Trying for a decent bead!!!!

[bhardy501]

Another thing you need to remember with small machines is the duty cycle. thats the lenght of time you can safely weld with the machine out of a 10 min period. You can find out the duty cycle in the paperwork that come with your machine or maybe even on the machine itself. Some of the smaller inexpensive machines have a very short duty cycle at full power. If your machine is rated 20% at full power then you can weld continuous for 2 min out of 10 with out risk of burning up the machine.

[SICFabrications]

ark welding is sort of my thing the 6013 is a good filler rod with deep penetration but never makes pretty welds try the 7018 1/8 lead the weld and use both hands one supporting the other so you get an even smooth motion. and are you ac or dc welding

not true... once you learn the 6013 rods, they can make the most textbook pretty welds. with enough practice, you can make a 6013 weld look as if it were tigged

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I am not a fan of AC stick welding. You get better results from DC Reverse Polarity also known as DC+ or DCRP. Now your rod coice. If you have dirty metal or need deep penetration use the 6010 (my choice), 6011 or 6013. These are not drag rods and should be used with a slight whip motion. Establish your weld pool (the molten part) advance the rod out of the pool about 2 rod widths, ex. 1/8 rod should whip out about 1/4", then back into the pool by 2/3rds of the pool. Repeat this action stacking the weld as you advance each whip stroke. Your whip out and back is done quickly as to not let the weld pool harden. If it does harden just stop on the back stroke for a sec. to reestablish the pool. The whip action does to things it preheats the metal in front of the weld for better penetration and it cleans the metal. These rods should be used as a root pass, filler and cap should be done with a 7018. now when you switch over to a 7018 you dont use the whip action with it. You use a drag technique. The biggest thing with the drag technique is to watch your weld pool and make sure as you advance the weld the pool stays uniform. The back side stays nice and round and the width of the pool stays the same. If the back side of the pool is elongating out then you are moving to fast, slow down a little. As far as rod angle I keep my rod straight in when using the 60xx rods and use a slight trailing angle, rod tip pointed back toward the weld,when using the 7018s. Either rod pool control is probably one of the most important things to watch. Your pool will tell you exactly what you are doing.

very sound advice! matter of fact, this was gonna be my next topic for discussion