I have the smiley unit and its my first time tig welding. My beads are really thin and crooked. i have a hard time getting the filler wire to go where i want it to. Could this be that im using to big of tungsten or the wrong kind or what? Also does sheilding gas use quicker when tig welding versus mig welding because i went through a bottle in about 4 hours of just practicing short beads. Im using 3/32 tungsten the red stuff, 1/8" filler and argon is coming out at about 15psi

 

How are you sharpening your tungsten? How much taper?

 

How thick is the material? 1/8" is rather large

 

It's 1/16. he corrected it in his h-t thread. I guess pics are in order.

 

1/16" tungsten sucks ***. It is the least common size used by professionals. As I've said before, I've welded down to .006" thick material with 3/32" tungsten...by choice.

 

i was talking about filler size not tungsten size. :P

 

I know. I have a pack of red 1/16 from like 2003 I think. It is still full :P

Yeah he meant filler.

back on topic woot!

How clean is the basemetal? contamination will make the puddle run all around on you. Is your filler balling up on the end and then kind of falling off into the puddle? It's almost 100% impossible to get consistant results when that happens.

 

yeah it comes off in like ***** and for some reason i can'[t seem to keep my tungsten at a point, even if i don't touch the base metal with it it still get like melted

 

The tungsten is balling up?

You might have the machine hooked up wrong. It shouldnt do that on DC. You might have it on the wrong setting (DCEP) instead of DCEN. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_tungsten_arc_welding

Wikipedia >*

 

Smiley units dont do aluminum. Sounds like hes touching the puddle.