Mig Welding Instruction

Here is a quick mig welding instruction guide for you to get started learning how to mig weld.  The first step is to make sure that you have all of you equipment and that it is all setup properly. It is also very important that you make sure you have the required welding safety gear as well.

Mig welding is easy providing you have a steady hand and the mig wire is always feeding smoothly through the mig gun.  So the first tip for this welding instruction is for you to check that you are using the right sized drive roll for the specific wire diameter.  This means if you are using 0.9mm wire which is 0.035", that you must also be using a drive roll that is made for that sized wire.  On the side of the drive roll there will be a number stamped in the side which will show you  which way around to put the drive roll on.  There are usually two different sized grooves in a feed roller.

Make sure that you have a good ground or earth connection.  It's a good idea to check that the nuts and bolts are tight on the welding cable.  Also you can grind off the surface of the clamp so that you have clean exposed copper contacts, which will give you better arc stability.

You also need to have the correct sized contact tip in the mig gun.  Again like the wire and feed rollers if you use 0.9mm wire you need to use a 0.9mm contact tip.  If you are using aluminium mig wire or gasless mig wire you will need to use a slightly larger contact tip.

Set you welder up so that when you weld with it the weld bead is not to tall and looks like bird poo.  You want the weld bead to look like a nice smooth curved semi circle.  You will know when the machine is running right as it will sound smooth on consistent.   If the wire is balling up and there is heaps of spatter, chances are you will need to turn the power up.  And if the power is too hot you will see that you burn through the metal. 

It is also very important to keep you hand and arm as stable as possible when you are mig welding.  This is because any movement in your arms will affect where you are welding.  So try to get yourself in a good comfortable position first.  You should always do a dry run of where you want to weld first, this is so that you are sure that your hand, mig torch or arm will not bash into anything when you do the actual weld.

Finally if you do make a few bad welds, don't fret as you can easily grind down the bad bits and quickly redo those particular welds.

This is a basic article for a mig welding instruction you can find out more about mig welding and how to mig weld.