I'm headed to a friend's this weekend and will bring one of the "bad" ones to let him try on his machine with HF. I'll keep you posted.

I just tested scotch brite and acetone on the electrodes and did both on the metal again too. Still no arc.

I give up. Throwing these 3 away.

Oscar-Thanks for the video. I'll give it a try. Toggatug-I just measured the 5. There is only .0008" variance from largest dia to smallest. I can't see that making any difference. Also one good and one bad are identical at .0937" Gdarc21- There is no difference in my setup between tungsten...

Oscar- I just did some looking online and can't seem to find the method you mentioned. Any chance you can describe it or post a link to a video or something?

I'll try cleaning with scotch brite. I've tested the 5 and all range from 0.3 to 0.6 ohm. As for "trying to start" when using the "bad" tungsten...when I touch the metal I get a tiny blue spark (some times) like a 9v battery if you short it but that is it. But that is it. With th...

Also, the tungsten are MTS brand bought from Amazon. They had great reviews, but maybe just crap.

I just double checked. Ground is pos and electrode is neg. Like I said, no issues (except from the operator) welding with 2 of the 5. Visually I see no difference in the colour of the electrodes. Also, all are banded purple. Actually, the 2 that work are darker near the point, but one would expect t...

Since I'm just learning, I have 5 sharpened because I am still dipping the tungsten. My pedestal grinder with my dedicated wheel are in my shop, but my welder is in the barn, so having spares sharpened saves me a bunch of walking. All tungsten are sharpened the same...longitudinally. Metal is clean ...

I'd like to preface this post by saying that I'm a mechanical engineer, not a welder. But I have been around a lot of tig welding and have even designed 2 automated orbital tig welding heads for the nuclear world. At home, I have a chinese multi process machine. It runs flux core better than any mac...