I've recently been practicing a lot. Mostly on aluminum. I'm getting more consistent and fairly comfortable striking up an arc and moving. Finally got my filler hand to where I can feed a whole stick autonomously. That was a huge deal. Occasionally, I will stop and switch over to mild steel or stain...

What do you have your machine set at, freq. balance, amps. argon cfh? how thick is the plate your welding? I've used a few different settings so they're running together but I've used 125 amps, 10% balance, 30-50-100 AC frequency. About 15 cfh flow on Pyrex gas lens setup. Open to suggestions. This...

Irrespective of tip shape the crap Chinese welders seem more affected by surface finish / grain on the tungsten than real machines - not sure what grit your sharpening with but try finer finishing on a linisher if you have one and turn tungsten very slowly so grit marks are straight not spiralled -...

I had a bad bottle of Argon just a few weeks ago. It's been in my shop for 5-6 years or so. Gas was okay(noble gasses don't go bad) but apparently, there was moisture or corrosion or whatever in the bottle. Couldn't keep the black bits out of my welds on aluminum for anything. Mild steel was not muc...

Wondering if this might be a tungsten issue: pure tungsten on an inverter machine, maybe, or a tungsten shape issue. For instance, sharpen the tungsten to a crayon point to focus the arc. Thanks for the input. I dunno. I've tried quite a few variations of sharpening. I've done the needle point whic...

Hello All, New to the group. Beginner TIG welder who has gotten his feet wet. One frustration I'm having is focusing the arc in the center of the joint. It seems my arc either jumps to one piece or the other. The way I'm getting around it is cramming pedal into it, but it seems like Jody and other w...