Unfortunately, I do not have "in progress" pictures.

I would be happy to explain the set-by-step if you would like....

 

do it! I dare you!

 

Some .25" steel tig



Some stainless



My welding is getting better, but not where I want it yet.

 

resembles something I used to have in high school...

 

lolol please, you still hit dat pipe nga

 

I have officially welded 2 pieces of metal together. I learned that turning up how much argon your torch outputs helps a ton.

 

lars is all growed up.

 

Do you have a flow meter? How much argon are you moving?

 

At the gauge I have it set to about 14cfm. It turned the little *** on the back of the tig torch and that allowed more argon to flow out. I have been experimenting with different amounts of argon flow.

Also for filler rods should I be using he same thickness as the tungsten electrodes I am using?

 

I like to use as small a filler rod as I can for a given weld puddle size which usually depends on how close the fit is. For stainless stuff I'll use MIG wire when I can.

 

I need a tig welder so bad.

 

the filler rod size depends on the amount of weld your looking to fill. if there a large gap or large fillit needed ill use a larger wire.. if its something like FMIC pipes and the gaps are small, ill use a smaller wire.

make sure you metals are cleaned.. i have wire brushes only for aluminum, steel or stainless. i do not mix.. same for the tig wire.. i have a scuff i use to clean it also.. always use equal or better metal as your welding wire for best results too!

 

I do a lot of pulse fusion for exhaust and IC work.

Dann

 

this.

so much this.

we were welding some IC end tanks on friday, and despite wiping everything down, there was this one spot that must have remained contaminated, and it was absolutely shocking how badly that spot rejected any type of weld. it would either burn through, bird crap, or do all kinds of other assery but not bond together cleanly

 

I'm no expert tig welder, but I'd like to think I'm good enough to give advice lol. The first thing you want to do to sharpen your skills is to try welding without filler. Try just laying some beads using the "walking the cup method" on some flat steel. First things first, for all welds you Do from this point out, keep your tungsten a mm or 2 at max above the puddle. Its ok (reccomended) To get the tubgsten out just enough you can lay the cup against the metal, for more control. Make sure you have a 45-55 degree angle on the torch as Well. You'd be surprised how easy it is to lay a dime roll like that. Try not to give it too much heat, and don't move too slow. You'll know when you've got it right when they look beautiful, golden blue and silver. A really great way to manage the amount of heat as well as how long you stay In one spot at a time is to observe the orange hue around the outside of the weld. You don't want it much larger than 3-4 times the width of the weld it self on thin stuff, and maybe double on thick stuff. Then once you've got that down, practice doing butt welds with no filler, as well as outside corner joints and inside corner joints. This will make you very keen to how you actually manipulate the weld puddle. Once you are good at that add filler. You simply touch it to the leading edge of the puddle half way between dimes. It goes like this. Move torch, dip rod, move torch, dip rod. Don't force the filler in, it should "suck" the needed amount in if your in the sweet spot. This is a great basis to become an awesome welder. As others have said, keep your metal super clean. I brush it with (non contaminated) scotch brite and wipe it down with alcohol. Make sure you grind your tungsten to a fine point on a wheel that only sees tungsten. <--- very important. No wind either, it'll blow away your gas, and the post flow! You need the metal covered in gas till its not glowing anymore, or it'll contaminate (and turn grey) one tip I can give based on these photos right off hand aside from cleaning the metal is to either lower the amperage, speed up, or both.

If you read that a few times and google the terms you don't know you'll have kick *** welds, they're not too bad for a beginner as it is.

And. Make sure you post your new welds after practice.

Hope this helped, wish someone said it to me.

 

From all this talk about cleaning parts and not using the same brush/wheel on everything, I may try that.

I have one wire wheel and one grinding wheel that is used on everything. Removing the green paint on mild weld elbows, buffing stainless so it's shiny, deburring chop saw cuts, grinding electrodes, etc.

Needing an assortment of wheels & brushes will be a pain in the ***.

 

No different from your boyfriend really...


GET IT?!



HAHAHAHAHAHA

 

Wait. You make that amazing absurd flow stuff with contaminated tungsten?

Easy way to do this is, get the diamond wheel from HF for tungsten and when you grind you tungsten put it in a hand drill so you can get it perfectly round and dont burn your hands/risk getting your glove caught in the grinder. Thats the one thats the big deal for contamination if you never do aluminum. Its not a huge deal to use a carbon steel contaminated brush on stainless, you'll just make some fireworks when you weld and random areas will rust, stainless onto carbon is perfectly fine. I just buy a crap load of HF stainless steel brush cups for the drill/angle grinder and get the multi pack of hand brushes when they're on sale.

 

I personally couldn't believe how nice my welds were when I started using a tungsten specific wheel, a huge difference. If you don't want to get a dedicated wheel, try getting some chemical sharpener, it's extremely cool stuff if you've never seen it before.

 

I have 2 issues with chem sharp, it can only refine an already correctly shaped tungsten, and the bigger issue. I've only ever seen them in glass jars with brittle plastic caps and they always fall off the welding table (murphy's law) and break the cap and/or jar and make a mess.