Welding Roll Cage

[9andy9]

what is your recommendation for welding 1 1/2 .095 tubing What wire size How hot i heard that you dont want more than 1/2" heat effected zone this tubing is not chromemolly is .024 wire too small? or do would it be better to use .035 what do the the big teams use Thanks Andy

[arcdawg]

do a search on the board..........

dawg

[ASKANDY]

Andy.
Welcome. Good question.
Most of the teams I work with use .030 wire. If it's not Chr moly, don't worry about the haz. You will not be putting that much heat into it. Just make sure you have good toe tie ins. If you have too much heat, you will have some undercut and burn through.

Have fun!

Andy

[Compchassis]

I use .030 wire on everything. Most of the stuff I weld is .120 wall, but I weld sheet metal all the way up to the occasional 1/2" with it. I run straight Co2 and have never had a problem with spatter. However, a couple of weeks ago my welder went down and the welding shop loaned me an Ltec machine to finish up a job. It had .035 wire in it and I hooked up my Co2 bottle and started welding. Welded fine but I had about 3 times the spatter with the .035 wire vs the .030 wire.

[9andy9]

thanks for all your replys apprciate them

[TheRealSpinner]

I assume you are using mig to build your roll cage. Most of the welding I have done is on 1.5" tubing, .065 wall thickness. I have found that .035 is too much. I use .030 with amperage at 3 or 4 (4 being the highest) with wirespeed at about 10-15 and it works great. I think that if I was working with .095, I would put the wirespeed down even slower (just a little) and move slowly. .024 is definately not enough. .035 might work well though.