Mike Hummel's steel experimentations

I started my experimentations today with some bending of 22 gauge sheet metal. Easy to bend and work with. I moved on to welding after some simple 90 degree bends. After switching in some flux core wire I began testing different wattage and wire speed combinations as seen below.

The best one I found for sheet metal was a 1 wattage and about 50 speed as seen in top right. Since there was no argon gas I had to use the flux core and that's why some of my welds turned out so bad. (argon is used to shield the weld from the oxygen) After some practice I was able to weld a few like below.

Overall the sheet metal was hard to weld because there is a high risk of burning through the piece.

After some experimenting with the 22 gauge sheet metal I used the chop saw to cut some round tubing and then used the grinder to angle the edge so it would be able to fit together nicely on the side of another piece of round tubing. I then did some practice welds on the left side of the piece before welding the joint as seen below.

Since the weld was so awful looking again because of the lack of gas I decided to grind it down.

On wednesday I will be working with lower gauge sheet metal and more with thicker tubing. Hopefully there will be argon I can borrow but if not I'm going to use some anti-splatter spray.