Very interesting. I have noticed a difference between the 3 brands of 6013 I have used. Far more of a difference than with 7018, that would explain a lot lol.

Linc’s seem to be heavy Rutile, while Hobs are Rutile-Cellulose.

Just confirms that welding is sorcery. I really like these analyses. Thank you, Greg.

Doesn’t surprise me that there are a lot of differences in the 6013s. Let me know what you think of them on DCEN. Honestly I think the start of the weld is better looking and they seem to run good. The sound is definitely different lol. It’s too bad it’s tough for you to find good 7018s, they are a great rod with a very easy to see puddle.

@@makingmistakeswithgreg For thin steel, between 7018 and 6013 which one is more suitable for that task ?

@@harisyoung4110 For thin steel, I had some success running 6013 and welding in a series of tacks. Like tack, break the arc, wait until the metal cools a bit, another tack, and so on. 6013 because it restarts really easy. 7018 not so.

Thanks for the kind comment. There is a ton of confusion with polarities and welding because welding is opposite of what most people are taught. In “conventional current” aka what’s taught in schools (and how things like car wiring diagrams are depicted), power (or current) flows positive to negative. The truth is this assumption was made before anyone knew what a electron was and was basically a guess. Well it was a wrong guess because electrons (and thus current) actually flows from negative to positive. This isn’t a issue for most things, however in the case of welding it plays a huge role. When you weld on DCEN electrons collect at the tip of the rod and jump the arc gap to the plate, and the electron striking the plate puts most of the heat onto the plate. On DCEP (electrode positive) the electrons strike the tip of the rod thus more heat is generated in the tip of the rod. DCEP is supposed to have less penetration than DCEN but in my own testing it’s not a huge difference. On auto body it’s been a trick for years to run rods DCEN to get better performance. In my own testing in the past I never noticed much of a difference. I do find you can run slightly less amperage on DCEN which will help. Honestly I despise welding super thin material with stick so much that i never do it lol. Tig or MiG is so much less frustrating I use those.

None of that ever made much sence to me. All of the heat on the rod still gets dumped into the puddle regardless of polarity. What I can see is the effect it may have on ionized atoms being pulled one way or the other in the plasma (which also effects redox "cleaning action" in the contect of AC balance on aluminum), and how it may give the molten metal globs a static charge which pulls them to the other side. With all the old timer slang that gets tossed around in industry it wouldn't suprize me if the DCEP "penetration" was actually just referencing arc forcefulness or cleaning action for penetrating through dirty metal; as opposed to the modern use of penetration to mean the melt depth profile in a slice and etch.

On thin sheet metal it is common for 6013 to be run DCEN, which tends to produce a tall rope like weld. It makes sense that it would also work with 7018. I have only ran 7018 on DCEN by accident and it did run, definitely had a a odd sound to it though lol.

Cleaner the better 😀

Great question. A stick welder operates on variable voltage, constant current. On DC output your voltage would be read as actual voltage (which voltage is dictated by rod and arc gap). On A/c you would have RMS voltage. Current wise on older transformer machines are all adjusted for the power difference on AC vs DC. Basically the numbers on the amperage dial (look at a miller dial arc 250s dial for example) are doped/skewed so that when you select the same amperage in both dc and a/c mode the effective welding current (aka the way the rod runs) we’ll be very close. On modern inverter machines that can output A/c they too will likely be compensating the output. No doubt there will be some variability in actual output with any machine between the two. So your thoughts are correct, they are likely looking at rms and not peak, however they all have their numbers doped to make them comparable to dc. With that said I have welded with a couple A/c only machines (40+ years old) that seemed to be way off on heat input based on the settings I selected. Considering all those are is a transformer with multiple taps for lower output, I am not sure why the output was “weak”.

@@makingmistakeswithgreg Maybe those 40 years, stoled a few amps :) Lose trafo plates, degraded isolation... etc... A'm sure last 40 years stoled some power from my hands 🤣 As AC from outlet is rms 230V (or 110V in USA), so transformer should give also rms power/amperage. But also we could never know how company 40 years ago labeled it. On the other hand.. overrating was not so popular in those days(at least in my expirience).

6013s on thin material are a life saver for sure. They are my go to rod on thinner steel for sure, especially the 1/16th rods.