How to Clean a MIG Welder

Video Transcript

" Hi I'm Mike Rogers and we are making this video for expertvillage.com on the uses of a mig welder. Having to show you the few useful techniques it is important to show you how to look after the machine itself because this nozzle does get very badly covered from the weld and needs cleaning periodically. In addition the wire and the sensor can become welded to the tip if you are not very careful. This happen periodically so you need to know how to clear this problem. Firstly we remove the gas shield. Simply by this. Secondly if we look here we could see that the weld bead at the end of the wire has become attached to the tip. So by pulling the trigger the wire could not come through it has welded itself. We need to clear this problem. Okay to clear the end of the welding tip we need a pair of wire cutters and we simply cut away the welded portion and try again and yes the wire is now flowing through. Cut it to length you always want to keep this little length before starting to weld. So that is the tip prepare for the next weld. This turn our attention to the gas shield nozzle. This nozzle has started to become clog with bits of weld splatter inside. We need to keep it clear it could fill in completely if we don't keep on top of this problem. A simple wire brush is a good start. Simply brush inside of the nozzle until all those little bit of splatter are gone. We can then take a larger wire brush and give it a simple clean around the inside. The cleaner we clean this area the better it would keep itself clean once we are working. Now sometimes as it happened here you could get a very tough of weld splatter. You see that it is built up inside. We need to remove this with the wire cutters. Simply checking away inside and then finishing with the wire brush one last time. This then goes back on to our torch and we are ready to start our next welding project."