00:00All right, today we're going to do some welding with gas shielded flux core. It's also called
00:06dual shield. We'll weld some different thicknesses and cut them apart to see the penetration we got.
00:11We'll run a vertical weld and we'll talk about the setup and the pros and cons of running dual
00:18shield wire. So one of the biggest advantages in my mind of running gas shielded flux core compared
00:23with solid wire is that you can weld uphill with a stringer bead and have nice hot settings just
00:30about the same that you'd have when you're running in a flat or horizontal position. So if you notice
00:35I'm just keeping that wire up on the leading edge of the puddle. What I like to picture is a glass of
00:40water filling up and you just keep your finger right on that surface as it fills up. Now the
00:46important thing here is to watch your angles and I like to you know of course be heading in there
00:53about 45 degrees but use just a very slight push angle when I'm going uphill with this wire
00:58and you can just have confidence in the process that that slag is going to hold it in place but
01:05it is pretty sensitive. Any little variation in your movement you'll see you can end up with some
01:11you know just little wiggles and wobbles but for a vertical weld running a straight stringer on wire
01:17feed I mean that's really pretty good in my opinion and people who run this all day every day I mean
01:23I'm an engineer nerd talking about it but people who run it all day every day you can get pretty
01:26smooth. So let me show you something here at the start of this weld those are worm tracks and that's
01:32where gas was not able to escape out from under the flux in time and so you end up with those little
01:39discontinuities there usually they're pretty surface level but the main reason that this happens is if
01:44you're using too short of a stick out and so if your wire doesn't have some length to it it can't
01:51preheat on the way in so if you hold a longer stick out it's a lot better notice the rest of
01:56this weld is completely clean. Let's talk a little bit about the setup so the wire itself is gas shielded
02:01flux core. Aesop's trade name is dual shield. Lincoln's is outer shield. Now I'm using 045 or 1.2
02:09millimeter diameter wire. The gas that runs with it depends on the wire itself it's either usually at
02:16at least 75-25 argon CO2 blend like you'd run with solid wire or straight CO2 and some wires can run
02:23either one. At the end of the wire designation it's E71T-1 at the end it'll either have an M or a C.
02:31M for mixed gas and C for CO2. Another consideration with flux core wire of any sort is the drive rolls.
02:38So these are knurled drive rolls see those little grooves to help push the tubular wire without having to pinch
02:44down on it too hard. Let's take a look at the machine setup and settings here so I'm using the
02:48HTTP MIG 2800 today and the last time I used this I just used it in manual mode so when you first turn
02:55it on it's just wire speed and voltage old school and you can just leave it like that and never mess
02:59with any of the settings inside but if you go to MIG 2T then you can enter some synergic settings and
03:05since I don't run a lot of dual shield flux core I just went through here and you select your wire type
03:11and now when I turn the wire speed knob it changes my voltage as well and that top left LCD shows the
03:19estimated amperage that I'm going to have so this is what I set it to right here about 250 inches per
03:25minute and since I was running vertical up on that last weld I just dialed it back about a volt or so
03:32from what was recommended and that works really well for me you know I probably didn't even need to
03:38dial it back but it was helpful so in addition to being able to run out of position like that
03:43there are a few other advantages of running a dual shield flux core there are also some
03:47disadvantages we'll talk about later in the video but another one of the advantages is that you can
03:52get good penetration or at least better weld penetration than you get with short circuit MIG
03:57so we're going to go ahead and test that out here now since I'm not running in the vertical position
04:03I'm just going to turn up my wire speed and amperage a little bit and also just go with the
04:06recommended voltage that they had and these settings were kind of spot on now notice I'm
04:11using a slight drag angle here this is debated and let me know in the comments if you run a lot
04:15of dual shield what you do a lot of people actually run a push angle I'm kind of in the if there's slag
04:21you drag camp but the slag is so light in this case that you can often run a push angle and it seems to
04:27do okay but either one you just don't want to get too carried away with and run it nice and consistent
04:33all the way across and you have some light slag usually isn't too too bad to remove here but you
04:39can see it catches every little wiggle and wobble that you have so let's go ahead and cut this apart
04:46and take a look to see what kind of penetration we got on this quarter inch all right let's take a look
04:50at the weld penetration on this quarter inch thick plate so this light region here I've etched the weld
04:55to show where the actual weld metal is and it's penetrated into this vertical plate as well as the
05:00horizontal plate well I think it'll hold now I want to try something just a little bit thicker
05:04so I'm going to go ahead and turn up my wire speed and that'll increase my amperage as well
05:09and then run here on some half inch thick plate notice once again I'm just using that
05:15very slight drag angle the the biggest thing is to keep those angles very consistent as you weld along
05:21now notice that slag following right behind your weld pool and it's not too bad to actually read
05:28the weld puddle it reminds me a lot of 7018 where that slag follows right behind but the slag freezes
05:33really fast which is one of the things that's pretty helpful in the vertical position I'm holding
05:38that little bit longer stick out once again and that seems to work now dual shield it is a pretty runny
05:45puddle and so it's pretty sensitive to any little movements that you have so you'll notice there are a
05:50few little inconsistencies on that lower toe right there the upper toe is pretty consistent but you know
05:56any little movement it's going to capture it on the left that looks like a little bit of undercut
06:00I didn't notice any in real life so I'm not sure if that's just part of the image or maybe there is
06:06a little bit there but its size is right about a quarter inch and then on that lower leg about a
06:13quarter inch on the smaller parts and the bigger parts are just a little over so let's cut it apart
06:20so I've etched the weld here on this half inch thick plate once again and you can see I did get
06:23some penetration into the vertical plate and into the horizontal plate on this thick material
06:28and it did just barely come down and kiss that corner of the weld so you know this is in the
06:34acceptable region but I wouldn't mind a little bit more penetration I think with a little bit hotter
06:38settings I could probably get there when I'm setting up for these videos I usually cut an extra set of
06:43coupons because sometimes I need to take a mulligan on one of my shots but I didn't this time so I
06:48figured for practice sake I'll run one more and I felt pretty good about that one
06:53now a couple other advantages of dual shield flux core are just the bead appearance you can get a nice
06:59smooth clean bead I just like the way that they look a lot of the time and also the properties now
07:05people talk a lot about strength of a metal but there's a lot of mechanical properties that aren't
07:12strength and one of them is toughness and the toughness of a weld like strength when it gets
07:18impacted is quite a bit higher a lot of times when you're running dual shield so that can be a big
07:24advantage now let's talk about some of the disadvantages of running a dual shield flux core
07:28and the first one comes up as soon as you go to buy it it's about twice the price of your standard
07:35solid wire so you're going to be spending more up front now you can save some of that on productivity
07:41if if that makes sense but generally speaking solid wire is going to be more economical and you're
07:47using gas either way now another drawback to running the dual shield flux core is the fume that you get
07:54it is a smoky and pretty dirty process so I'm fortunate to have a fume extractor here but if you don't have
08:01one it can smoke out a pretty big room pretty fast and you end up with a bunch of just little fine
08:08dust all over everything when you run a dual shield flux core so that can be another disadvantage now
08:14something else to keep in mind is not all machines will really run a dual shield wire well so you need
08:19to have you know at least like a 200 amp class machine to run some 035 dual shield well all right well
08:25if you have any questions or comments or if you run this stuff all the time and have some other things to
08:29add let me know down in the comments section below and if you enjoyed this and learned something
08:33let me know by hitting that thumbs up below now if you are just getting started with welding and
08:38you're trying to teach yourself in your garage or your own shop and you want to be able to learn faster
08:44i have some affordable online courses linked in the description below that i'll walk you through
08:48everything that you need to know step by step to get up and going with the basics so be sure to check
08:53those out we'll see you next time
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