Scott-EP

damn, this post should be edited and made a sticky for the noobie welders out there

lkailburn

sweetness ;-)


thanks, yeah there is a lot of great info here

-Luke

lkailburn

gas lense parts came just before the weekend but i only had a few mins to try it out. (flew down to DC for the weekend). i noticed i had trouble keeping the arc stable and what i think was actually happening is i had too much gas flowing through. i had it turned up a smidge to about 25 when doing that collector (so i could extend the tungsten out just a hair) but now with the gas lense parts and its improved flow i think 25 was way too much because i could see it actually blowing the puddle around.

tonight i'll clean off some plate steel and run some beads on it at a lower flow rate, maybe 17-18 and then i'll post up pictures

-Luke

Toysrme

Set it to 10. Maybe 15 tops for a collector. Sounds like you're getting some arc blow. Plus more flow = shielding gas turbulence that will swirl the air were trying to purge right back into the weld.

lkailburn

Update 6:

this was my first try with the gas setup. gas flow around 17, i could still lower it.

you can see there is a bit more color in the weld. but the weld with filler shows a lot of black contamination? i do my best to keep the filler rod as close as i can without letting it melt.

also, this was 1/4" thick steel welded at 70amps. too thick/too low heat



I'll do some more practice on thinner scrap plate metal

-Luke

Toysrme

Well for just running a bead I'd be more in the 110-120amp range myself. If you wanted to join that to anything in one pass tho you'd be 200-300amps depending on the weld. That's just me...
The black is contamination. Clean your electrode, filler rods & base metal better. I'd start with the electrode.


You're gettin there.

lkailburn

yah, see my little tiny welder only goes up to 100amps lol. so i've got to stick to the thin stuff.

If you look at the bead with no filler, you can see that there is no black contamination going on. which instantly makes me think its the filler rod. when i can find some thinner scrap metal i'll try a non-filler pass, and then clean a filler rod with rubbing alcohol and then do a filler pass and see if that makes a difference. The base metal was pretty damn clean, i took an angle grinder with a flap wheel on it and polished it way up, then cleaned it with rubbing alcohol. the beads are close to the 'edges' of what i ground/clean tho. maybe they sucked in a bit of contamination?

more practice!

-Luke

jinxy

alcohol is nothing but carbon, oxygen and hydrogen, so using alcohol will contaminate your welds by allowing oxidation reduction reactions to take place. When you use the argon to shield the weld, you're using it to keep those contaminates out of the environment.

lkailburn

hm. do you guys use any chemical cleaning agents then?

jinxy

you can use alcohol and acetone, but you just have to make sure it's all evaporated before you start welding.