well welcome back Steve rod reviews today we're talking about welding flux core welding let's get
to it right now well today we're going to discuss flux core welding I realize a lot of people who
watch youtube channels and they're sitting people welding they're mostly seeing them use gas metal
arc welding and some people call it MIG welding metal inert gas welding i've been welding for over
40 years and i have welded with the mig welder thousands and thousands of truck frames and for an
industrial use they're just terrific there's two main differences between the flux core and the mig
welding and today i'm going to tell you my opinion i'm not here to sell machines or to sell wire to
sell anything i'm giving you my own opinion that i'm saying for the average do-it-yourselfer flux
welding is the best now we're talking about the wire itself which is i'll show you i've got a
little piece here and it's called flux core and all it is is a wire like this and for mine it's
oh four or five and i'll tell you something ya you're gonna see a lot of youtube channels that
tell you oh you have to have a gas bottle and you have to hook it up and for use that are new
to the welding scene this is the kind of tip you would get on a flux core machine and there's no
diffuser on the end so the ones that have the gas would actually have what's called a diffuser on
the end and the gas from the bottle on the back of your welder puts gas through here and shields the
welding and this wire does the exact same thing but there's some downfalls to this type of welding
and there's some upside to mig welding now if you are going to use your welder for lighter gauge
materials and especially bodywork or where your welds have to look currently critically appeals
appealing and really nice fancy-pants welding well then go for the gas but for me I'm saying
the flux core is all the average do-it-yourselfer needs and I'm gonna tell you why okay so let's get
right down to the brass tacks here first of all if you want to do mig welding you got a buy or lease
or rent tank on the back of your machine that's an added cost and it's not very user friendly in
the wind so you can see in the back here I've got a fan and quite often I take that fan and I point
it right at where I'm welding if I don't have my exhaust chute on and like during the summertime
when the doors open and I could have a strong as wind as possible and it will not affect the weld
where if you do have MIG welding set up with a bottle yeah try to do some welding outside and the
wind it's not very user friendly at all and I'm gonna show you the weld that I did and let just
loose guys take a look and see now of course with flux core you're gonna have a lot more smoke and
I would say yeah you're gonna have more porosity and some more slag and you're gonna have more I
would say clean up to do but let's just take a look at this this is the piece I did right here
now I just stabbed that on there real quick it was nothing fancy and for me most of the welding
I do is not all that fancy I'm welding iron and I'm not in an industrial atmosphere I find way
too many people by themselves a welding setup with MIG and tell you what unless you're doing bodywork
forget it because it if you don't mind a little bit of splatter a little bit more porosity but
I've been welding for forty years using the flux core and a lot of people aren't gonna like to hear
that because guess what a lot of these places that you know you're visiting on YouTube well they're
selling you machines as well and they're selling you the idea and I'm not buying it I've had great
success with flux core I will continue to use flux core and I'd love to hear your opinions whether
you actually use flux core or whether you've been sold on the MiG process itself even though it's
more appealing to look at is it the right choice so let's take a look at my Lincoln welder here
it's a 240 volt and I'm going to show you the chart on the side of it and maybe you just might
think about flux core might be a better choice so let's take a look at that next ok so here we
have the chart here from Lincoln Electric and we have four stainless steel aluminum settings now if
you take a look at here you will see that the gas shielding we get down the bottom here this is your
flux core no gas shielding the only one that we're really interested in here is welding steel which
is this one right here so if you go across and you see this pattern here that means not recommended
and really they're telling the truth so these are the thicknesses up here of your steel all the way
across or whatever material you're looking at and you start a 24 gauge all the way to 5/16 we take
a look at the the gas shielding and you go across here and you could see as the letters get higher
is the temperature range on your settings on your welder that go up and for mine is a maximum of e
so if you are using gas shielding tank on the back of your welder the most you could go is
12 gauge and this is the thickness rate here right 2.5 millimeter now they do not recommend
anything past that from Number ten to five sixteenths they don't recommend anything past size
so now we go to the flux core welding they don't recommend anything at the bottom end which is 24
gauge to 20 gauge but with the Mik process it's recommended so now what does the average person
weld well I'll tell you what the average person welds from 18 gauge to 5/16 that's about what
the average person Wells and I'm using 45 and it goes all the way to 5/16 and I've welded thicker
not with multiple passes and never had a problem now if you go with the 35 gauge wire 35000 up to
10 gauge so you can see there is a huge difference in welding capability between using a MIG welder
with shielding gas which is a maximum of 12 gauge here but it goes all the way down to 24
and the opposite happens when you use gasless flux core and as you could see as far as I'm concerned
the average person who's a do-it-yourselfer it's going to be welding 18 gauge to 5/16 well thanks
for trying to be here today I hope you found that interesting and I would surely like to see the
comments down below whether you agree with this or not because to tell you the truth yeah there
is so much information out there on convincing everybody the flux core welding is bad somehow
and for me I think it's a no-brainer it's so much less expensive to get into the hobby and not so
complicated on your wallet and that's the main thing a lot of people are deterred by getting into
welding because it can be quite expensive now in the future I'm going to do some more welding and
I'm going to talk about different processes as well so thanks for joining me here today
subscribe if you haven't come back again and let's do some more welding and have some more fun chairs
you