MIG Wire Feed Speed

Starting points only — tune by ear and eye. These are short-circuit MIG empirical estimates for mild steel (ER70S-6 wire, C25 gas — 75% Ar / 25% CO2). Aluminum, stainless, flux-core, spray transfer, pulse — all need different settings. Real-world tuning: a good MIG weld sounds like sizzling bacon. Too cold (low V) gives bird-droppings beads; too hot gives burn-through; too fast wire gives stuttering pops; too slow gives a runaway puddle.

The math, for reference. Burn-off rate is a wire-diameter property — smaller wire burns off faster per amp, so you need MORE inches per minute to feed it. Material thickness gives the amperage starting point (≈ 1 amp per thousandth of an inch for steel). Voltage scales with amperage in short-circuit transfer. From there, single-pass on thicker material wants the high end; thin material wants the low end of voltage.