TIG Welding - the easy way.

[RogerH]

4 hours ago, Adie TR3A said:

Hi Roger

The R tech tig welders are great pieces of kit i have had one for some time now and have done all the  body work repairs on my 3 with it.

Obviously you are using AC  and   pure tungsten or zirconated electrodes sticking out about 5mm from the ceramic shield

What gas are you using     

Are you balling the end of the electrode before welding ?

Feeding the filler rod took me ages to get the hang of even now i have good and bad days.  I found that the WP16 torch that came with the welder  somewhat heavy when doing  welding on the shell and changed it for a smaller lighter WP9 (R Tech or ebay) also changed the ceramic pots for  glass Pyrex ones,  eBay again(you can see through them when welding). Have you got an auto dimming welding mask? 

It's practice .. practice  perhaps doing some welding on 1mm steel sheet would give you some practice 

Regards Adrian Salisbury

Hi Adie,

Hobby Weld Argon.

Zorconated Tungsten electrode.

I am not balling the end - What is that ????

I am using the standard gun TIG 26 - t feels OK.

I am using an auto dimmer mask.

I can get the metal to melt and usually control the current to keep the pool going.

The main problems at the moment is getting that lovely stacked dimes appearance and exploding the molten pool with contaminants.

Lots of practice.

 

 

[Adie TR3A]

Hi Roger

The R tech tig welders are great pieces of kit i have had one for some time now and have done all the  body work repairs on my 3 with it.

Obviously you are using AC  and   pure tungsten or zirconated electrodes sticking out about 5mm from the ceramic shield

What gas are you using     

Are you balling the end of the electrode before welding ?

Feeding the filler rod took me ages to get the hang of even now i have good and bad days.  I found that the WP16 torch that came with the welder  somewhat heavy when doing  welding on the shell and changed it for a smaller lighter WP9 (R Tech or ebay) also changed the ceramic pots for  glass Pyrex ones,  eBay again(you can see through them when welding). Have you got an auto dimming welding mask? 

It's practice .. practice  perhaps doing some welding on 1mm steel sheet would give you some practice 

Regards Adrian Salisbury

 

Roger

When tig welding Al you do not have a sharp point on your electrode but a ball/rounded end. Most people just touch the electrode to   the work piece to melt the end, same result as when you do it accidently. This is covered well on  U tube  sites  for tig welding Al

I found when doing my 3A bodywork i was constantly buying gas but the guy i get it from suggested i go to the largest cylinder which contains more gas per £  but the cylinder deposit is greater.

regards Adrian

[RogerH]

33 minutes ago, Adie TR3A said:

 

Roger

When tig welding Al you do not have a sharp point on your electrode but a ball/rounded end. Most people just touch the electrode to   the work piece to melt the end, same result as when you do it accidently. This is covered well on  U tube  sites  for tig welding Al

I found when doing my 3A bodywork i was constantly buying gas but the guy i get it from suggested i go to the largest cylinder which contains more gas per £  but the cylinder deposit is greater.

regards Adrian

Hi Adrian,

I will TRy that.  Yesterday evening  it occurred to me that I am using 1.6 filler rod (that's all I have at the moment). Today I wound three rods together and that gave an improvement. I cam nearly feed it through my fingers. It also melts ever so slightly slower and can join the melted pool better.

 

Roger

[mtrehy]

Don't over think it. You're getting better results as each hour of practice passes - not because you're bunching rods together!

In another 10 hours you won't really care too much about the filler rod or electrode. That's not your problem. If the electrode is clean and you've ground a bit of a point on it then it will be ok to learn with. I grind mine to a point and then just flatten the tip a tiny bit. I've often just grabbed a very sharp point electrode out of my box (prepped for DC) and used that on aluminium and works just fine. Adrian is technically correct but when learning you're going to be grinding every few minutes anyway and don't want to be spending ages prepping each tungsten when it won't affect the learning process.

I remember focussing on all these little things myself when learning but ultimately it's just practice. Same as amps really, you can set it high on the machine and control it with the pedal.

You definitely need to be comfortable though and able to rest your hand/wrist/arm on something as you weld so you (and the work) are rock solid in position, you need to be able to see very well (no cheap masks) and your setup needs to be clean (including the filler). I reckon that when I do a mistake now it's 95% due to me rushing my setup and not being in a comfortable position for the length of the weld. 

I wouldn't worry about feeding the filler rod yet, that can come later when you have got the basics down. You can sit in front of the tv in the evening with your glove on and practice feeding filler.

You definitely need a big bottle though! I have SGS bottle on my MIG and an Albee argon cylinder on the TIG which are both rent free bottles but you pay big deposit up front. If I was starting again and planned to do a lot of TIG I'd look at other options - I've seen some very sensible prices from BOC on monthly cylinder rentals recently and as Adrian says doubling the size of cylinder doesn't come close to doubling the price!

https://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/threads/aluminium-tig-guide-getting-started.64695/

[RogerH]

Hmm, lots to read

 

Roger

[RogerH]

Hi Folks,

things have moved on a small amount. After spending quite a while (unsuccessfully) to lay a stack of tilted dimes I then had a thought !!!!

The job I am doing requires a flat face on both sides. So the dimes are not needed (no matter how pretty the look).

So today I picked up a new bottle of Argon, changed the filler wire from 1050 to 4043 and proceeded to simply melt the metal of both parts and join them together

(not always as easy as it sounds).  Once the pool got moving then it was just a matter of keeping it moving. Didn't use the filler wire.

This actually worked. This is no work of art but functional. It it was on show then I would go over it again and put a raised bead on it but iot will be 100% covered.

 

So I can now get on with coating the dash support with a layer of builders foam

 

Thank you for adding to this adventure.

 

Roger

[BlueTR3A-5EKT]

Well done Roger.

Peter W

[Waldi]

Thanks for sharing Roger.

Great learning for me too (although I have to TIG yet).

Waldi

[nigtr6]

Hi RogerH,

I used to be involved in Aluminium welder and I do recall the material was pre-heated prior to striking the arc.

The temperature was attained using a soft/ fluvy flame, the edges of the weld would have soap, yes, a bar of white soap was rubbed along the weld when the soap went light brown it had achieved its pre-heat temperature. Much easier than temple sticks and crayons etc.

Hope it may help?

Regards

Nigel

[FatJon]

I bought a TIG from R-Tech some years ago and I too had zero experience of TIG welding.

Getting to grips with stainless was relatively easy and I can now make a reasonable job of most steel jobs but Aluminium was a bigger challenge. My tips may seem obvious but they were not so obvious to me when I started out.

My number 1 tip is to make sure it's clean, very very clean, shiny, degreased with brake cleaner and use a stainless brush so you don't ingrain muck or grease into the surface. The cleaner it is the less cleaning current you need and the more of the heat goes into the weld rather than the electrode. Edges need to be as clean as faces, the remnants of the gritty cutting wheel or paint from the hacksaw blade will not help your welding.  

Number 2 tip is when welding dissimilar thicknesses swing from thick to thin but biasing towards the thicker then a quick swing to the thin stuff and feed the rod into the pool just as the thin metal melts and then back to the thicker metal.

Number 3, as mentioned earlier, never try to just keep going if you dip the tungsten in the pool. It's hopeless and you WILL ruin the job. Clean all the oxides off, back to a good clean finish and regrind the tip.

Number 4, rehearse the weld so you know you can complete it with minimal changes in posture and can comfortably and accurately control the torch and feed the filler rod for the length of what you're trying to weld.

Number 5, you can get away with quite a lot of tip out of the torch and more tip out will give a better weld than struggling when welding into a tight space, for example between two runners on a manifold where getting the right torch angle is all but impossible as the torch doesn't fit.

I also find that generous current and going faster makes for less distortion as you actually throw in less heat with more current and a faster travel speed. Nothing worse than making an inlet manifold and finding it's become a banana by the the time the last runner is attached. If you are spending the first 20 seconds getting the pool to melt you're not hitting it hard enough and the heat is dissipating into the work piece and that's best avoided. This especially applies to aluminium which conducts heat away much faster than steel.

An auto-darkening helmet is a Godsend too though I think most are that way now.