Xlaserlab X1 Pro, Pt. 3 Making Sparks

Now that I have everything needed to make all of the connections, I figured I could finally try this thing out. The road, that took too long, leading to this point is detailed here and here.

Before getting into the actual act of welding, I had a nagging worry in the back of my mind that I had not set up the wire feeder correctly. The working part of the wire feeder looks a lot like an old time movie projector. Remember those? There are two wheels that drive the wire.

Wire feeder mechanism.

The unit comes with two sets of wheels that are marked .8V, 1.0V, 1.2V and 1.6V. I have no idea what the V stands for.

Drive spools side A.

Drive spools side B.

There are different sized grooves on each of the spool halves.

Grooves in the drive spools.

I am using .9mm wire and none of those numbers on the spools appears to be .9. I thought that the wire was supposed to go down into the groove, so I chose the one with the groove that just let the wire slip into the groove.

As soon as I tried to use the machine to advance the wire, the wrongness of this approach made itself instantly known. The wheel spun but the wire did not move. OK, so obviously the wire doesn't go into the groove, the groove must just be there to guide the wire through the feeder. I chose a groove that would not let the wire slip down into it, which turned out to be the smallest groove available, which was not, for reasons I can't fathom, the smallest number on the spool face.

Now that the wire feeder appears to function properly, it is time to move on. I stopped by Harbor Freight to get their smaller welding table, mostly because I wanted to protect the top of my work bench from damage. Of course, the table top is an old fire door, so how bad could it be? I didn't use the base, just put the table top on my work bench.

It took a bit of doing to get started, there are a lot of things that have to be turned on to get it to work. A few things on the panel that look like status indicators area actually switches. I learned this a little bit at a time. The first few times I tried, nothing happened when I put the gun to the work surface and pulled the trigger.

Once I got it to make sparks, my initial run was pretty terrible. It did more burning than welding.

First try, not so good.

The bit on the left is where I started. I found out that the wire was not feeding. I then figured out why, the wire icon on the touchscreen display is more than an indicator, it is a switch. I thought that having the wire feeder attached and powered up was enough, it is not. The part to the right is when the wire feeder was turned on.

Back side of the first try. Without the wire, not very good penetration, with it, better.

The next piece I tried worked out a little better.

Second try front.

Second try back.

Next I tried to do the back side of the joint on the second piece. That didn't work out too well, it was hard to keep the gun aligned with the groove.

Backside attempt.

I tried a few other items and once again learned that you need to have things clamped pretty well, or at least be able to hold on to them. Lastly I pulled some coupons out of a welding practice kit that I got from Amazon. The first tries didn't look so good, but after a while they started getting better.

Practice piece front.

I was having some difficulty keeping the gun/wire aligned with the gap and had some lines that strayed. I've heard people say that the wire basically pushes the gun and determines speed. I didn't really feel that and was doing my best to maintain a steady pace.

When I first started this I had the machine set to 2mm thickness and these are 3mm thick. The first couple of passes had pretty poor penetration, but when I adjusted it to 3mm, it did a pretty good job.

Back side of first piece.

By the time I got to the back side I was doing a little better keeping it straight. The line on the right was the last one I did (the piece was getting really hot). I was able to keep that one fairly straight and even.

I can see where people with welding experience pick this up easily. If you look closely, you can see the molten pool as you go and it is just a matter of keeping the pool going where you want it to go.

Obviously, this like anything else this is an acquired skill that will become better with practice. I don't quite feel confident enough yet to work on something I actually want to keep, but that should come in the near future. All in all, I have to say that this is a pretty impressive little machine that will be able to handle many different projects, once I have gained experience in using it. Definitely recommend, two thumbs up.