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MIG Welding
How Does a MIG Welder Work?
by
Matthew Wright
If you're thinking about
getting into welding, you have to ask yourself what type of welding you are
interested in doing before you buy any equipment.
Most welding machines are
capable of making most joints in metal, but they are all better at some jobs than
others.
By far the most universal
welder is a MIG. You can use a MIG welder to weld thin gauge sheet metal or
heavy steel pipe.
A pro can make beautiful,
smooth, deep welds with a MIG welder, but an amateur can get an adequate weld
out of the machine, too.
They are simple enough to use
that you can plug the thing in, crank up the gas shield and start doing some
welding — ok, that's simplifying things more than a little bit, but the fact is
MIG welders these days aren't tough to jump into at all.
So, What Does MIG Mean Anyway?
Before we get there, let's
talk about arc welders.
Arc welders use high voltage electricity
to generate enough heat to make a weld.
There are different types of
arc welders — stick, TIG, MIG — but the difference between them is not in the
electricity they use or how they use it, but in the other element common to arc
welders, a gas shield.
The gas shield can be created
by a flux that releases gas due to a chemical reaction, or by a cloud of gas
released from a tank connected to the welder.
In the case of a MIG welder,
the tank is filled with a mixture named Metal Inert Gas by the industry.
The gas recipe varies, but
the name indicates that none of them will react with metal and add any
contaminants to your weld.
This gas is pumped through
your welding cable from that metal tank you had to lease or buy.
It comes out of the same
nozzle your welding wire is fed through so it literally creates a protective
cloud around the arc as you're welding.
A MIG welder is also a
wire-feed type welder. The metal that it uses to create the weld material is
held on a spool inside the welder.
The type of material it uses
depends on what type of metals you're joining, but it's always a metallic
wire.
For beginners, or for welders
who need ultimate portability, some welding wire contains flux inside it,
eliminating the need for a separate tank of welding gas.
This works but is inferior to
a proper gas setup.
The wire is fed through the
nozzle coming out as you pull the trigger.
The welding wire itself
completes the arc that was started when you clamped the other electrode to your
welding project.
A MIG welder has a number of
different heat settings which allow you to set the machine to just the right
power to get a deep weld with good penetration, but not so much power that you
burn a hole in your project.
Don't worry if you do this a
few times before you get things right. Even seasoned welders are surprised from
time to time and end up having to make last-minute adjustments to their heat
settings.
There is also an adjustment
to the feed rate of your wire. This will vary by project and equipment, but as
you get to know your usual jobs and your welding machine, you'll fine tune your
feed rate.
It's always a good idea to do
a test bead on some scrap metal before you start working on your valuable
project.
A properly set up machine
that is welding clean metal will sound like bacon sizzling in a pan.
Getting the heat and feed
settings right before the real job is in front of you can save lots of time and
money.
Matthew Wright
· Automotive
repair expert with three decades of experience
· Former
newspaper reporter and editor
· Specializes
in vintage European vechicles
Experience
Matthew
Wright is a former writer for ThoughtCo. He has experience in both journalism
and auto repair. Wright has worked in the automotive industry since 1989,
specializing in European auto repair and rebuilding. After almost a decade in
the business, he began working as a reporter in 1996, and has held positions as
a newspaper staff writer and magazine editor. After some years in journalism,
he returned to the automotive world, opening an exclusive repair and
restoration facility for vintage European vehicles.
Education
Matthew
Wright attended Georgia State University. His automotive education came from
three decades of maintaining, troubleshooting, and repairing cars.
ThoughtCo
and Dotdash
ThoughtCo is
a premier reference site focusing on expert-created education content. We are
one of the top-10 information sites in the world as rated by comScore, a
leading Internet measurement company. Every month, more than 13 million readers
seek answers to their questions on ThoughtCo.
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more than 20 years, Dotdash brands
have been helping people find answers, solve problems, and get inspired. We are
one of the top-20 largest content publishers on the Internet according to
comScore, and reach more than 30% of the U.S. population monthly. Our brands
collectively have won more than 20 industry awards in the last year alone, and
recently Dotdash was named Publisher of the Year by Digiday, a leading industry
publication.
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