My LWS recommends 98%AR, 2%O. That is the mix used by a large metals fab shop near here. Had a bottle filled to attempt spray xfer but haven't had the time to try it yet.
Jerry

 

http://www.everlastgenerators.com/f...s.com/forums/showthread.php/5536-New-Heavy-Duty-Rolling-Shelf?p=57898#post57898

 

Actually the post you should be referring to is http://www.weldreality.com/MIG_welding_gases.htm
I am familiar with that particular post. It's actually a very good read. I did not want to mention it because I did not want to create a debate but more so hear real world experiences from anyone whose used that particular mix. Thank you for your contribution.

 

We were given that by our old LWS and it didn't run so nice compared to tri-mix. Kind of left a burned appearance.

At the time I was not doing the welding so it may have been operator error that went away when we swithed.

Mainly keep it for steel spray transfer.

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We were given that by our old LWS and it didn't run so nice compared to tri-mix. Kind of left a burned appearance.

At the time I was not doing the welding so it may have been operator error that went away when we swithed.
View attachment 1231781

Mainly keep it for steel spray transfer.

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Thank you for sharing. Was that done in spray transfer? What was your gas flow if you remember, it seems like you might have been having a gas coverage problem. Also if you don't mind mentioning your wire feed speed and voltage.

 

Think he was "attempting" spray. Gas usually stays at 30cfh

He got reamed for that one[emoji36]

Now I will say to be fair that LWS had a habit of sending bad mixes and it took 2 months to get a tri-mix bottle and when it arrived, looked like it was buried in a field.

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If those pieces got wasted that's definitely an expensive exercise, those are not cheap. I still think some sort of gas problem was the issue if they gave you a higher content CO2 that could have been your issue. Your LWS would not by any chance be Airgas, they are absolutely horrible at times.

 

used 98ar 2oxy for a couple years a few years ago when we were doing a lot of heavy stainless.

i could never get it to short cuircuit (sprays nice though)

always had a grey weld bead. but was easy to brush to shiny

only way to mig structural ss in my opinion. sheetmetal stuff gets tri-mix, anything above say 3/16 that could be wire fed was sprayed 98/2

 

Thanks for sharing your experience. I am with you in terms of what you're saying but take a look at that particular link, Mix 98/2 Ar/CO2 is supposed to be much better for gauge metal. That is one of the reasons why I put up this post.

 

We have a bottle of it at work, use it for welding nuts on 16ga 304... does as good of a job as the tri mix but costs a lot less what with the no helium involved thing.
These are 2 little tack welds onto a carbon steel coupling nut so its kinda hard to gauge, the few times I ran it setting the machine up it seemed to play pretty well on 16ga in various forms.
Seemed like if I had it in a better machine (with full volts/amps vs a tap voltage setup) that it could be made to run as nice as the helium blend.

 

Thanks for sharing your experience. Have you ever tried that mix on straight carbon steel?

 

holy cow, i am sorry, i was confusing your post about 98ar 2co2 with 98ar 2o. .. . . my bad.

i have never used 98/2 ar co2. never even heard of it till now.

 

It's okay I sometimes overlook things as well. I would recommend reading from the link above. Some real interesting information on the gases. To sum it up basically a lot of different metals can be welded optimally just utilizing argon and CO2 and varying the mix rates. This presents a lot of interesting opportunities by only having two large tanks and a gas mixer.

It also goes on to explain why argon CO2 combinations are superior to tri mix as well as argon oxygen mixes when dealing with gauge thickness.

 

For a quick splat or 2 yea... not really enough to give any kind of good report on it though. It behaved like if you ran pure argon with steel wire... but it sucked Slightly less. I wouldnt want to do it every day because 75/25 is a lot smoother but it might work if you want to have 1 gas for your mig to bounce between short circuit and spray on CS and SS.

 

It wasn't joining, but years back I had the displeasure of doing stainless overlays (automated) using hard wire from time to time. More to the point - programming the parameters used, someone else did the running bit. To me it was always a bit like pushing "paper" through a machine - troublesome.

Open arc spray or pulse - usually Ar/1-2%O2 (no carbon pick-up - sluggish - very shiny), sometimes Ar/5Co2 (also short arcs OK - welded the best of the 2 parts - more carbon pickup - grey bead, brush to shiny easily), Ar/2-3Co2/1-2Hydrogen (this also short arcs really good - best bead shape with solid wire - little to no carbon pickup - gold appearance - brush to shiny). Be careful with the hydrogen blend & test a short area first - it will cover gas holes created by the reducing flux atmosphere, you will never see it till you grind it or machine it, the puddle looks agitated but OK - learned that the hard way.

Sub arc - neutral flux - always shiny but you had to go over the whole surface & either stick or tig fill the areas where the bead wobbled before machining. That latter part was frustrating as solid stainless seems to for no reason "move over" like a 7018 puddle does around an inclusion of piece of junk in the surface.

For whatever reason it seems that a lot of suppliers are going back & pushing 90He/7.5Ar/2.5Co2 (old school mix for thin sheet & needs lots of volts)??? I saw the neighbor shop got a bottle a while back & just shook my head.

Matt

 

I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and experience. I was wondering if you can elaborate on some of your argon CO2 mix experience. I know that as the CO2 level approaches 5% you will get more carbon pickup. Did you ever play with a range between 2 to 5%? I know this is primarily spray but have you tried these gas blends with short-circuit? Also did you ever try running it on straight mild steel?

 

Now I have my mixer all setup, I want to experiment with different mixes as far as transitioning to spray transfer etc.

 

I would love to hear your results if you would be kind enough to share them. I even have some suggestions for mix ratios. it would be really interesting to run some of these experiments on.030 wire as most of the data out there is for .035 and up.

 

@ Matt & Dave - excellent insight on real-world apps of short-circuit n spray on SS with blends of Ar, O2, CO2, and H.

 

@ weld - Had a chemical plant that liked “Core Bright” from alloy rods on their stuff – so whatever esab has that looks the same (I'd call them). The boys loved it – shiny, good bead shape and pretty much refused to “fingernail” at the toes.

I kinda wish I'd come across that praxair gas-hat manual a long time ago (I think). Beside the obvious thing of promoting 2&3 part mixes for mo' money, I'd have some questions – Like “why in the wide-wide world of sports” would you want a 2 part purge gas that has argon/hydrogen, or nitrogen/hydrogen blends (Pg 15&18) and HydroStar H-2 & 5 for back purging on stainless pipe (Pg 17&18) in the praxair guide??? WTF - I need some help here.

I think it's reasonable to worry about mig because there are more variables to keep track of to get it right, and it's real easy to go wrong.

I looked at some recommendations (WFS-Volts-Travel speed) & quickly crashed with the evolutions lincoln has over the last 25 years in their docs. From the GMAW manual GS-100 in '90 to the first C4.200 GMAW manual in 10/99 there was little change and they used tables from ASM ninth edition 1983. In the latest PDF version of C4.200 (on line) the tri-mix is the ONLY gas listed for short circuit. I'll post a scan of the old timey lincoln short arc tables for gage to 1/8” & general settings GMAW for SS.

So, being dazed and confused, I decided to look at my lincoln's synergic Ar(mix) settings and what IT thinks it should be doing and it's no where NEAR close to tri-mix settings in the docs... What's left is to wonder if they want Ar/o2, or Ar/Co2 & what balance. It's not in the manual, but for steel the tuning is C25 for short arc - and for pulse it likes C10.

I'm pretty sure - that it wants a more active gas than 98Ar/2Co2 but less than old timey C25 settings looking at the volts, and the jump when the WFS goes from 362IPM to 412IPM. If so then I s'pect the C25 that used to show up with 200-300 stainless was used when corrosion was a non factor, like architectural stuff?

Attached the settings for 035” wire using lincoln SS GMAW synergic mode (PM300) in the third column. The forth & fifth column are SS GMAW settings from the 1991-2 Weld & Fab handbook. In the second attachment notice the volt drops when using Ar/o2 -6V & Ar/Co2 -5V in the left panel.

Matt

 

Matt thanks for sharing your input and experience. ESAB's wire is definitely top-notch. As a matter of fact so are there Stick electrodes if they were priced equally with Lincoln electric I would say they were better.

I never quite understood why you would need a two-part gas purge unless it is for agitation purposes on the rootside. Maybe someone in the community can chime in on this?

The more I read the more indication there is to being able to operate with just argon and CO2 along with a gas mixer. Again thank you for your contribution and I look forward to anything else you might have to add.

 

I compared the voltage settings for .035" stainless wire on the Power Wave machines, and the voltage for "Argon mix" is 3 - 4V less than the voltage for tri-mix in the short-arc range of wire feed speeds. Sounds pretty similar to your observations.

I don't personally like short-arc on stainless with Argon-CO2 mix that much. The usable wire feed range is limited, especially vertical-up, and the beads look somewhat cold even at the correct settings. I don't have much experience with tri-mix so I can't comment on that.

I usually use 97% Ar/3% CO2, what Airgas calls "Stainmix Gold".

John