Mig welding wire part 2

Here is part two of the mig welding wire information. Now we look at the twist and the curve in the welding wire and what effect it has on welding performance.

Welding wire cast and helix

Arr, what are you talking about!

Wire cast and helix is how the wire unwinds and unspools. This has an effect on weld accuracy, arc wander, consumable life and contact current pickup.

The cast of the wire is how large a diameter of a circle it would make if you were to cut a length off the spool. Is it going to have a diameter of 1ft or 4ft or 10ft? See diagram below.

Wire Cast

Wire Helix

The helix of the wire is like a spring. It.s how far away the bottom wire is to the top wire in one revolution. If you were to unwind some wire and place it on a flat surface, it is how much it springs up. See diagram below.

Okay, so now you know what wire cast and helix are. What effect does this have?

The majority of welding torches on the market today all pickup the current and transfer it to the welding wire via the contact tip.

Thus the name for a "contact tip".

If the wire cast is too small the wire will make a tighter bend as it exits the gun. This tighter bend in the wire will feed through the contact tip with more pressure, which will lead to premature contact tip wear. See diagram below.

If the cast is too large it will also have a negative effect. The wire will tend to be loose in the bore of the contact tip and not have a good contact for the current to flow.

With wire helix, if the helix of the wire is all over the place and not consistent. The wire feeding out of the torch will always be changing its position. So if you are welding with a robot for example. Ideally you want to keep the wire tracking along the weld gap or area to be welded in, within about one wire width.

This is a very small tolerance to adjust for, especially if it is on a robot.

Imagine if you are making a weld 1meter long. If the wire comes out on target all the time, the weld will be successful. But what if that wire changes direction all the time?

Left then right etc.

Yeah sure it is only a small issue, but these are some of the things you need to be aware of when purchasing a quality precision welding wire.

Wire consistency

Wire consistency is also a very crucial and critical issue to consider when making an informed choice about welding wires. I have seen and heard of many people in the welding industry, be it either the smaller box trailer manufacturer, who has two welding machines and only uses two spools of wire a month right up to larger companies who might have 50 welders or more.

They have all had issues with mig welding wire consistency. For example, the first ten spools are great and the welding is fine etc. But then they go to put on the next spool and it.s rubbish. Consistency is a big issue. You want a welding wire that you can rely on, day after day, year after year, spool after spool.

If that spool of mig welding wire causes you or your workers to have to stop welding and find out what's going on. It is going to cost you time and money. If it is a business you run, you want to make money not lose it to downtime.

If you are looking for one of the world's best solid MIG precision welding wires, you can't go past Kiswel KC-28 mig welding wire.

Consistently time after time, spool after spool it never lets people down. Precision layer wound, copper coated, ER70S-6.

You might also want to check out gasless mig wire.