Mig welding settings

Mig welding machines have a mechanical drive system that is used to feed the mig welding wire along the mig gun to the contact tip. Some wire feed welding machines are called compacts as they have the feed mechanism buil into the main box/case/enclosure of the welding power supply. Other industrial mig welding machines often will have a seperate wire feeder unit.

This wire feed unit has all the mechanical drive roll system parts in it and will also have controls on the front of the machine to adjust the welding parameters.

The two main mig welding machine settings that you need to only adjust most of the time are the control for the wire feed speed, and the control of the main power selection.

Constant Arc

Because when you are welding you need to keep a constant arc going you need to set up the mig welder so the the wire is feeding at the correct speed into the welding arc and puddle.

If the wire feed speed is to fast it will physically keep smashing into the metal that you are trying to weld. The welding arc will not have enough "burning time" to burn of the mig wire fast enough. The same is true the other way around. If the wire feeds out of the gun too slow, the welding arc will be forced to burn back towards the contact tip and eventually the wire will stick to the tip.

The the idea is the adjust the wire feed speed so that it is suited to the main power selection you have chosen for welding.

Your particular machine might have one knob for wire speed and one knob for the main power. Some mig's will have a course adjustment knob and a fine adjustment knob for the main power setting.

In a nut shell you want to set the main power setting then fine tune the wire feed speed so that the wire burns off nice and steady.

Too much wire or too fast a wire speed for a given power setting

VIDEO AND PICTURE OF WELD BEAD ETC

Too less or too slow a wire feeding speed for a given power setting

VIDEO AND PICTURE OF WELD BEAD ETC

It is a balance between the wire feed speed and the main power. You can not keep the same wire feed speed for all heat settings. If you find the sweet spot when you are welding 2mm steel. The same wire speed settings will not suit when you wind up the main power to weld 6mm (1/4"). The reason being that the heat at the arc is now much more and it will burn the wire off faster. So you need to increase the wire feed speed to suit how fast it is burned off.

VIDEO AND PICTURE OF WELD BEAD ETC