Welding Tips and Tricks

Anything from 1/4" and up will work. Get into the thick stuff, and you'll need to preheat the base material to get your first beads to flow (or use about 250amps!). The upside of using 1/2" is that it will withstand an enormous amount of practice beads before turning to goo-

That's a lot of work to get a bead at all. First a couple passes of just pushing a puddle then try to add some filler, then put that burning torch down.

Is this what you mean by goo? I was hoping to get another layer on this one.

Yup. And yup.

The trick with thick aluminum is that it takes an enormous amount of heat to get your first puddle. The base material keeps that heat for a LONG time, so you can run another few passes more easily. But, you need to quickly taper off the heat used to get your first puddle because the accumulated heat is melting the interior (below the oxide layer). Continuing to weld only turns the interior (melts at a much lower temp than the oxide) to goo so your puddle/beads are just rubbery snot worms.

You can plunge the part in a bucket of water to quickly quench it without losing all the heat. I like 1/4" for practice, not 1/2". 1/2" is (in my opinion) much harder to deal with for the reasons mentioned above.

Practice lap #5 today.

I've also been practicing on some 1/8" and I have my machine set at 140A until I run a pass or two and then I cut it back to around 130A or so. Sometimes I'll run a bead a little cold just to see if I have enough control to keep from just flooring the pedal. I'm really just looking for consistent bead width and uniformity. I'm thinking that on the thinner stuff having more control of the pedal and being able to make consistent beads is more important than penetration. Not trying to say penetration isn't a very important factor either.

I had not tried a T joint lately and gave one a try with a #5 cup. I was impressed by how shiny the tungsten stayed.

Dip less, travel more. You'll continue to get smoother and more consistent beads

Thank you.

Gene, I'm wondering how you place your torch hand when you are welding. It looks like you might be having trouble moving it smoothly. Dont put too much pressure down on the table. Just lightly touch it with the heel of your hand. I sometimes extend my pinky and just touch the tip of the surface is rough or hard to slide on.

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Warren, Thank you too. I'm a leaner. I'll have to work on my posture to put less force on my torch hand.

I think I figured out what a contaminated weld puddle looks like. This would be tungsten contamination.

Learn something every time you weld!

I think it's tremendous that you're plowing away, working towards a goal, unafraid of public commentary. With that determination, IG will no doubt have a new, highly trafficked account

Today's contaminated pool is a 309LW failure.

Leaving the wire stuck in the puddle isn't contamination. It's something I do regularly. I use it as a location to taper of my arc as I reposition. Then I just light back up on the wire.

Yeah yeah That's what I meant.... I always do that on purpose.

And doing that also protects the filler wire from contamination from being exposed to the atmosphere. It's commonly intentional for stainless pipewelders to do this. Now, if it were your tungsten, that would be a different story...

That was the "W" in the failure mode. At one time I had 2 tungstens and a filler at the same time.

Wow, what a break from the internet. I didn't mean to just disappear. I've been welding regularly just not getting online much. That broken chair that I was welding seems to have lost it's temper and now if you lean back too far it changes the neutral point where the rocking chair rocks. Oh well, it was broken before I tried to fix it.