossed around in industry it wouldn't suprize me if the DCEP "penetration" was actually just referencing arc forcefulness or cleaning action for penetrating through dirty metal; as opposed to the modern use of penetration to mean the melt depth profile in a slice and etch.
Hi all... I was experimenting with 7018, low hydrogen. Its a difficult rod... My observation was that electrode negative helps in reducing blowing holes in thin steel...but is hard to strike up. Electrode positive produce invert result. Hope it helps.
On thin sheet metal it is common for 6013 to be run DCEN, which tends to produce a tall rope like weld. It makes sense that it would also work with 7018. I have only ran 7018 on DCEN by accident and it did run, definitely had a a odd sound to it though lol.
Interesting question.. do welder on AC show rms or peak amperage? If it's rms, then the power (heat) that is transfered is the same, but if it's peak, then DC transfer more. Cos.. as you have transition thru 0, you also have peak that is above rms value. Somehow... I beleve it's rms, as everything else is rms vauled (for example 230V from my wall outlet is rms, not peak)
Great question. A stick welder operates on variable voltage, constant current. On DC output your voltage would be read as actual voltage (which voltage is dictated by rod and arc gap). On A/c you would have RMS voltage. Current wise on older transformer machines are all adjusted for the power difference on AC vs DC. Basically the numbers on the amperage dial (look at a miller dial arc 250s dial for example) are doped/skewed so that when you select the same amperage in both dc and a/c mode the effective welding current (aka the way the rod runs) we’ll be very close. On modern inverter machines that can output A/c they too will likely be compensating the output. No doubt there will be some variability in actual output with any machine between the two. So your thoughts are correct, they are likely looking at rms and not peak, however they all have their numbers doped to make them comparable to dc. With that said I have welded with a couple A/c only machines (40+ years old) that seemed to be way off on heat input based on the settings I selected. Considering all those are is a transformer with multiple taps for lower output, I am not sure why the output was “weak”.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Maybe those 40 years, stoled a few amps :) Lose trafo plates, degraded isolation... etc... A'm sure last 40 years stoled some power from my hands 🤣 As AC from outlet is rms 230V (or 110V in USA), so transformer should give also rms power/amperage. But also we could never know how company 40 years ago labeled it. On the other hand.. overrating was not so popular in those days(at least in my expirience).
I've been running 6013's on a few things... as shown here I really don't see much difference. I actually like how they run - so much so I've got 4 different sizes of them. Will be doing some sheet metal tomorrow with them. 1/16 & 3/32.
On EN the weld tends to sit like a bead of caulk on the plate (aka doesn’t wet out). With more amperage more rod burns off but it doesn’t wet out more.
