First post from a very inexperienced welder!

[the45er]

After 12 years with a little Lincoln 100 MIG welder, my wife significantly upgraded me to a new Millermatic 211 for my combined Christmas and birthday. Now I can stick some metal together - maybe! lol

First project was to stick some 1 1/4", 14 gauge, square tubing together using 0.30 wire and gas shield. I set the unit's auto function on and turned the dial to 14 gauge. Metal was all new (no rust). First of all, I couldn't believe how fast I had to run the bead! Jeez, compared to that Lincoln that wire was flying out of the gun. It will take some getting used to, but I also couldn't believe how fast that I could blow a hole in the tubing if I stopped for a nano-second.

I know better than to blame the welding unit. It's the Indian, not the arrow. But I would like to know if there are any tricks to getting used to the speed, or does anyone else think that the auto function may be a little "hot" in the settings? I don't see how you can run a smooth bead having to run it as fast as I seemed to have had to in order not to burn a hole in the tubing.

[Broccoli1]

AS runs hot

[Cgotto6]

Auto set tends to run on the hot side as broccoli just said. You will have much better results if you teach yourself how to manually set the voltage and wire speed. You can start with the setting suggested on the inside cover if the machine, but those are just baseline starting points and will require some slight fine tuning. Good luck, enjoy the new machine and welcome.

[go2building]

On thinner stuff I like to push the weld, less penetration.

[Sberry]

If its too hot it would be just right for me,,, ha

[fjk]

I've never liked autoset. I prefer to do it manually. It lets me deal with exactly the problems you're talking about.n

Learn how to do the setting manually (the manual should have a good table in it, there also should be a good chart on the machine someplace --- usually on the inside of the door covering the spool & feed mechanism). Then learn how to adjust for your own preferences ... like you, I prefer to move slower, so I dial the power and feed speed back a bit from the recommended settings.

Frank