If your machine will do spray arc, go get a bottle of 90/10 (Ar/Co2) and try it. It welds real nice. It almost turns the steel to butter like TIG welding. And it gets real deep penetration. I only use it on steel 3/16” and up. Mostly I use it for 1/4” material.

all of the process you listed are just as strong as each other

@@zenlandzipline ar/c02 is for stainless ar/qxy is for carbon

@@chopperchuck oh, ok. I stand corrected. Is qxy oxygen and you just misspelled it? I will try argon/oxy after I empty this bottle of 90/10. I’ve been using a mix of 90% argon 10% CO2 for pulse spray arc transfer for carbon steel. It welds awesome but I’ll have to try the argon/oxy. I haven’t done any stainless MIG welding in at least 10 years, but when I did, it was some tri mix like argon, CO2 and a tiny bit of helium. I just TIG anything stainless these days. I do a lot of stainless sanitary pipe and for that I just use straight argon. There s a lot of bad info out there, I’m glad I can get good advice on KZfaq .

@@zenlandzipline yep I miss the spelling But what I haven't missed is 40 years of being a certified pipe and boiler welder

That’s a hell of a way to get a full penetration root, thanks for sharing. As far as the co2, it’s funny you mentioned that. I just finished up a video on co2 that’s coming out tomorrow. I didn’t run it at 140a but I did run it at 200a vs c25. Without ruining the video the 100% co2 makes far bigger of a difference than I would have thought. The downside is voltage. I bet my machine at 140a could make solid welds on 1/4inch steel, but my machine can output 25+ volts. A normal cheaper 140a might probably couldn’t get over 22v, and would probably have a ton of spatter and poorer performance.

that;s pretty cool thanks for sharing

Thanks for the kind words. It’s fun making the videos because I get to experiment and learn stuff too. I want to see people being able to be able to build stuff and believe in themselves 😃.

And I read that^ as 'beveling' and was confusing before realising you wrote 'believing' haha 😅

Thanks for the kind words. I am just happy to be able to help people out 😀

Thanks for the kind words. I try to simplify things so most people understand what’s going on. Welding is deceptively complex, which is why I enjoy it. Luckily it’s fairly easy to get started and to make stuff 😃

No problem. More knowledge equals better decisions 😀

I will be doing a bunch of direct comparisons soon. I don’t believe I will be able to break a set of plates that are welded on both sides due to them being too strong (the plate will just fully bend. I do have a different way to measure performance though, I will likely do a butt joint and bend them to demonstrate weld failures (like what’s done with a pipe strap cutout bend test).

Thanks for the kind words. It’s never too late to start, tons of respect for wanting to pickup a new skill 😀

It definitely isn’t a miracle worker but used with the right machine and proper circumstances it’s part of whats needed to make things that don’t break lol. Much like all of welding, arbitrarily doing something with the hope it will be effective (and never testing anything), rarely will be a good solution.

They all performed decent from a breaking strength perspective, but how many of them broke off the bottom plate (and the cut and etch) shows that there is definitely a reason why you probably shouldn’t use a 200 amp mig welder to weld thick steel regardless of beveling. I think I am going to do a break test away from the face in the shop press and see if it fails due to lack of fusion into the bottom plate vs a unbeveled plate.

I will have to find my little scale. On my list of videos to do is a video on the cost per inch of weld, where I was going to measure things and calculate out the actual true cost per inch of a weld.

No problem, glad you like videos 😀. I put a lot of effort in to help people better their skills 😀

No doubt any magic settings, results other people get, or what people say should happen, might as well be considered fiction for a person unless they test it themselves.

No heat at the root and nothings fused lol.

No problem 😀. I am a big proponent of do testing just to know where you’re at. A few tests won’t hurt, and it’s worth more than any magic settings or video on KZfaq can tell you about where things are at. I won’t lie, I had more than a few bad habits that I cleaned up based on testing things on this channel lol.

100% agree with you. The modern machines with some horsepower have mostly made stick irrelevant within manufacturing. You’re in luck, at my job I have access to multiple 400+ amp wire welders and some pretty big wire. In the future I will be doing some test plates and bringing them home for testing 😀

@@makingmistakeswithgreg Looking forward for it. 🙂

Anything beveled will definitely have more penetration, so keeping the heat on the thicker material will help bite into it. Being able to focus heat on one or the other plate is a must have skill to weld dissimilar thicknesses, or many holes will be made lol.

Very good explanation of what fusion is vs penetration. Many times people become confused between the two! Good job!❤

Or, 100% CO2? Have *heard* (read) that runs hotter and gives better “penetration.” Also, have access to a 190 amp Mig… do those pen’ better???

That 170amp machine will be able to do a lot of work. The main thing you will want to watch out for is running flux core on thicker material. The .035 flux core will likely perform far worse (due to internal weld porosity) than er70 mig wire on steel that’s 1/4 or thicker due to how fast the weld solidifies. It wouldn’t hurt to do a couple test welds with a cut and etch to see what the machine is capable of. I am not sure what the max voltage is on the machine, but 100% co2 will give more penetration over c25, but you need 24-25v. I have a video coming out shortly comparing 100% co2 to c25 and the difference is pretty significant.

100%. The question of “is this good enough” becomes easily answered when you’re staring at the insides of a weld and clearly see poor fusion. More practice and being able to see direct improvement in results is a great way to learn. Sure beats guessing at what’s under the surface lol.

A ton of stuff like that comes down to personal preference for sure. It’s best to be used to a wide variety of angles and gaps because if one thing is for certain, the real world likes to give you everything but perfection lol.

So flux core wire (self shielded) will out penetrate short circuit mig without much issue. However there is a huge limiting factor with gasless flux core, and that is internal porosity. I have done a lot of tests in the past, and no matter the wire used or settings, .035 flux core wire had internal (non visible from the outside) porosity on steel above 1/4inch steel. This becomes a major issue with weld strength when attempting to weld above 1/4 steel. Switching to .045 Gasless or bigger will likely help with this, but most peoples home welders can’t run .045 or bigger wire. The reason the porosity happens is due to how fast the weld pool solidifies, there isn’t enough time for the gas to escape. Running bigger wire allows you to carry far more heat without the wire blowing apart, thus the weld pool is hotter. So the simple answer is flux core will put penetrate short circuit, but it’s weld will be weaker than short circuit on a test like this video because of inherent weld defects.

It definitely isn’t a cure all that’s for sure. If I was able to do a better job of making the weld deposited the exact same, the differences would have been far closer. All of them show signs of defects that are undesirable. With 2 more passes all of the welds would have proven to be very strong. Having the correct thickness of weld will make it far stronger than the bevel with a single pass.

@@makingmistakeswithgreg When anyone welds manually there is going to be variation. It's unavoidable. From your testing, would you say that the strength gain of welding into the bevel is mainly because there is more surface area for the weld bead to fuse to? And that the farther back into the groove you can weld toward the root, the better? If you have the time maybe you can test breaking some U-groove joints too.

I can give you some advice. With a 140a machine you’re limited in a lot of ways. I have done extensive testing and have found that 140a is limited to about 1/4in material at the limit. 3/16th is no real issue. Running flux core wire you can get better penetration but you will have internal weld porosity issues on thicker than 1/4in material with .035 wire. Believe it or not 100% co2 gas will be your best bet to make strong welds on 1/4in material with gas shielded mig. There are a ton of thoughts that exist on the internet that beveling, preheating plates, and all sorts of other tricks solve the issue of a lack of amperage. The truth is nothing will substitute amperage, and a machine that’s 200-250a has significantly more performance on 1/4in and thicker material. Generally I recommend that if people want to weld 1/4in and over to start with stick welding. However stick welding is absolute challenge to weld sheet metal (16ga and thinner) so it’s mostly useful for thicker material. So basically if you want to be able to weld 1/4inch or thicker pickup a stick welder and learn stick, or upgrade to a bigger 200+ amp wire machine. With that said if I had to make a weld on say 3/8th plate with a 140a mig welder I would preheat the completely cleaned plate to 300 degrees, and over weld it (aka have a oversized multi pass weld). The first root pass will have poor fusion, but subsequent passes will probably not be bad.

@@makingmistakeswithgreg Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. It is very much appreciated. I will follow your recommendations.

Beveling is really dependent on what’s being welded and how it will be stressed. If you only have access from one side and need to have 100% full weld between the top and bottom plate of a fillet weld, beveling is the only way to achieve this. Situations that may be required is two stressed members of say a bridge that meet at an angle. Or on pipe where 100% weld needs to be between the two pipes. From a fabrication perspective much of what people weld probably won’t see a whole lot of benefit to it. It arguably would be less effective than simply welding both sides of the fillet weld. Sometimes that’s simply not possible or not acceptable. Definitely a complex problem lol.

Short circuit mig by definition is where the wire hits the molten puddle as a solid and shorts out. Spray arc is where the wire is molten and crosses an actual gap where there is an arc present. The two processes exist separate of one another and can’t exist at the same time. You can’t achieve spray with gas mixtures that have a high amount of co2, which is why c10 and 95/5 oxygen exist for spray. You can achieve globular transfer with high co2 mixtures, this is recognized as its own form of transfer. Very few people use this because it welds like long arcing a stick rod (aka big spatter). It does have huge penetration but it’s not really practical for the average person to do. If a welder is capable of 24+ volts and 180+ amps it’s possible to spray with it. The limiting factor is most home welding machines simply don’t have enough duty cycle to do much of it. It’s not really hugely beneficial to the average person who welds 3/16th and under material either, since short circuit does a great job on that. I am not sure if slowing the wire feed speed and pushing will do much to make pushing penetrate better than pulling. There is a 100% real problem with running hot settings fast, you can really loose fusion doing that. At an average rate of movement where you’re not flying at Mach 5 I don’t know that slowing down with less wire will do much. In a future video I will have to test that.

The change in fulcrum will undoubtedly make a difference in breaking strength. How much is difficult to say. On the test there is no doubt a bit more depth of fusion on most of the beveled plates over the straight 90 control. That will make a significant difference since it has to be torn through to completely break it. What I really worry about is the super straight with no depth of fusion on the bottom plates on some of them. I need to do some breaks away from the face in my press to see if they would break there.

I actually did the whole test with stick and ran into a lot of issues. With wire you can weld oddball angle bevels and it still works. With stick you have bad arc blow issues when the bevel is too narrow and the rod can get in far enough. I couldn’t get consistent enough results to make it a reasonable test. Stick still has the exact same lack of fusion that happened with mig on shallow bevel angles. Most rods (besides 6010) don’t have that good of penetration so you must have a wide bevel angle and a gap just the same as with wire.

Stick can have more or less fusion than short circuit mig. Believe it or not 7018 typically doesn’t have more root penetration than short circuit mig, but it does have more sidewall fusion. 6010 has a lot more penetration than short circuit. The hardest part with stick on grooves/bevels is the angle must be right. If it’s too narrow the rods arc gap will get out of control and a poor arc blown weld will be put down. I will be doing a video in the near future comparing short circuit to stick and talking about which truly is stronger (with tests). This will probably be a bit eye opening lol.

​@@makingmistakeswithgregthis will be first time for me to turn on notification for YT video. Can't wait for results, thank you Greg!

I did cover that in a couple random videos it’s something that I should revisit. Based on what I have seen it doesn’t seem to make a huge difference. If you use say a 140a mig welder and heat the plate to 600 it won’t magically give you the performance of a 200amp machine. If you heat it to hot that the weld stays red hot a good while you may actually see a reduction in weld strength due to poor solidified grain structure. Some materials (like thicker high strength steels like chromoly) do need a preheat before welding, but that is to prevent hot short cracking, not to improve penetration. So on steel thicker than 1/4 it wouldn’t hurt to run a 150-250 preheat before welding, but it’s not going to make a huge night/day difference.

There are a few types of those. They have alternator style (installs as a second alternator) they have the spool gun style (ready welder, trail welder, fast welder, etc) that runs off two 12v batteries, and then there is straight battery powered welders like the esab and fronius. I guess you could also just parallel two batteries and stick welder with jumper cables too (not the cleanest welds lol). They all work, the trail welder 2 is probably the best setup for ease of use and effectiveness. As far as the effectiveness, for off road I much rather have a stick welder. When you weld on thicker material (aka 1/4 and thicker) it has no issue making clean welds. With flux core wire when you hit 1/4in it’s very common to have internal weld porosity. Stick also gives the ability to run special purpose electrodes like 312 stainless (for welding springs, castings, and higher strength materials) nickel rods (for cast iron), and aluminum rods for aluminum wheels and other things. Depending on your skill level the stick route is what I would do. Flux core wire will be useful too though, so don’t write it off. I will be doing an experiment welding with two batteries soon with stick, so look out for the feasibility of that for trail repairs lol.

i have an old broco goweld, it can use gas and with 3 car batteries/42v max rating they claim that it'll weld 1" steel, which is not surprising given that the amperage potential of even just two car batteries is 1000+ amps, compare that to a house wall outlet: 120vac/20amp outlet =2400w=24vdc/110amps... a car alternator isn't playing in the battery-only league because it can only put out around 150a max, but the convenience of it on the trail far outweighs the limitations... check out rory from trailmater on youtube, he's not doing finished welds with an alternator/battery/stick combo, everything he does is rusty and dirty so it's ugly, he's just getting broken parts off of the trail with his rig in the quickest possible manner.

So over spec rods are quite a rabbit hole. It’s common for higher spec rods like 80xx or higher to have a number of undesirable “side effects”. It’s very common for them to require a preheat on the material, or the welds will crack. They are most commonly used for welding on materials that need preheat and post heating anyway so that’s generally not an issue. However if you use them on mild steel and don’t preheat the weld will likely crack during cooling. There are ways around this (it comes down to how they are achieving the increase in tensile strength). I have a few rods I will be doing a group test with, including 11018, which I know will likely crack lol. Stainless 309 rod (or even 308) will welding mild steel successfully. My guess is they will likely they would not handle a bend test (on say 3/8th plate fillet weld) as well as 7018. I believe the penetration is rather shallow and many 7018s actually test higher than 309 in particular. I will have to round up the 309/312/and special purpose electrodes and see what happens. I did use a pull angle, the difference with pulling is definitely significant. Push if needed based on the situation but pulling for the root will lead to stronger single pass welds. If you had to do a 3 pass weld doing a push on the cover passes would likely be just fine, but the first pass you will loose root fusion. Speaking of root fusion, I have a comparison video out this week on 100% co2 vs c25 gas. The results surprised me to say the least. As far as metal being torn out of the plate vs the weld, it could be as simple as the tear taking the path of least resistance. If the weld is not perfectly centered (45 degree angle to the root) with equal fusion on both plates, it will likely tear out of one of them. If it’s taking a bunch of material with it I wouldn’t worry too much about it. If it’s like in the bevel video where it pulled no material with it I would worry. Depending on the welding process it’s also common for this to happen, 6011 and 6013 had a tendency to do that. Start and stop strips/run on/off tabs will solve the issue with reduced fusion at the start and blown out ends. To make the most consistent welds this can be a requirement. Consistent welds equal strong welds. This is why tig has an advantage over other processes, it can achieve 100% root fusion start to finish on short welds where it would be impossible for mig or stick to do so. It is possible to achieve no lack of fusion at the start with stick and mig, however the settings would have to be hot (making weld terminations blown out). For the most part a less than perfect weld is more than fine. Where they become an issue is on high vibration, high strength materials, and/or high stressed joints. I have a pretty interesting video out soon where I talk about how I failed 2x to make/weld a jackhammer bit. Definitely a case where you need completely defect free full penetration welds lol.

@@makingmistakeswithgreg I had no idea that OverSpec Rods had such issues like cracking when cooling. I was under the impression that like stepping up from 60xx to 70xx produces (theoretically) a stronger weld. Now that you have explained, it makes total sense that the crystalline structure of higher tensile filler metals becomes more susceptible to cracking when cooling without some kind of thermal soak or temperature control. Maybe not exactly like welding cast iron, but similar as the carbon in the parent metal migrates to the heat affected zone making the cast iron more brittle. I understand that “IF” cast iron is welded (not brazed), two things are required PREHEAT and INSULATING the post weld in say warm sand to slow the cooling and recrystallization process. I found this out the hard way, and now SiB braze any cast iron. I assume over spec filler materials are used on high strength steels like armor plating, and special welding procedures dictate how to meet the job requirements. Also I recently saw a heavy equipment repair (KZfaq channel “On Fire Welding”) welder, do a repair using Run On/Off plates for the first time, when performing a large beveled groove repair on really thick plate. As a home hobbyist, I can’t imagine needing those on/off plates, other than for learning/testing purposes. I love your practical approach to testing, and you inspired me to build a similar face bending lever with torque adapter so I could have some basic numerical feedback when the difference in strength might be marginal. But honestly you could get really good feed back without the torque adapter, you can really feel the differences. Even the coupon in a vise, and beating it with a BFH, gives you more feedback on your welds than just assuming it’s a strong weld. Since I have started testing my welds as you suggested, I have really learned a lot about how to improve my game. Sometimes shockingly so. Thank you for all your advice, encouragement and wisdom. Hopefully others will read this and encourage them to do the same. I’m really interested in how the welding mild steel with SS filler metal goes.

Unfortunately the common thought is that beveling gives the ability to properly weld thick plate without a powerful enough machine, this simply isn’t the case. There is no substitute for amperage with thick plate lol.

​@@makingmistakeswithgreg The power of the machine only effects the time it takes (Several small beads vs a few large beads.) Even a little 120v machine can weld any thickness plate (Assuming the power output quality is sufficient, no major droop or fluctations.) Not beveling a T-joint gives a stronger joint per unit of filler metal deposited, regardless of the machine. It is a simple cross sectional area, and leverage issue (in bending stress).

The smaller rods will definitely help get into the root. There are still far less variables that work with stick vs mig simply because of the wire diameter. That’s not actually a bad thing, rarely do more variables in an overly complex thing add much good lol.

If I recall correctly a single pass wires use cheaper and lower quality materials which is fine so long as you have enough base metal to mix in with to dilute it. But as soon as you start running on top of previous welds there isn't enough bass metal to mix with it creating a more brittle weld (someone will have to correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I looked into this). It can be done but you're rolling the dice on its long-term success.

@@TheMadHatter626 Thanks for your reply. I was wondering if anyone has looked into this. I made a repair on my snow plow frame last winter. Thick metal and used several passes. It's still holding. If you saw the welds made by the manufacturer you wouldn't worry. I think the person that welded my plow together was blind. LOL!

The mad hatter is definitely pointing in the right direction. Flux core wire is a funny thing, it produces good single welds however welding over it can have some undesired results. I have tried tig welding over wire cleaned Gasless flux core welds and it contaminates the tungsten bad. It leaves something internally to the weld. I have actually tested multiple pass wire vs single, and what I found is the single pass weld had a much harder surface after the first and second pass. It appears as though it becomes harder as you layer it. The problem with this is Gasless t11 flux core wire already is up there on tensile strength (far over normal mig and 7018) and arguably on brittleness. Making the weld harder and more brittle wouldn’t be a good thing. The Gasless flux core wire also doesn’t have to meet much in the way of testing standards with -gs wire, so it’s a bit of an unknown. Some manufactures will specify test results for it, but many don’t. So it’s a bit of a “what criteria does this even meet” deal lol

@@wrdturkey Sorry for the lateness I found the an explanation on an old form that I bookmarked. 'Flux cored wires EXXT-2,EXXT-3,EXXT-10,EXXT-GS are recommended for single pass welds due to the high manganese content. Manganese will work harden and add toughness to a weld. If you do multiple passes with these wires they could crack due to the mangenese content will keep building in the weld and become brittle.' As an add note EXXT-GS wire is an open standard so manufacturers can release wires on the market before they're approved by the AWS (American Welding Society) to promote more rapid adoption of welding wire with specific requirements. That's not to say some manufacturers didn't take advantage of the open standard to produce questionable wire.

@@makingmistakeswithgreg So I wasn't the only one with problems tig welding over flux core, that's a relief to know. I knew t11 flux core tensile strength was up there with Mig and 7018 but I didn't know it was that much higher. Thanks for the new lead for my next research binge. 😁

You can theoretically reduce passes and reduce how much weld is outside of the theoretical 90 degree intersection by beveling you are correct. The problem with this from a “home gamer” perspective is that on thick plate the probability of poor fusion is high. I was successful in getting decent results, but it wouldn’t take much flaw in technique or settings to cause a very weak tie in to the bottom plate. You could end up with a situation where you think you have a solid amount of weld throat depth, but due to lack of internal fusion you have almost none. With spray, dual shield, or other processes that have more penetration I wouldn’t be so worried.

I did make a video on that a while back, links below. My general opinion is preheat is not very effective. The preheat may allow the weld toes (sides) to wet out a bit better and the bead might be a bit flatter, but the actual depth of penetration/fusion is not significantly better. So basically the weld will visually look better but from a strength perspective it won’t really perform better. Wire welding in particular performs poorly on anything thicker than 3/16th plate unless you have 200+ amps. It really falls apart on over 1/4 inch with smaller welders. With stick welding you can weld thicker plate at sub 160a which is why it is a far better option for welding thick plate in the home (especially with minimal equipment. If you were to compare the difference between a 200a mig weld with 100% co2 gas on 3/8th plate and the same weld done with less power a hot preheat, and c25 gas, it’s shocking at how different they are. There is no comparison, the non heated plate will have 3-4 times the penetration/fusion. With stick the preheat will not benefit it much either, in most cases preheating with stick is done to prevent weld failure from the weld cooling fast on higher strength alloys or cast iron. So basically if you don’t have the amperage you will not be able to make the weld, and the problem becomes way worse with wire welding vs stick. When it comes to tractors many parts are made from higher strength steels and they will likely need a preheat before welding anyways. Hope that helps.

@@makingmistakeswithgreg thanks for the intel...

Haha if it was a etchasketch I would make far worse pictures 😅

How much a beveled plate twists really comes down to how much weld you put down. If you put down a big weld that doesn’t fuse at the root, as that metal cools it will pull a significant amount. Doing multiple passes over a single large one will help keep warping down. Ultimately if the part needs to maintain being square measures need to be taken to assure that. Such as clamps, super square fitups, tacking the parts with a bit of “English” aka bent the opposite way it will pull, etc.

A 1/16th rod or an actual sparkler would penetrate it lol. You could bevel both sides and weld it out. You would still run the risk of having a lack of fusion unless you run a gap. Depending on what it’s being welded that much weld may not really be required. Generally speaking if you took a 3/8th fillet weld and ran two decent passes on it (one on each side) it would be able to handle significant stress without failure. Being fully welded with no gap between the top and bottom might be required if the material will see a lot of impact force or vibration.

I did not preheat the plates. Believe it or not preheating will not increase fusion depth by much. I did a video on this previously but I am working on a new one that goes more in depth. Preheating can give the illusion of more penetration because a weld will typically lay flatter and the toes of the weld will flow out better, but the actual depth of penetration change will be limited.

A lot of your thoughts are correct, but you’re missing a couple key components. Most of what the average person welds is done single pass, and In 99.9% of cases they are not an engineered part. Many things that might be welded could see force away from the root. Many things may also see vibration or impact forces. Root fusion/penetration will limit how much a fillet weld will leverage against the weld, and it will handle vibration far better. It’s not just about weld size. Case in point the short circuit weld that had virtually no penetration vs the most fusion beveled weld. If both of them were finished with 2+ more passes and both stress tested (with any thing other than a static load that only puts the weld face In tension), which one will fail first? The main point of the video was to demonstrate that simply beveling plates doesn’t improve penetration beyond what a persons machine is capable of. By having a weld further into a plate you change the fulcrum point, reduce leverage, and decrease the effect vibration will have towards failure of the weld. No, beveling doesn’t change the material properties of the weld that’s deposited, but it can change the force that weld sees. A properly welded joint can also reduce lack of fusion (like what was shown in numerous pics where weld material extended further than where it was fused to the sides) which reduces great places for cracks to start. I understand where you’re going with the thought that beveling is not done for strength, but you’re too narrowly defining what strength is. A open root butt joint (like on pipe) can’t be welded to pass any destructive test without a bevel and a gap. If you were to weld it without a bevel you would have a very weak joint. The bevel makes it possible to achieve complete fusion with internal reinforcement where it would be impossible otherwise. The strength comes from the weld material yes, but that weld material can’t be put there without a bevel. And without thinning the material down proper fusion cant be achieved on the root. So in certain circumstances you can’t achieve the strength required without a bevel, so defining bevels as not being done for strength is in many ways incorrect.

Well I guess I should’ve finished the video before commenting lol. You hit every nail right on the head

To add something worthwhile to this comment, could you test 6010 vs 8010 on bend test? I see 8010 gets used in pipe and it makes sense to me that 8010 is stronger but are there drawbacks to it?

So I actually did the full test with stick and never released it. I couldn’t get consistent enough results that I felt the test was valid, let me explain: With stick you simply can’t run certain bevels because they force a long arc gap and it causes the rod to get arc blow. Not to mention things like the gap required slowing travel significantly to deposit enough metal that you can maintain the puddle. Which ultimately deposited significantly more metal. Trying to determine if the strength came from the thicker weld or the penetration was near impossible because of how inconsistent the results were with stick. I literally tried everything (2 times as many plates as this test) and I had results that were literally all over the place. I decided to do the test over with mig because it doesn’t suffer from arc blow issues and is mostly unconcerned with bevel angles. I have done stick once on about 20 test plates and this video 2 times. Based on everything I have seen, a bevel can help increase strength, but if you use the wrong angle and settings it can actually make it worse. Ultimately unless someone does a bunch of testing on their own with their own setup, there is no way to know what’s going on with their welds. Visually many poor welds look or on the surface. If anything the video drives home the point that if you’re welding on something that needs strength you need to know for sure what worlds via testing. Guessing is not a good solution lol. As far as 8010, I doubt in a bend test on a fillet weld it would surpass 7018 but if I can find some I will give it a shot. I do have some 11018s and a bunch of 80+ rods I could try as well, which I am sure would still hold on.

Thanks 👍. I am trying to make a difference for peoples skills 😀

The bevel will allow more weld to be deposited into the material, which allows you to reduce the number of passes on the outside of the “theoretical” 90 degree intersection. This can be good if you need the clearance (aka an oversized weld would be in the way) or if you want to achieve resistance against leverage. The problem is the bevel itself doesn’t allow you weld thicker steel than your machine can handle. Many people have the thought beveling solves the issue of not having enough power when the reality is if you’re not careful it can make it work. Whether or not a fillet weld needs to be full penetration or have a bevel (and thus weld further in) comes down to what the particular joint needs to handle.

Generally when I think I was a hero and did everything right (and put down killer welds) I found out something doesn’t fit, or I screwed up and welded something on backwards lol.

As stated in the video the video is a direct response to the 200 or so comments that I have had in the last year that simply beveling plates gives the ability to weld thick plate with short circuit. Not to mention stick (which is rated for thick plate) doesn’t penetrate bevels the way people think it does either. The purpose of the video is to demonstrate that beveling is part of making strong welds but you can’t just assume it gives you the ability to weld thicker steel as good as a process designed for it.

So believe it or not I tried to run this test with stick and couldn’t produce consistent enough results that I felt the test was valid. The issue I ran into was that different bevel angles work for mig because of the wire size, but they don’t work for stick. With stick the bevels and gaps posed a huge problem of often lengthening the arc gap and causing arc blow. That could be fixed by slowing down, but slowing down deposited more metal, which gave higher strength. So basically what I had to do to maintain control of the arc forced me to make thicker welds and thus skewed the test results. To a certain extent the same thing happened in this video, much of the additional strength came from the additional metal, not the fusion (the fusion was poor regardless). I will be doing some direct comparison with stick and mig (and tig) soon, which should provide some valuable info.

Switching to spray welding or bigger dual shield wire would definitely make a big difference in performance.

I think the takeaway from this video is that while yes, you can bevel and lay down multiple passes for additional strength, if you aren’t using a suitable process with a high enough heat input you still aren’t going to get good fusion. So you’ll just have multiple poor welds stacked on top of each other. The choice of a bevel versus a fillet weld in industry is dictated by the geometry and strength requirements of the joint. If space constraints allow it a fillet weld is always cheaper to run than a groove weld. Groove welds are typically only used where there isn’t space for a fillet weld, at least if we are limiting the discussion to T joints. Curtis at CEE, if I recall correctly, typically runs spray (I think I’ve seen him run some dual shield as well), which is a more suitable process for welding thick materials. Whether he uses a groove weld or a fillet weld is more or less his preference (or dictated by the part/machine he is repairing) and using one or the other will not result in a better or worse weld. Preheat is more about reducing the cooling rate than improving fusion/penetration.

Your thoughts aren’t wrong, thicker plate needs multiple passes. CEE repairs things that are quite a bit different than what the average person works on, let me explain: preheating much of what he welds on is more for preventing the base material from cracking during cooling. Many high strength steels have hot shortness sensitivity. The preheat will not provide much additional fusion (I have tested that with little gained) but it will allow the material to be welded. By depositing more weld further into base material you are effectively able to reduce the amount of weld outside of the material (number of cap passes) to reach full strength. You are also able to achieve the highest strength possible if you fully weld the part with no remaining gap/lack of fusion between parts. Depending on circumstances this could be required. The purpose of this test is to show that simply putting a bevel on something and thinking you’re able to weld thick plate to the maximum strength with the short arc process is not correct. Although the bevels tended to show a increase in strength (much of which came from bigger welds due to my inconsistencies), they all suffered from poor root fusion, some had poor side fusion, and none of them are what I would deem acceptable for the purpose of welding 3/8th plates for high strength. Had I completed a few more passes on them the actual strength difference would have likely been fairly close I think.

The hard part with the mig gun I have is the nozzle is big so it can be difficult to actually hit a decent angle with short circuit (which has a short stickout). With spray it’s far easier due to the longer stickout. I will be interested in what you think will happen with the video I have out tomorrow on 100% c02 gas vs c25. That came out surprising to me.

100% accurate lol. Thicker steel doesn’t like to be tickled with low amperage lol.

The only way to “turn the heat up” is to switch to spray arc or use 100% co2. Simply increasing wire feed over the settings I ran will just deposit a bigger weld, not penetrate more. As long as the voltage and gas mixture is at short circuit range nothing will be gained with higher WFS. Higher voltage will not increase penetration in the root either. A different gas mixture is what’s missing. Spray arc will fuse far further than any of the welds in the video. However it also penetrates far further than short circuit mig on unbeveled plates. The main purpose of the video was to demonstrate why simply beveling thick plate is not a legitimate solution to a lack of power/proper gas mixture. In the future I may do a comparison of short circuit and spray on a beveled plate, the results will be similar to unbeveled plates.

They all will break given the circumstances, some at higher numbers than others. If I had welded the other side I wouldn’t have been able to break any of them. I will be doing some bends towards the face and see if the lack of bottom plate fusion causes them to fail

Thank you Greg, this is great stuff. I'm real beginner, so I have yet only a simple gut feeling: weld each surface separately to get the fusion, then put the two together and weld the two welds???

Couple things to help clarify what you talked about: the purpose of the video is to show that simply beveling plates does not allow for more fusion than what the process is capable of. It doesn’t make it “safer” to weld thick plate with an inadequate welder. “Just bevel the plate” is something I hear multiple times a day in both comments and on face book groups constantly. It’s unfortunately not a solution to a problem of inadequate power. Even with 200amps and c25 gas a bevel still has poor penetration as expected. So not just any bevel is going to work. I didn’t use spray arc because that doesn’t have a problem welding a fillet weld without a bevel and achieving proper fusion. It’s prequalified to weld 3/8th plate per AWS, short circuit is not. If you want to see the results of spray on a beveled plate it would be by far better than a beveled plate and c25 gas. A vast majority of home hobbiest welders don’t have machines capable of spray, and the video is not aimed at people with big welders who weld stuff with higher liability. It’s geared for the average person with the average 200amp class (or less) machine. Around the same time this video came out I produced numerous videos on spray and talked about how it works/benefits. In all my videos I stress the importance of testing what a person is doing instead of making assumptions as to what’s going on. Very few people actually do this, and it’s more valuable than any magical settings. Spray arc is not possible on a 140a mig welder. The highest voltage I have ever seen on a 140a mig welder is 22v and that won’t cause the wire to go into true spray. Globular might be possible at 22v with 100% co2 but nobody runs that because it produces a lot of spatter. Even if you did something like run .023 wire at 22v with c10 in an attempt to spray, it’s still not welding 3/8th plate properly. Dual shield performs poorly with .035 wire on 1/4in, and 140a machines can run .045 wire. A 140a might bead with c100 will have far less penetration than 200a with c25. There is simply no way to weld thick plate safely with short circuit process at 140a.