Welding

[The Shaggy D.A.]

Ello peeps.

My new ER5 doesn't have a rack. A Renntec one is around £100, Givi/Kappa arms and plate about £110. And then there's a Hepco & Becker jobbie for a laughable £300.

Or...

There's one of these for £65 :-

https://www.amazon.co.uk/R%C3%B6hr-SMINI-120NI-Welder-Inverter-120amp/dp/B08BG4RBVZ

Reviews seem favourable, and it sounds like it'll be plenty for fabricating a simple frame for mounting a topbox plate on. Anyone used one of these, or anything similar? Don't want to sod about with gas, or having to warn the national grid when I want to use it.

I'll probably get through a pack of rods and set fire to parts of the garage and my person whilst getting to a stage I'd be happy to trust my work for the final product, but I reckon I'll end up wandering around the house looking for things to fix with the new toy
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Chances are quite high you are not in my Monkeysphere, and I don't care about you. Don't take it personally.
Currently : Royal Enfield 350 Meteor
Previously : CB100N > CB250RS > XJ900F > GT550 > GPZ750R/1000RX > AJS M16 > R100RT > Bullet 500 > CB500 > LS650P > Bullet Electra X & YBR125 > Bullet 350 "Superstar" & YBR125 Custom > Royal Enfield Classic 500 Despatch Limited Edition (28 of 200) & CB Two-Fifty Nighthawk > ER5

[stinkwheel]

I'm probably about 3 days ahead of where you are now in terms of welding skill. I've got a similar little inverter arc set, mine is a draper one (probably from the same factory in China). It'll work fine for anyting up to 3mm. I haven't tried it with anything thicker but it's not turned up all the way. With practice you can weld 1mm wall bar without blowing it to bits quite easily.

Buy good quality rods. Practice lots. When you're halfway down a rod practicing, save the remaining half for your workpieces (easier to control the shorter stick). Preheat the rods in a low oven so they are bone dry. Prep is vital, you need a gap for the weld to go into, the pieces need to be held where you want them and you can't weld rust or slag.

Self darkening mask so you can see what you're doing. Keep the fire extinguisher handy.

If your early efforts are as good as mine, invest in a couple of decent flap wheels for your angle grinder. Tell yourself they are for prep if it makes you feel better.

Or there's brazing? You'll need a good torch. You can JUST get 10mm x 1mm wall tubing hot enough with MAPP to braze but you have to roast the hell out of it which means an oxidising flame (not good for the braze bonding). I found heating it with a reducing flame hot enough to flow flux over then turning the flame up to melt the bronze worked reasonably well.

Relevant to me because I was just thinking of getting some tube stock in for the exact same project tomorrow (rack for my bullet).

My plan is to make a form from MDF, pack the tube with sand and cold set it round the form to get the initial framework and bends. I still haven't decided if i'll weld or braze.

EDIT: Flux core MIG is another option. They are pretty simple too. I used to have one but it was cheap and shonky and it caught fire when the wire feed stuck and the motor burned out. I have since been advised that the first thing you should do to make a cheap MIG set work well is fit a quality PTFE liner in the wire feed.
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“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[Bhud]

How much experience do you have?

If you have none, then the following will apply. If you have some experience, then disregard everything below:

I've had a similar machine for a couple of years. I think it's absolute rubbish and I should have gone for a MIG/TIG welder right off the bat. However, it's usable. It's going to take a fair bit of practice to be able to use it. They are best suited for thick sections of steel.

Get yourself two big (500g or 1kg) packs of flux-coated E6013 rods. One of these roughly 2mm thick or thicker, and the other 1.6mm thick (the thinnest you can get).

1mm and 1.5mm-thick mild steel is very, very tricky. You will blast holes in it.

The idea is to be able to get the amperage just right, and the temperature of the piece you're working on just right.
Too hot is no good; too cold is no good. Too high an amperage is no good; too low and you'll just get spatter.

You set the rod off to start a bead as if you're striking a very long match.
That's your first task, btw. Just put down some lines of weld on a flat sheet of mild steel, with both sets of rods.

Making that rack sounds like a nice project but a little ambitious to expect to be able to do right off the bat. Probably something you will want to work up towards. Use thick steel and be grinder happy when you start your project.

[stinkwheel]

Here's a couple of things I made with mine.

A sump guard carrier (not welded it all in this picture):
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AM-JKLWzdewRTOG77ok2jRNkNZNskqXufYF3-nOPzXInCT_KSF-Pa-GgAVw5InGw10vhyuoS49xLmgRhlPRWWOyO0LpajKSzVM89BgYyiFa1lQua36yRIhnpm9ElmxFiayDAOEVFfU0w06DZu95AuI3Gctlh=w1182-h886-no

Brake lever:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AM-JKLUgHLxeVukvWtfdd5p8_DjsT409Kd-xhOD-D81dg_m6cYbOJpr9aeWrAeA77C-WXf-0JewISTyisrmtKe5jCr3-0v9h3i55amVRnlae-LjRfgNnZmXrvMoiIz6BYTT8-YCnOiFR-fEA23VGYJ0jKVoS=w1182-h886-no

Both survived a competative long distance trial. If they were going to break, they would have.
____________________
“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[Shaft]

[Pete.]

Shaft is right a MIG welder would be a far better prospect but if you are hell-bent on going for a stick get yuorself some 1.6mm 6013 rods and a load of scrap to practice on. 6013 are forgiving rods and have shallow penetration which will help avoid burning through your tubes plus the small diameter will help prevent you laying down a huge weld when you're learning to go around the circumference.

Get/make a workbench and get a good light over it but not from behind oyour head because it will light up the inside of your lid and make seeing what you're doing difficult. A piece of ply or worktop would be ideal if you could get a sheet of tin over it. A kitchen sink draining board in a pinch and it'll stop sparks rolling all over the place.

Another thing to think about is just about any stick welder can be used as a tig welder either scratch or lift start and some do HF-start tig. You'll need pure argon gas for that though and a torch with a gas valve.
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a.k.a 'Geri'

132.9mph off and walked away. Gear is good, gear is good, gear is very very good

[doggone]

If you can already weld those little inverter welders are not bad actually.
I'm not good but builder friend is and he has used the one I bought for similar money to weld up RSJs in a roof.
It's much easier to get a result which looks good with MIG but that costs you ten times as much and try carrying that with gas bottle up a ladder like the little inverter.

If you are welding nice clean reasonably heavy bits of steel it will work well enough, more fiddly stuff like thin tubes it will make a mess if not very careful.
In short worth a go but to do one job far better to take it to someone who already knows what they are doing.

[WD Forte]

I used to have a gas MIG setup years ago mainly used to keep
rusty old Transits etc on the road and stuff like that.

Now, all I have is a portable gasless MIG I bought for
spares repair for £25 which oddly and happily enough never needed to be fixed!
woo hoo! result!
Its been brilliant for the odd tacking up job and broken exhaust stud removal.
When I had to change a YBR ignition switch, I use it to tack nuts on the end of the security bolts and out they came nae bother.

They guy I bought it off used to use it for metal gates until he had problems with it and assumed the wire feed had gone wrong
I reckon he used the wrong tips or wire which dragged cos its always worked perfick for me.

Auto masks are nice too, wish I'd kept mine now
might buy another if I have to do any projects other than a quick tack job
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bikers smell of wee

[MarJay]

The difference between a stick welder and a MIG welder is the difference between not being able to weld and being able to weld. Take it from someone with a fair bit of experience.

Stick welding is for ships hulls, not for precision. MIG or TIG is so much better but the level of skill involved with TIG is quite high.

MIG is great. Not only will it do a fair bit of work for you, but it will still teach you a lot of technique. If you can, try to go for a MiG that uses argoshield rather than CO2, but they are expensive. My other half works for BOC but I haven't managed to get a discount from her! If I could, I'd have a relatively basic MIG welder which used argoshield but I don't really have enough need to justify one at the moment. The expensive part in that case is having the account with BOC and paying for Argoshield - They know how to corner the market.
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British beauty: Triumph Street Triple R; Loony stroker: KR1S; Track fun: GSXR750 L1; Commuter Missile: GSX-S1000F
Remember kids, bikes aren't like lego. You can't easily take a part from one bike and then fit it to another.

[WD Forte]

MIG is like having a glue gun but for metal
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bikers smell of wee

[Polarbear]

I have a really good inverter welder filched from Shell when they conveniently decided to ban all portable welding gear so you couldn't blow the ship up . It will weld using up to 4mm rods and I absolutely adore it.

One thing not mentioned is that many rods are polarity sensitive so make sure that you have the earth and rod holder in the correct sockets for that rod. Also some are specifically designed for overhead or vertical welding but you won't be doing that for a while.

Get good quality rods, not unbranded shit from some Sunday market. Esab, SIP, Oerlikon and the like.

Then it's just practice and keeping your hand it. I couldn't believe how shit I was after a few years of not having to weld (Ordering the machinists to do it ).
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Triumph Trophy Launch Edition

[MCN]

[Robby]

[Pete.]

[MarJay]

Also worth saying I've never been convinced by gasless MIG, but some people seem to think it's OK.
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British beauty: Triumph Street Triple R; Loony stroker: KR1S; Track fun: GSXR750 L1; Commuter Missile: GSX-S1000F
Remember kids, bikes aren't like lego. You can't easily take a part from one bike and then fit it to another.

[Pete.]

[ThatDippyTwat]

I have a tiny little IGBT inverter set (stick only) that is surprisingly good, assuming you know what you're doing (I was fully qual'd 20+ years ago). It'll not touch a half decent MIG or TIG set and if you actually tried to pull 250A at a 60% duty cycle out of it, it would melt... but it was, quite literally, under £50 brand new. vs North of £1K for anything I'd touch for production/site work. It works for general sticking mild together. Have done 6mm with root and cover passes without issue.

As said, prep is the key, or you get to grind it out and try again. Oven dry your rods before use, keep them in a sealed tube with silica in it. Practice is essential. You will blow holes in stuff. You will stick the rod to the workpiece. It's part of learning.

[GettinBetter]

Check the duty cycle, if you can only use it for 2 mins in every 10 then it may not suit your needs.

At full power the duty cycle on these hobby welders drops right down.

[stinkwheel]

[The Shaggy D.A.]

Thanks for all the insight peeps, figured that realistically by the time I get the kit and get proficient enough, it's going to spend 99.9% of its time taking up space in the garage after one project, so I've just bought a Givi Monorack.

Maybe when I retire and have more tinkertime.
____________________
Chances are quite high you are not in my Monkeysphere, and I don't care about you. Don't take it personally.
Currently : Royal Enfield 350 Meteor
Previously : CB100N > CB250RS > XJ900F > GT550 > GPZ750R/1000RX > AJS M16 > R100RT > Bullet 500 > CB500 > LS650P > Bullet Electra X & YBR125 > Bullet 350 "Superstar" & YBR125 Custom > Royal Enfield Classic 500 Despatch Limited Edition (28 of 200) & CB Two-Fifty Nighthawk > ER5

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Fair do's. I only bought a mig welder to remove broken stuck exhaust studs on my old SAAB. It took about 4 hours of mucking about to be able to reliably make a decent looking weld, you should see some of the hemorrhoids I'd made in the first few tries.

It's really useful to have sat around, I've accumulated a fair few off cuts and bits of old steel that you can make brackets with, patch over holes and so on. I've made the obligatory welding cart, 6 ton press, fixed the car exhaust, took broken studs out of other people's bikes, and a few other bits, so in my head it's paid for itself now.

If you are putting it off for a while, spend that little bit extra and get a gas mig, on mine you just set the wire speed once and don't need to touch it, as the power level selection automatically changes the wire feed to suit. It's not that hard to set up once you've got your head around it, but actual welding and controlling the puddle needs experience.
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'81 CG125, '97 FZS600 : '99 CBR600F4, '09 KTM RC8

[GettinBetter]

[sickpup]

A bit late I know but I just thought I'd add to this.

I now have 3 welders, a Clarke 160EN Gasless/gas Mig welder, a Clarke ATA161 Arc with the added scratch TIG kit and an R-Tech AC/DC Digital TIG that can also Arc weld.

There is a lot of negativity towards Arc welding mainly from people who have never used a decent one. I learnt on a massive old Oxford oil filled Arc welder which made things very easy, the little cheap buzz boxes I just can't use, they are horrible. Modern inverters are also easy to use and get good results from.

Mig is seen as easy which it is but good Mig is a lot harder. Mine will do flux core gasless which it is pretty good at just very smokey. Problems here tend to occur in my experience from the wrong polarity and the wire being left in a shed and gaining corrosion on the wire surface.
I have mine on Gas most of the time, Hobbyweld 5 which is pretty cheap, BOC or Adams aren't the only choices, shop around and see what is available in your area.
No machine as far as I am aware is tied to one type of gas.
It's easy to use the Mig on gas but I will be replacing it at the end of the year hopefully for one with a wider range and lower settings so I can more easily do thinner work.
Always buy quality wire, it makes the world of difference.

The Tig is still in the box, had no time to play with it yet and no free cash to order gas but hopefully I'll get to it in a month or two.

I can also gas weld badly but it isn't really suitable for home use.

[recman]

Hands up everyone with a mig who lets out a couple of feet of wire, touches the end of the wire on the earth and pulls the trigger, making the wire glow like the filament in a bulb.

Just me then.

[starksur]

Its been brilliant for the odd tacking up job and broken exhaust stud removal.
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