Posted by Timothy Gibbons on February 21, 1998 at 14:04:11:

In Reply to: Welding stainless wire posted by Jeffrey Zachmann on February 10, 1998 at 00:50:19:

: Hi Valerie,

: I'm using a MIG welder to put together a stainless steel sculpture of 1/8" wire. Experimenting, in order to get enough penetration during the short bursts of welding, I've turned the voltage up, but get a lot of spatter, and the welds still tend to be not very deep and have alot of weld material. I was wondering if I used a thicker welding wire, (I am now using 0.24) perhaps 0.30, would I get better penetration or just more metal in the weld. I was thinking I might be able get more heat right away and not have to add as much metal. Am I way off base here? I'm pretty much self taught, and the people at the welding shop here in small town Minnesota aren't much help. Thanks, Jeff

Hello Valerie,

One thing to keep in mind with welding staimless steel is you want to weld it as cold as possiable.If you use to much heat the metal will no longer be stainless. So you want to hit the metal as fast as you can with you mig. I personally find that I prefer to weld stainless with TIG ( You have more heat control and can produce smaller beads.)

Increasing the size wire would not help. You would increase the size wire if you increased the thickness of the metal. Also if you increase the size wire you increase the resistance in the closed welding circut and it takes more heat to melt the stainless wire.

Some other things to keep in mind: you might try preheating the metal before you start to weld . This can be done with any oxyfuel torch this not only helps to weld quicker but also helps to control distortoin.Juist play your torch over the metal until it is slightly more uncomfortable to the touch @ 300-450 Degress F. You can use templer crayons to monitor the heat change.

Tim 'Bootz' Gibbons

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