I always run a felt wiper between the drive rolls and the liner. Every welding supply has them. Also, try to keep the cablehose as straight as possible when welding. A simple loop ads a lot of friction between your wire and liner.
2X this is the correct method. Short answer your wire bound up either at the tip or in the liner while you had the trigger pulled and the wire kinked up. Wire speed, temp hi/low or tension tight/loose shouldn't cause a hard kink. MrC.
Sounds like we have nearly the same welder, though mine is a Hobart. I run gas, not flux, but I had the same issues as you. I contacted a buddy who welds food-grade and medical-grade for a living to pick his brain. He had me pull the wire, spray down the liner with cleaner, blow out the liner with compressed air. Its been working great ever since. Im gonna try the wipers that people have suggested here. My garage is pretty dusty since I also use it as a wood shop. Good luck.
You should always know the flammability of any product you use. I only use CRC Brakleen 0589 because it is non-clorinated and non-flammable. Parts salesmen constantly try to sell other brands. With the MSDS requirements, it is easier to stay with one brand.
The liner on my old mig used to get dirty and jam the wire! When I blew it out with the compressor the first time got quite a blast of powdered rust out of it. It seemed ok after that, but that little task became a yearly chore.
take the tip off and try it, you might need to ream the tip out a little. had that at work when we used the flux core, seems like maybe the pattern the wheels leave on the wire makes it too big for the tip.
Let's start at the beginning, "end of the last roll How big of a roll, 10lb or 2lb ? I have had several rolls of FLux Core be wound faulty, and several have had the wire deformed on the spool. flux core deforms easily and will cause lots of birdnests if it is or gets deformed. It all starts with the proper drag setting. If you have it set for 10 lb and now down to the last pound your drag is off. Maybe enough to cause the problem maybe not but its off. Running thru several spools has a wearing effect on the drag tension parts, that's quite common. Some GM & PM usualy takes care of it. If your parts wear, and you tighten the drag that will cause your problem, possibly other causes are there too but we are starting at the beginning. Too tight of a drag setting causes slippage at the rollers, slippage causes two things, wire deformation and roller wear. Wire deformation causes a bind someplace between the liner entrance and the tip. Could be any place in the path and dirt in the liner will make it worse or easier to bind. Worn rollers causes you to tighten them up to overcome the drag and any hickup in the lead causes a jamb at the roller. To test the drag setting, tread the gun, install new tip, release rollers and by hand pull the wire thru the tip. You should feel nothing but smooth & even light tension, no sticky spot, no vibrations. The spool should stop when you do, and you should not need anything but your bare hand to pull it. Next is the rollers and tension. Too loose = slippage, (see above) too tight and that causes wire deformation (see above). Worn rollers (see above). To properly set the roller tension, AFTER YOU HAVE SET THE DRAG, re engage the rollers and while pulling the trigger pinch the wire with your fingers. You should be just able to stop it but not quite. Of course don't be near the ground. If you can stop it its too loose if there's no way it was close to stopping its too tight. Next is the liner, Remember the drag test, if you felt any vibration there is a problem with the liner. Liners wear too and that happens at the bends in the lead. Those bends are at the neck of the gun, the base of the gun as you move it and right out of the machine. The wire rubs hard in those places and causes wear and foreign matter to be generated right inside the liner. You can't help that, stop that, or control that it just happens. Cleaning the crap out of it is about as good as you can do and that's tricky because of the way the liner is constructed like a wound spring. Those low spots in the windings actually give the worn liner particles and wire scrapings some place to come to rest without reeking havoc for a while. Next is the tip, they wear out, get dirty, arced up inside and burned up sometimes. It's a visual inspection, or a manual test of the loose tip in your hand slipping over a piece of wire. Along with the tip is the tip holder that is also the liner retainer. That should be checked for tightness every tip change. Takes seconds. Next is the nozzle, it needs to be clean and free of splatter. There should be no, None, zero contact between the tip and the nozzle. Reason is if the nozzle hits the work it burns the wire inside the liner or at the rollers. That makes a birdsnest, messed up liner, bad roller. I realize a lot of folks don't smoke, I do so there's plenty of wire wipers around here. Put a butt on the wire before the rollers and that takes care of it. Don't run without something to clean the wire.
i use the felt wiper on the liner also.dirt in the liner,or a dirty spool will cause grief,like if the welder rarely gets used and is allowed to get covered in dust/grindings.
Thank you for all the responses! My air compressor is out of service at the moment so I was unable to blow out the liner (I will do it asap though) There is little friction in the liner itself. I belive the major culprit must have been the tension setting. I also loosened the tension on the roll of wire, turned up the heat a titch and turned down the feed. I was still able to get a good bead (well good for me). I only ran about a foot of welds today but didn't get one bind. Hopefully it will stay that way. I also added in a clothes pin and cloth wiper. Thanks again, Ryland
This is the first mention I noticed of anyone using mig dip in any of these welding threads. I have a can thats got to be 25 years old still works wonders, also works good on taps & dies. The birdnest problem I had a while back with my lincoln 175 ended up being a very slightly kinked liner. It would weld ok at times other times it would just spit and sputter or ball up at the disconect form the welder. I finally figured out that it would weld ok if the cable/liner was in a straight line any loops or bends and would start having problems. Took it all apart and found a kinked spot that looked like somthing wad been dropped on it tried to straighten it out with no luck, new liner no problems.
Um no. Here it is again, the whole thing this time, bold is by me ... but like I said, do what you want
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