Well, since Greg said there are no settings on this welder, and it just plugs into the wall, I'd say having the heat turned too high and wire speed wrong isn't really possible here.
I agree the aluminum is pulling heat out of the weld.
Having never used one myself, I'd ask if its possible to "unclamp" the two electrodes sooner in the weld process....
Or just get used to using an aluminum backer...

Last edited by darren (6/24/2014 4:55 PM)

I actually have one of those welding spoons!  havent tried that.

This welder has a toggle switch that lets you control the amount of time the current flows.  What this thing would do is when you start to weld it would immediately start to burn into the metal and throw sparks.   No matter how thick or thin the metal.  It basically just wouldnt weld anything together.   When I put the aluminum on the top side, it wouldnt weld at all, just heat up the aluminum.   When I put it on the bottom,  thats when it made all the difference.   It started behaving like I believe it should.  place the part between the tongs,  press,  hit the switch, it would start to heat up and make a nice round cherry.  Behaving the way it should.    Doing it like that it made some nice strong spot welds.    

I was about ready to give up on it until I decided to try that.    The aluminum disapating the heat sounds like a good enough answer for me.

 

This morning, I took the bolt out of the top moveable half, and made it a little bit bigger and put a larger bolt in and a fiber shim on one side to make the mechanism work real smooth without the side to sid motion and slack that it had.   This made it were I was ablt to put a lot more pressure down on the weld without it trying to move side to side.    That made a big difference in its performance.  

I actually have it where its able to weld two pieces of 12 gauge real nice.   Welding thinner gauges and thinner to thicker it still welds best with a piece of aluminum underneath it.    

Ive got it where Im confident its making nice, clean useable spot welds.   

My wife told me the reason she bought this for me is she heard me talking about spot welds at different times (and at the bash)   and she got a 20 buck coupon email from ebay (anyone else ever get one of those)  making this a pretty decent purchase for the price of 115 dollars.    

I will post some picks of some welds if anyone wants to see them.  

Is there much use for it on a Mustang?  There are only a very few places where a 7" reach would work.  Cool tool to have, though.  The new bolt thing is a great idea to improve it.  Too bad the builder could not do that from the start!

Greg B wrote:

  .....I will post some picks of some welds if anyone wants to see them.  

Welding always fascinates me.  Show some pics!