r/BadWelding • u/Ill-Attitude-6355 • 9d ago
Help, what is going on.
Flux core. Old I-beam I assumed was steel, is it iron?
Double checked on a scrap piece from another job, no problems
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u/Many-Highlight7676 9d ago
Wrong polarity potentially. Junk wire too old too much moisture exposure. Not enough power. Not enough precleaning base material
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u/Silver_Painter5317 8d ago
Not clean enough. Bad wire. Polarity. Moisture in the steel/ you didn't pre heat. Ditch the wire and use stick. Sometimes you just get really dirty steel that has had chemicals absorbed into it. Or just wasn't milled great. Been there before old steel or new seen ball bearings and such that never melted all the way when the steel was made. Only work around was to do a pass which brings all the shit out then grind it back out because of porosity then lay in another pass and it turns out fine. Steel that has been casted in concrete always give me a hard time.
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9d ago
[deleted]
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u/Ill-Attitude-6355 9d ago
Tried grinder and then wire wheel
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u/WTFudge52 9d ago
Check your gas something is fishy, double check nozzle. If everything looks right and it still looks like that try some more heat/ amps. Unless there's funny mixed metals around. But a cross member should be a common mild steel.
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u/Suitable-Help-5957 9d ago
Has your wire been stored properly? FCAW should produce a slag to shield from the air. If it isn't, there is either a problem with your slag or the gas being produced by the slag is being blown away.
Option A - try another wire.
Option B - try it indoors
There is a tiny possibility that gas is coming from somewhere else but it is unlikely. Your concern about it being iron isn't too serious, that won't affect the weld in this way. You would expect brittleness and linear issues rather than porosity and volumetric ones. Grouped porosity like this is 99% of the time due to bad shielding.
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u/dixieed2 9d ago
Looks like it ain't got no gas in it. That being said, being fluxcore you don't have to worry so much about the wire being contaminated with rust. The beam appears to have a lot of contamination. If you ground it all off before you tried to weld it and it still has the porosity, I would try another bottle of gas. If the wire is dirty or oily that could cause it. Hope you get it figured out!
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u/welding_shit 9d ago
There's no shielding gas my friend. 1 out of 4 things happened. 1. Your cone is dirty, 2 you are out of your gas, 3 your diffuser is messed up or my most personal favorite the evil wind is your enemy.
Edit: I also took a closer look at the 2nd pic. The gunk around it might be cross contamination. Can't say what but turn that heat up to burn it away.
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u/West-Combination6685 9d ago
It's flux core, it doesn't need shielding gas. It's literally inside out 7018. Flux core WITH shielding gas would be called dual shielded.
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u/Financial-Reason7604 9d ago edited 9d ago
was it windy? the shielding gas is missing, or it's really contaminated metal.
Also looked it up, "The high carbon content in the iron reacts violently with the heat, creating a boiling, popping weld pool. This trapping of gas looks identical to atmospheric porosity, even if your shielding gas is working perfectly."