Welding Stanless Steel

[Make_My_Day]

I recently learned that you can do MIG welding on stainless steel without using inert gases. There is a flux-cored welding wire available in a few different diameters that can be used to weld stainless. I watched a couple of Youtube videos on the subject, and the method doesn't seem to be much different than using flux-cored welding wire on mild steel. I also checked Amazon to see if the wire was already available for purchase and found that there is indeed a market for it on Amazon. I am wondering if there any professional welders or hobbyists here that have used this method of MIG welding, and what do you think of it?

[CPJ 2.0]

Flux core will always be second best to inset gas shielded, but if you want to glue two pieces of metal together, it will do it, and do it fine for almost any use a home gamer will be using it for.
It’s more expensive (per pound of wire) but you also don’t need a tank of gas.

[fisheadgib]

What CPJ said. I occasionally have to repair a piece of stainless kitchen equipment that has a cracked weld or broken leg and my "portable" Lincoln 140 mig welder ain't so portable as I can lift it but can't carry it very far. Plus the cart and bottle, it's a pain to move around. Enter my cheap HF 120v, inverter powered wire feed welder. It's the size of a six pack cooler and weights 15lbs. I bought some Blue Demon stainless wire for it on Amazon and to be honest, the welds don't look any different than with the Lincoln .035 wire that I usually use, except they probably won't rust. If you want a pretty, professional looking weld, goe mig. If you want to stick two pieces of metal together, flux core will do. I've had the cheap HF welder for around four years now and it works way better than I thought it would and since I've had it, I seem to use my mig and stick welders way less.

[jbp-ohio]

My stepson has his own mobile welding business. I know he doesn't use it but not really sure why.

If you need welding done in the Atlanta area..........https://atlanta.craigslist.org/nat/sks/ ... 14263.html

[Make_My_Day]

Flux core will always be second best to inset gas shielded, but if you want to glue two pieces of metal together, it will do it, and do it fine for almost any use a home gamer will be using it for.
It’s more expensive (per pound of wire) but you also don’t need a tank of gas.

Thanks for the info. I wanted to try it, because although my Hobart 190 will do Stainless with the inert gas, I priced the tri-mix at a local supplier and the price blew my socks off. I don't remember the exact price, but it's way more than a tank of Argon/CO2. I want to try the flux core wire and see what results I can get out of that. I watched a few Youtube videos on the subject, and the results didn't look too bad. I'm not doing professional stuff. I mostly would do repairs for myself, homeowners or maybe light business welding. I can do mild steel and aluminum at this point and would like to do some stainless without spending a small fortune on the gas. If the results are not that good with the flux wire, I will get a bottle of the 2-gas mix and go from there. I was told by the local supply that you can mig-weld stainless using a 2-gas mix, but it wouldn't be as clean, and it's much cheaper than the tri-mix.

[fisheadgib]

Most mig welders will run a flux core without gas also, at least the Lincolns will and I don't see why the Hobart wouldn't. Wire speed and power is all that matters. I've used the Blue Demon stainless wire for a while and it works the same as the non stainless wire. Go to Home Depot and buy a small roll of Lincoln .035 flux core for 15 bucks and practice with it.

[Make_My_Day]

Thanks....my Hobart 190 using 240V power will do welding with flux core wire or plain wire with gas on steel, gas with Aluminum wire and gas with Stainless. Now that flux core wire for stainless is available, I want to try that as well. I don't know how long this flux-core wire for stainless has been around, but I just found out about it about 2 weeks ago, and I wanted to know what the results of using flux-core with stainless turned out to be like. I'll probably get the .035 and the .021 wire to practice with, depending on the metal thickness.

[fisheadgib]

I've been using the Blue Demon for a couple of years and I don't know how long it was around before I found out about it. To be honest, everything works the same as steel wire and steel wire will stick to stainless just fine. I've played around with it and it's not as pretty as a good mig weld but it's passable. A one pound roll is about 25 bucks so it's not too expensive to practice with.