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Thread: Problems with 1.6mm Gemini rods
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11th Oct 2010, 10:34 PM #46New Member
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- May 2010
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- werribee vic
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im only a mug welder but recently tried a pack of 2.5mm ferrocraft 21 rods after they were reccomended for vertical down in the manual for my welder. after laying down the best and easiest fillet welds on 3 mm plate ive ever done i tried making a T out of a piece of 25x25x1.6 and a piece of 40x40x1.6. with the welder set at 60a dcep i had no trouble getting a great looking weld with no burn through that i had been suffering with other rods
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24th Oct 2010, 08:52 PM #47Golden Member
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- Sep 2008
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To those who were following this thread - I found the answer after a weekend of failure. I kept trying ~50A on DCEP and it kept just making a mess and not fusing. For some reason later today I pushed it up to 60A DCEP with a very short arc and fast travel speed and got a clean, small fillet. After that I could repeat it every time, skill errors aside. Problems with this approach were - I found myself always starting new fillets with full rods and given how flicky they are it was difficult to keep a short controlled arc and I'd also blow holes (from too long an arc and too slow speed - mostly related to new, long rods).
60A was way too much for the butts, where there's a bit of a root gap with the SHS from the curvature of the corners. 50A was more appropriate there. 55A doable but easy to blow holes. So it was kind of annoying with 25mm SHS to do two short welds then change amps, then two short welds then change amps. But the two different settings were definitely appropriate for the different jobs.
At one stage over the weekend I tried DCEN with this light stuff. Angry arc, fast burning of the rods and felt like more heat in the job for a given amperage. I'll stick with DCEP I think.
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25th Oct 2010, 06:25 PM #48
Good post Legion,
Stick that one away in your memory banks folks, as this question will come surely up again in 6 months time.
Grahame
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21st Mar 2011, 10:39 AM #49Golden Member
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- Sep 2008
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I did a lot more practice welds on the weekend with these rods and confirmed my earlier findings. 60A, DCEP for the fillet welds. It worked well every time. I also cut the rods into 100mm mini rods to eliminate the shaky hand syndrome. 100mm was perfect for a 25mm fillet.
I didn't try to use them for the butts where there was a significant root gap. I used 2.0mm 12XPs to do those, on ~67.5A with very fast travel speed and it also worked well most of the time. I cut those in half, so 150mm mini rods to make it more precise on the short welds.