While I love my wirefeed welder, I'm pretty careful about where I use it. While most are rated to weld up to 1/4" material (more if you have a 230v unit), you simply won't get the penetration you should have in a high-strength application with thicker material. You also get slightly more reduced penetration when running flux-core wire. Yeah, I know lots of guys have built all sorts of stuff with these, up to and including trailers, but I've also seen more than a few weld failures. Mine is rated to 1/4", but I won't use it if the material is any thicker than 1/8". For structural welding on a motorcycle frame, no way would I use one unless it's fairly thin stock, say .090" or less.
The XS frame and swingarm was factory welded using an arc process, and that was for strength purposes. I'll be honest and say that if your new swingarm and frame mods were done with a wirefeed, you're really taking a chance IMO. You noted that it's really hard to break the welds, but a properly-done arc weld will be all-but-impossible to break, and on thicker material the weld won't fail; the parent metal will first. Your design will be putting a lot of torsional stress on many of the welds, and those are the type of stresses that wirefeed is the weakest on.
My rule of thumb is if the machine can't burn a hole in the material, you're not getting enough penetration.
I don't want to see anyone get hurt....
The XS frame and swingarm was factory welded using an arc process, and that was for strength purposes. I'll be honest and say that if your new swingarm and frame mods were done with a wirefeed, you're really taking a chance IMO. You noted that it's really hard to break the welds, but a properly-done arc weld will be all-but-impossible to break, and on thicker material the weld won't fail; the parent metal will first. Your design will be putting a lot of torsional stress on many of the welds, and those are the type of stresses that wirefeed is the weakest on.
My rule of thumb is if the machine can't burn a hole in the material, you're not getting enough penetration.
I don't want to see anyone get hurt....
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