Kevin swore he’d never weld with flux core, but decided to give it a try on the Everlast Lightning MTS 275 multiprocess welder. He loads a spool of flux core wire. Flux core welding just seems messy, Kevin explains, as he feeds the welding wire into the welder’s drive roll.
When you are using flux core, you have to change the ground cable from the positive terminal to the negative terminal to make the polarity correct so the flux core wire runs correctly.
Before you feed the wire through the MIG welding gun, always take off the nozzle and tip, then just pull the trigger on this machine. It does not have an auto feed or a wire jog button, so you can just pull the trigger. You can turn the wire feed up to make it feed faster, but it comes out pretty fast.
If you’re using flux core, you can just leave the nozzle off because you aren’t using gas – there’s no reason to have the nozzle to direct the gas if you’re not using any. This makes the end of the MIG welding gun a little bit smaller, so it’s a little easier to get down into tight places.
To use this machine with flux core, Kevin needs to set it up. He pages down on the Everlast Lightning control screen, toggling down to flux core, no gas. For wire feed, he guesses at 150. He leaves it on 2T for the trigger control. The highest inductance is 100%, so he makes inductance 50 percent. There’s no need for post flow. He doesn’t need any wire feed at the end, so he leaves it at 60. No down slope. The spot timer was on, so he turned it off. He left burnback at zero for now. Upslope is set to zero. Starting wire feed is set at 60. There’s no need for pre-flow with flux core. Kevin sets the starting voltage at 19 volts. He gets a piece of scrap metal to run a few weldng beads on and see how it works.
Kevin welds for a bit, then turns up the wire feed a little.
After welding, he uses a wire brush and a chisel to remove any slag, although there is none to speak of.
Kevin shows the sample, where he started his test, where he went to 190 on the wire speed. Then he points to where he went to 225 on the wire speed. Kevin says, “It looks OK. It’s not perfect, but it looks OK at least enough that you can get some work done with it.”
Next he welds 2 pieces together. He tack welds the metal on each end than runs a welding bead between them.
Kevin shows the weld. “Not too bad,” he says, asking viewers to take into account that this is the first time he’s used flux core with this machine and in the last 3 – 4 years.
He very rarely uses flux core, but at least it gets the job done. Kevin says he could increased the wire feed. On the back side, there was really no penetration, so he could probably turn the voltage up a little bit to go with the extra wire feed to burn the weld down in there better.
Kevin says, “You really can teach an old dog new tricks.” While he’s off getting himself a treat, please give this video a “like.”
Well, you might want to wait another moment to see him learn proper use of tools ….