/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1223190
i don't know anything about welding.
but i know that flipping the stick in no way can change the polarity. it's not possible.
and also you mean current, not amperage.

>>1223194
Idk the difference but I was referring to the amerage necessary to weld a certain thickness of metal with a certain electrode

>>1223190
Every rod manufacturer provides details for operation. See the package or their company website. Most welders also have amp rating charts on them or in their instruction manual.

>Also does flipping the stick around change the polarity? Or is that a myth
I don't think you posses the mental capacity to weld without hurting yourself. Please be careful

>>1223198

I am looking for this too. anyone who can post an amperage vs. thickness chart will be appreciated.

thank you much. ignore that hater up there >>1223194 I think he is a troll.

>>1223198
>>1223206
>I think he is a troll.
current is the property, amp is the unit.
you say what time is it, not what is the secondage?
you say how fast is it, not what is it's miles-per-hourage?
you say what is its temperature, not what is its centrigradeage? (or farenheitage?)

not trolling at all.

>>1223205
What's reverse polarity with stick welding then? Does that just mean that the electrode can operate on an AC or D.C. Welder?

>>1223275

yes if you are using positive ground.

>>1223275
No.

http://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us/support/process-and-theory/Pages/understanding-polarity-detail.aspx

>>1223288
So why would you reverse the polarity of a DC only stick welder?

>>1223377
Depends on the material and joint you are making. Polarity affects the heat apparently somehow, don't ask me.
So if you want deeper penetration it's one way but aluminium foil it's the other or it'll burn a hole right through

You ever heard of Google?

>>1223190
>Also does flipping the stick around change the polarity?
I really want to know where you heard such a thing.

>>1223275
>What's reverse polarity with stick welding then?
Reverse polarity is not something that only applies to stick welding or a particular way to stick weld exactly, it just means that the electrode is the positive end in the arc welding circuit.
Since in arc welding heat concentrates on the positive pole, it suits best welding processes that use the electrode as filler metal too (mostly because it enables better penetration), like MIG and stick. It's for the same reason that TIG, in which the electrode has to stay intact and not melt, uses DC electrode negative, which is also called straight polarity.

>>1223389
So with a D.C. Only stick welder you cannot change the polarity, it's already set to electrode positive? Or can you just switch the electrode holder and the clamp

>>1223393
It always depends on the welder and the electrode you use. Usually DC stick welding is done with DCEP, but a lot of the time it can be done with AC too and some rods use DCEN, but they're not nearly as ubiquitous as the DCEP ones.

>>1223396
Okay thanks. I was looking at a DC only inverter welder that ran D.C. Negative and was wondering if you could make it go positive by switching the electrode holder and ground clamp. Then it just depends on the stick you run to get more heat to the electrode vs more penetration?

>>1223399
>was wondering if you could make it go positive by switching the electrode holder and ground clamp
Usually you can do that, but always make sure it's okay with the specific welder and obviously while it's not connected to power.
>get more heat to the electrode vs more penetration?
More heat to the electrode means more penetration. That's determined by amperage with stick welding.

>>1223399
And then depth/amperage will depend on stick size based on their recommendation, and type of joint?

>>1223402
But isn't DC- more penetration and DC+ thicker puddle?

>>1223403
Yeah, less so on type of joint though.
>>1223407
Nope. Don't know about puddle thickness but when the welding process uses the electrode as filler metal DC+ will enable deeper penetration. Maybe there's an exception with some special snowflake rods but I don't know.

>>1223417
Interesting I guess I was reading it wrong then. If that's the case and everything and someone's using the correct electrode size why do you read online about people needing mugs amounts of passes for 1/4" steel plates

>>1223423
That depends on the job. Sometimes in an industrial context where you'll work on things that bear huge loads or come under insane amounts of force they'll need multiple passes (and even then in those cases you'll use metal core or flux core welding more often than not), but in most diy contexts for 1/4" plate, a single properly made pass with 1/8" 7018 rod at about 130 amps will do the job just fine.

>>1223427
What about situations that are under *moderate* loads. Like welding up a bumper to a frame, or control arm suspension parts?

>>1223430
I never worked on car parts before so I'm not 100% sure, but one pass (provided it's a good one) should be totally fine.

>>1223432
Groovy. How can you tell that a pass is good or penetrated, especially if you can't see the back? Just by how the bead looks?

>>1223437
Yeah, the roots (sides) of the welds are usually a good indicator of the bead's quality.
Watch Jodie's vids my dude
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEFd56ofHos

>>1223442
Thank you

>>1223377
>>1223382
The arc deposits most of its heat on the positive side (that's where the electrons hit after they accelerate across the gap), so running non-consumable electrode processes like TIG electrode negative gives them better penetration. The situation is reversed with electrode-consuming processes like stick and solid-wire MIG, where depositing the arc's heat on the incoming filler wire produces a hot spray of metal that burns into the base metal more deeply than those processes would if run electrode negative. So stick is generally run electrode positive for better penetration, but electrode negative is preferable for sheet metal (also used in conjunction with a low-penetration rod like 6013). AC penetration is in the middle, and generally isn't used much for stick, though it does offer the advantage of being immune to arc blow from high currents magnetizing the stuff you're working on.

>>1223206
The rod boxes usually have this information, unless youre buying some chick crap i guess.

>>1223222
>current is the property, amp is the unit.
Potential is the property, volt is the unit.
You say what potential is it, not what is the voltage?
You say how much weight a cargo ship can carry, not what is its tonnage.
You say how many parts out of a hundred is it, not what is the percentage.

>>1223543
>You say what potential is it, not what is the voltage?
i say both

>You say how much weight a cargo ship can carry,
yes i do say that. i say exactly that.

>You say how many parts out of a hundred is it
percentage isn't a unit. completely different.

so 1 out of a billion. sure showed me lol.

>>1223543
>>1223573
The proper way to determine cargo ship capacity is in TEU though

>>1223573
>i say both

No, you hypocritical faggot, you can't use "voltage", but chastise the use of "amperage". They're derived in exactly the same way.

Also, you appear to have missed the point of the post you're quoting entirely, FYI.

>>1223573
The point is that OP's phrasing was correct. Amperage is the term commonly used in welding for what he referred to (https://www.millerwelds.com/resources/welding-resources/welding-dictionary#A)), similar to its use in other contexts (the spam filter doesn't like the electrical engineering dictionary link, so you can google that yourself). >>1223194 was an example of "correcting" something that wasn't wrong, and >>1223222 justified it with unrelated linguistics. From the Miller link above:
>Amperage: The measurement of the amount of electricity flowing past a given point in a conductor per second. Current is another name for amperage.
Current is typically referred to as amperage in contexts where its quantity is important.

Welder here.
If you refer to the current with any other term than amperage in a welding shop, correctly or otherwise, you're gonna get looked at like an ayylium.

>>1223580
Or maybe us electronics hobbyists have taken to calling it "current" instead of "amperage" because the value is frequently measured in mA or µA, not A. This can also refer to tonnage, where specifying "its tonnage is 20,000" doesn't require units where "its mass is 20,000 tonnes" does. Also you fuckers had better stop confusing mass and weight. Alternatively, both welders and breadboarders use whole volts for the measurement of potential.

Potential is also ambiguous from a physics standpoint when multiple vector fields are in play, it can refer to magnetic potential, electric potential, gravitational potential, elastic potential, etc. to the point where specifying "electric potential" at the head of every spreadsheet takes up more room than "voltage".

>>1223591
>Also you fuckers had better stop confusing mass and weight

they are the same thing in a uniform gravitational field, like the one around you're mom.

>>1223593
Have fun using pounds with that dimensional analysis you have there, imperialfag. I'll be waiting.

>>1223580
>>1223582
I guess all welders are mongoloids then
>>1223591
>taken to calling it "current" instead of "amperage" because
Because its the proper term and electrical engineers aren't dumb retard gorillas like welders seem to be.

>>1223599

american's are taught from birth when to divide by g and when to multiply by g, which is why we went to the moon while you were squabbling over some pigeon infested rocks off the coast of brazil.

>>1223611
I was more referring to how it became the proper term in the first place.

>>1223614
>american's
heh
Now don't get me wrong, England is by far more regressive than the US, but when you assume that I'm a Britbong because I use metric you forget that metric isn't in the minority, imperial is, and England uses somewhat of a hodgepodge of both unit systems anyway. Besides, there are plenty of instances in imperial units that require obscure conversion factors that simply aren't required, especially since you lot use metric units for electricity. I don't see you lot using feet when calculating an electric field strength, or when calculating centripetal force, just stick to one system for christ's sake.

natural > mks > cgs > US customary > mts > imperial > fucking cubits

>>1223626

correct. I was being sarcastic. I used to be a design engineer, and loved projects that used metric dimensions. when imperial units were involved, half the brain power went into putting g in all the right places and keeping it out of the wrong places.

>>1223611
>I guess all welders are mongoloids then
Suggest a more practical and useful way to refer to current when every welding machine out there uses amperage as a standard unit.

>>1223611
>hey man those plates are thick, could you go up to my welder and set the current higher?
>sure, by how much?
>more current
>HOW MUCH
>MORE CURRENT

Yeah that would be super smart and totally not a retard gorilla way to do things.

>>1223753
>>1223772
they use 'amp' as the unit
nothing to do with 'current', the property, being misused as the unit
nothing to do with 'amp', the unit, being misused as the property by creating the word 'amperage'

>>1223772
>>hey man those plates are thick, could you go up to my welder and set the current higher?
this is fine
>>hey man those plates are thick, could you go up to my welder and set the current to 200A?
this is fine
>>hey man those plates are thick, could you go set my welder to 100A?
this is fine
>>hey man those plates are thick, could you go up to my welder and set the amperage?
this is dumb
>>sure by how much
>>more amperages
oh wait, your argument wasn't even particularly well structured in the first place...

never seen a welder that says 'amperage' on it, show me one that does.
'A' or 'Amps' or 'Current' fuck even 'Power' on a chinese box of tricks, maybe a slidey scale triangle pictogram thing. never 'amperage'

>>1223843
>never 'amperage'

volt meters that DISPLAY VOLTAGE never say voltage either. they say volts, because that is the unit that corresponds with the numbers, same as ampere is the unit that corresponds with the numbers that display amperage.

I love the autism on display in this thread.

>>1223850
>volt meters that DISPLAY VOLTAGE never say voltage either.
sometimes they do, they might say 'voltage' to show the property being measured and/or 'v' to show the units being used in the measurement.

some welders current controls do say 'current' on them so you are the dipshit missing the point.

>>1223874
>sometimes they do, they might say 'voltage' to show the property being measured

post pic of one

>>1223275
Reverse polarity is a function of DC welding. When you see abbreviations DCRP and DCSP those mean reverse and straight polarity. RP puts more heat into the rod, SP puts more heat into the workpiece. Rod manufacturers will list recommended polarities either on the packaging or on their websites.

Why do my mig welds look like shit? Using c25 gas, 20v and 270i/m on a Lincoln mp210 on 1/8th inch tubing.

I'm doing the cursive e's.

>>1223843
Oh okay, so you were just nitpicking over people not sticking as autistically to proper use of terms as you, I thought you had an actual argument for a second.

>>1224010
Try going a bit more slowly and having less wire feed.
That wouldn't end up on weldporn but that's perfectly acceptable.