Long Equipment Life Begins With Regular Maintenance
Properly maintaing your welding gun and consumables is among the most important—and overlooked—steps to ensuring quality welds and long equiopment life.

The following are some simple ways to get the most out of your equipment.

Nozzles: clean the nozzle as often as possible, preferably with a tool designed for the task. Spatter build-up can lead to poor shielding gas flow or short circuiting between the nozzle and contact tip.

Contact tips: Rotate Centerfire contact tips as needed to ensure an even wear pattern and longer tip life.

Cable: Periodically check the torque on the neck and end fittings. Loose fittings interfere with electrical conductivity and can cause overheating and premautre failure of the gun.

A downloadable PDF document with these and other recommended operating tips is available on the Bernard Web site by clicking here.

Choose Your Weapon
Welding is not a one-size-fits-all type of activity, and your MIG gun should be a reflection of your particular welding needs. To give you even more choices in customizing your MIG gun to your specific needs, Bernard has expanded its online Configurator to include the components from its new S-Gun line.

You can now add a heavy-duty steel "monocoil" cable, an OXO-style handle and Quik-Tip consumables to your chosen gun. Most of these options are fully compatible with components from Bernard's Q-Gun line.

The Configurator allows you to select each component of your MIG gun—the cable, handle and trigger, neck, consumables and power pin—from among a variety of options.

The Tipping Point
Contact tip recess can have a significant impact on your weld quality. Click here to learn more.

Improve Your Flux-Cored Results: A guide to identifying and solving common FCAW problems

Flux-cored welding shares many of the same challenges common to MIG welding, but also has several that are unique to it. Understanding how to address these issues can yield significant improvements to your productivity and efficiency.

Self-shielded flux-cored arc welding (FCAW) fills a niche in welding that is not easily replaced by other types of processes. It offers high deposition rates, a wide range of mechanical properties, good weldability and a range of other features and benefits.

That doesn't mean, however, that it's free of challenges and difficulties.

Below are common pitfalls of FCA welding, along with trusted ways to correct them.

Birdnesting is a tangle of wire at the drive roll that halts the wire from being fed. Incorrect drive rolls, tension settings, blockages in the liner, improperly trimmed liners (too short, burred or pinched) or using the wrong liner are all sources of birdnesting.

Burnback is the formation of a weld in the contact tip that occurs when the wire feed speed is too slow or if the gun is held too close to the workpiece. Correcting this problem is easy: increase wire feed speed and the distance of the gun from the workpiece.

Porosity is a small pocket of gas caught in the weld metal. A dirty workpiece, welding wire that extends too far from the contact tip and impurities in the base metal are common causes of porosity.

Worm tracking are marks on the surface of the weld caused by too much voltage. If worm tracking occurs, reduce your voltage by increments of one half volt until the worm tracking is eliminated.

Slag inclusions occur when the slag gets trapped inside of the weld metal and it creates the potential for weakened weld components and reduced serviceability. These inclusions can be caused by incorrect weld bead placement, incorrect travel angle, low heat input, or poor interpass cleaning. Address these issues one at a time to diagnose and correct the problem.

Undercutting occurs when a groove melts in the base metal next to the toe of the weld and is not adequately filled by the weld metal. To correct this problem, reduce the welding current and travel speed, decrease the welding arc voltage and adjust your electrode angle as needed.

Incomplete fusion is the failure of the weld metal to fuse completely with the base metal or the preceding weld bead in multi-pass applications. Incorrect electrode/work angles, getting ahead of the puddle with the electrode and insufficient heat input are common sources of this defect.

Quality self-shielded FCA welds are within the potential of every welder. Armed with some basic information, you can aggressively tackle the most common problems associated with self-shielded FCA welding without sacrificing time or quality.

Click here for a more complete explanation of these common problems and their solutions.

Bernard Introduces Heavy-Duty Centerfire Consumables

Heavy-Duty Centerfire consumables can reduce downtime associated with tip and nozzle changeovers.

If you're running a high-heat welding operation, such as ship building, trailer fabrication or heavy manufacturing, you know how easy it can be to melt down your comsuable using air-cooled equipment. It's people like you who Bernard had in mind when it designed its new Heavy-Duty Centerfire consumables.

The Heavy-Duty Centerfire system provides the same superior performance as the orignial Centerfire line, but is designed for high heat air-cooled applications from 400 - 600 amps.

The Heavy-Duty Centerfire nozzles feature a removable cone, which allows operators to quickly replace the most frequently damaged part of the nozzle without disassembling the entire nozzle and contact tip.

Heavy-Duty Centerfire consumables are available in a variety of configurations, including several nozzle i.d.'s, tip recesses and tip designs.

To learn more about Heavy-Duty Centerfire consumables, call the Bernard Customer Service Team at (800) 946-2281or email info@bernardwelds.com.

Tell Us Your Story

Do you have a story to tell about Bernard’s products? If so, we want to hear about it. We’re looking for Bernard customers who have saved time and money, increased their efficiency and productivity or otherwise benefited from the use of our products.

If this describes your company, click here to tell us your story on our customer service Web page.

Select companies will be offered the chance to be featured in a case study article that will be published in a future issue of MIG Tips and in a relevant trade publication.

Contact Bernard’s public relations team at (262) 478-9297 with any questions about this opportunity.