At times, while you are welding, you might experience what is known as excessive spatter. Spatter consists of small bits of material that fly off of your workpiece when you are welding, and it can interfere with your work during the metal fusion process. A little spatter when welding is normal, but when it starts getting too frequent and too dense, it is most likely due to one of the following issues: fast wire speed, dirty base metal, poor shielding gas, wrong shielding gas, wrong welding wire, and excessive wire stick out. Below are some ways to prevent these problems from occurring so that you will not experience excessive splatter.
For fast wire speed issues, it is easy to just adjust the wire speed to a slower setting on your welder. If your base metal is dirty, make sure that you have used the appropriate solutions and methods to remove all paint, rust, oil, grease, dirt, or any other contaminants that may be on the surface of the metal. If your level of shielding gas is not strong enough, increase the flow rate of the shielding gas. If the gas level in the bottle is getting low and the welds are becoming porous, refill the gas bottle. Also, make sure to limit the amount of any cross winds that may be blowing the gas shield away from your welding area. Always be sure to not use the wrong shielding gas too. Your shield gas should consist of 75% argon and 25% CO2 for steel and 100% argon for aluminum surfaces. Make sure your welding wire is the appropriate type of wire for the materials you are welding, and if you have additional wire that is exposed from the tip of the welding gun, move the tip closer to the workpiece to remove the excess length. After checking on all of these issues, you should no longer experience excessive splatter while welding.
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