[v5cvbb]

I started out with a gas lens set but still kept stick out short. Didn't take long to figure out how limiting it was. More stick out gives better visibility and just seems like there's more room. I was horrible at estimating and when I started measuring stick out things got easier.

Good luck. Keep trying untill you find what works for you. There seems to be a lot of flexibility in settings, angles, stickout, travel speed, whatever.

[DougW]

I started out with a gas lens set but still kept stick out short. Didn't take long to figure out how limiting it was. More stick out gives better visibility and just seems like there's more room. I was horrible at estimating and when I started measuring stick out things got easier.

Good luck. Keep trying untill you find what works for you. There seems to be a lot of flexibility in settings, angles, stickout, travel speed, whatever.

Thanks!

Yup... it's "to each his own..." up to a certain point. Right now... If I have trouble starting a bead it seems like the whole bead is a problem. It doesn't seem to matter if I: Stop, wire brush the parts(again), clip the end off the filler rod replace the electrode. The weld, in most cases, is non-salvageable.

Can some boddies answer this question? I've cleaned the part with acetone, I wire bushed it(one direction, blow it off, re-clean with acetone again. Clamp the parts together. Put the electrode within 2mm of the part step on the pedal and everthing turns black like a contaminated weld. It turns black like acetylene w/o oxygen. I know... well duh it is a contaminated weld. HOW? I did not touch the electrode to the part. I mean just as soon as I step on the pedal - black come curling up.

Is there a difference in quality on aluminum. I'm learning on 6063T52 square tubing I get it from a Metals Supermarket over in South Houston. I'm using 4043 filler rod. I've toyed with 5356 but trying to limit the variables.

Just a note as this message has been up on my computer screen while I was doing other things.... But... It seems like I "might" be inserting the filler rod more in the center of the pool(also in the torch cone) instead of on the leading edge. I just picked that up on my last weld of the day so it's something I'll look at again in the morning!

[v5cvbb]

Only time I've seen black is when I left the gas off. Happened twice that I remember well. Any chance you have a gas problem? Have you had any trouble welding steel?

For my practice welding I barely clean anything and have no problems. Just see more trash floating around and finished weld isn't as pretty. All the cleaning is great, but I need hood time more than practicing my cleaning ability. I seriously doubt cleaning is your problem.

[LtBadd]

step on the pedal and everthing turns black like a contaminated weld. It turns black like acetylene w/o oxygen. I know... well duh it is a contaminated weld. HOW? I did not touch the electrode to the part. I mean just as soon as I step on the pedal - black come curling up.

When I read this my first thought was, this sounds like you are welding on anodized aluminum...

[Oscar]

It seems like I "might" be inserting the filler rod more in the center of the pool(also in the torch cone) instead of on the leading edge. I just picked that up on my last weld of the day so it's something I'll look at again in the morning!

Nothing wrong with that so long as you don't hit the tungsten with the filler. If anything it melts much easier into the hottest part of the puddle. It all kinda depends what size filler you are using. The larger the filler, the less it "works" just hitting the edge of the puddle--it will melt so much faster/cleaner if you get it closer to the middle where it is the hottest. With a thin filler, it will melt easily just getting it to the leading edge.

[DougW]

I'm going to remove the torch gas lead from the welder and take the hose off the regulator looking for restrictions or loose/leaking connections. The flow indicator ball indicates gas is flowing ~13 SCFH. Cup is the standard #6 Alumina. Something is very strange. I'm not the most intelligent guy on the block. But I can follow instructions. I do understand the frustrations that can pop up while climbing the learning curve. But when I do the same thing twice(or more) and get different results it seems as though something else is at play here besides ignorance. I can still get better results on the initial fillet(or the first butt weld-doesn't matter - just which ever weld is first in a series of 4 - 2" welds) if I preheat the parts to 200 degrees. On any material, other than the square tubing, I'm plagued only by my lack of experience. My butt welds, outside corner welds, T welds, straight bead runs with and w/o filler, all show a steady progress as muscle memory is being recorded though the repetitive process.

My material is standard 6063T52. As stated earlier I get it at a place called "The Metal Supermarket". It give no appearance of being old, heavily oxidized stock. I go though all the cleaning steps I've described just to eliminate dirty/contaminated materials as even a remote possibility. Filler rod is standard o'l 1/16" 4043 - sometimes I wipe it down with acetone sometimes not - doesn't seem to make a difference one way or the other. I've tried 1/8" 4043 with the only difference being it takes less dips to accomplish the same thing.

Thanks again to all that are contributing to this snafu...

[v5cvbb]

You seem like you've approached the problem in an intelligent manner. Sometimes when trouble shooting, the simplest problems are easy to overlook.

Can you hear your gas flow start and stop each time? That would mostly tell you the valve is actuating? I missed if you answered about any problem on steel. If everything works on DC it's always possibly the machine has an AC issue.

An old friend once told me I wasted time with the tricky stuff before I checked the simply things. He's gone, but his words stuck with me.

[DougW]

You seem like you've approached the problem in an intelligent manner. Sometimes when trouble shooting, the simplest problems are easy to overlook.

Can you hear your gas flow start and stop each time? That would mostly tell you the valve is actuating? I missed if you answered about any problem on steel. If everything works on DC it's always possibly the machine has an AC issue.

An old friend once told me I wasted time with the tricky stuff before I checked the simply things. He's gone, but his words stuck with me.

Yeah... I hear ya'. Simple stuff first.

Actually I think I may be on to something.

First attempt to start a bead on cold metal. Settings: 125A 120F 65B less than 15 but greater than 10 CFH. Starting the weld is taking forever.

20200518_092243 by Doug Wei, on Flickr
The only difference between the previous photo and the next photo is I changed the Argon flow from something less than 15 CFH to something greater than 15 but less than 20 CFH. I had quenched the part with water and dried it off. Cold metal start still takes forever. I'm talking maybe as long as 10 seconds. As you can see a clean start is still difficult but as the metal heats up the welding starts flowing better. In the first picture, if you can't tell, there was a lot of contamination just could not get a clean start. Hence the bump in CFH.

20200518_092252 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

Then the first fillet weld. Yeah, it's not pretty but there is no burn through, and little contamination. I'm gonna change my screen name from DougW to 'BigDipper'! These are things practice can eliminate though so I'm good with where I'm at on these two fillet welds.

20200518_092320 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

Made multiple re-starts, tried my hand at dipping - again. But considering the horrible welds I'm not showing - this ain't bad. Again... practice can eliminate this kind of stuff.

20200518_092335 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

Apparently I don't have the skill set to drive the foot pedal @ 180amps when the metal is cold then throttle it back as the metal heats up. I do think these 2 pieces of 2" x 2" square tubing are acting as tremendous heat sinks and are causing the cold start problems as this is the only combination I've experienced this problem with.

[TraditionalToolworks]

Apparently I don't have the skill set to drive the foot pedal @ 180amps when the metal is cold then throttle it back as the metal heats up. I do think these 2 pieces of 2" x 2" square tubing are acting as tremendous heat sinks and are causing the cold start problems as this is the only combination I've experienced this problem with.

I am not sure what your problem is, but the welds don't look very clean, something is awry, most likely to do with gas coverage or torch height, or even the type of filler you're using, but I am not sure. In your second pic down the top weld is about the only one that looks acceptable to me, and even that one looks like it might have some porosity to the left side of the weld. They seem to be getting better, I will give you that.

[DougW]

Apparently I don't have the skill set to drive the foot pedal @ 180amps when the metal is cold then throttle it back as the metal heats up. I do think these 2 pieces of 2" x 2" square tubing are acting as tremendous heat sinks and are causing the cold start problems as this is the only combination I've experienced this problem with.

I am not sure what your problem is, but the welds don't look very clean, something is awry, most likely to do with gas coverage or torch height, or even the type of filler you're using, but I am not sure. In your second pic down the top weld is about the only one that looks acceptable to me, and even that one looks like it might have some porosity to the left side of the weld. They seem to be getting better, I will give you that.

I was having getting a comfortable postion in those pics. and kept starting and stopping. What drove my optimism was, even though the welds looked pretty crappy, I was seeing consistency in arc starting and pooling at the beginning of the weld. Subsequently I've upped the amps to 150 making even easier starts and pooling while still inside my skill level to drive the foot pedal. Best I can tell it's taking ~120 amps to make these welds. So with a max setting of 150amps I have a delta of 30 amps to play with at the foot pedal vs the 60-80 amp delta I was working with when max amps was set at 180-200.

The following welds are mostly butt joints but some have a few fillet welds in there as well.

20200518_113744 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

20200518_113651 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

The welds on the left were much earlier the two on the right are with the, seemingly, correct gas flow and max amps.

20200518_113825 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

I'm still starting and stopping a lot because I haven't learned to feed filler with one hand. And, obviously, I'm not all that good at starting n' stopping...

20200518_113846 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

[cj737]

More heat, please. Look at the backside of your welds (butt joints especially). That low of amperage isn’t pushing through. Your beads are laying on top of the material, not penetrating. Don’t fear the heat. Crank it up, mash the pedal, stuff the filler in there. Stop regularly if you’re struggling to coordinate feeding wire and moving.

But damn it son, crank it up!

[DougW]

More heat, please. Look at the backside of your welds (butt joints especially). That low of amperage isn’t pushing through. Your beads are laying on top of the material, not penetrating. Don’t fear the heat. Crank it up, mash the pedal, stuff the filler in there. Stop regularly if you’re struggling to coordinate feeding wire and moving.

But damn it son, crank it up!

The problem... What is driving all of this tiggin' thingee is... I'm making at prototype something or other that requires a telescoping assembly. Inside this 1.75" square tubing is going to be a stick of 80/20 with nylon bushings that have to slide inside the 1.75" tubing. Therefore... lots of penetration isn't going to work or I won't be able to get the telescoping function I need. These welds don't necessarily need to be super strong as there will be almost no stress on them. For sure I can crank the heat to it and get'em to lay down better. And after inspecting the inside of the butt welds they could take some more heat but.... Is something like this what you had in mind?

Probably right at 150 amps w/1/8" 4043 filler on these welds...
20200518_124016 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

fugly porosity but w/penetration!

20200518_124009 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

This weld has penetration except for ~1/2" at the beginning...
20200518_123959 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

If you do the zoom thingee you can see the penetration...

20200518_124046 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

[TraditionalToolworks]

Doug,

Definitely listen to cj, but when you take a pic focus before you snap it. Not sure what type of phone you have, but on the iPhone you can just touch the screen where you want it to focus and it will focus there. Some of your pics are hard to see if there is porosity or not.

This last group is looking better though. You just need more practice. (so do I )

Go practice before posting more pics.

[DougW]

Doug,

Definitely listen to cj, but when you take a pic focus before you snap it. Not sure what type of phone you have, but on the iPhone you can just touch the screen where you want it to focus and it will focus there. Some of your pics are hard to see if there is porosity or not.

This last group is looking better though. You just need more practice. (so do I )

Go practice before posting more pics.

Thanks! Yeah, I'm practicing now... before I was just blowin' stuff up!

[BillE.Dee]

Doug, what i'd do is practice just running beads on the same flat stock thickness material that I plan on building with? After I get that down, practice adding filler (butt joint) to get right thru to the back side of material to set my muscle memory....then learn to slack off just a tad so I don't get ripples on the back side so I can get the material to slide, but I can still see where the filler is settling in the joint.
gramps

[DougW]

Doug, what i'd do is practice just running beads on the same flat stock thickness material that I plan on building with? After I get that down, practice adding filler (butt joint) to get right thru to the back side of material to set my muscle memory....then learn to slack off just a tad so I don't get ripples on the back side so I can get the material to slide, but I can still see where the filler is settling in the joint.
gramps

I hear ya' Bill! The main issue is everything is being built with square tubing. That's the main reason I've been practicing(or whatever you want to call it) on nothing but square tubing. I've got a couple of pieces of 1/4" flat stock that will be utilized. I've also been practicing running beads with and w/o filler. All I've been showing are my failures but I have had some successes along the way as well. But that's what's been sorta frustrating. I can do this but I can't do that....

But your suggestions makes sense and I'll throw them into my practice sessions. I know it don't seem like much to folks that have been able to weld since they were knee high to a jackrabbit but just getting to the point I know I can do the fillets - just need a bunch more practice, was a big step. There for awhile I had my doubts!

One deal is my goal is to build this prototype thing'a'ma'jiggy - that's where my main focus is. Learning to tig is one of the secondary goals I have to accomplish to get there.

Thanks for helping!

[DougW]

Doug,

Definitely listen to cj, but when you take a pic focus before you snap it. Not sure what type of phone you have, but on the iPhone you can just touch the screen where you want it to focus and it will focus there. Some of your pics are hard to see if there is porosity or not.

This last group is looking better though. You just need more practice. (so do I )

Go practice before posting more pics.

It's an S10+ Samsung. I tried touching the screen and it just put a slider bar up where I can adjust the backfill lighting. But I'm gonna do some I-net searching on manual focus for the S10+ and see what I can come up with.

[TraditionalToolworks]

It's an S10+ Samsung. I tried touching the screen and it just put a slider bar up where I can adjust the backfill lighting. But I'm gonna do some I-net searching on manual focus for the S10+ and see what I can come up with.

Ah, there's your problem...Android.

Throw it away and go get an iPhone!

I learned to hate Android the honest way, by working on it.

[v5cvbb]

On my wife's S10, in photo mode select more, then live focus. Then you can touch screen to focus on part you want.

[DougW]

It's an S10+ Samsung. I tried touching the screen and it just put a slider bar up where I can adjust the backfill lighting. But I'm gonna do some I-net searching on manual focus for the S10+ and see what I can come up with.

Ah, there's your problem...Android.

Throw it away and go get an iPhone!

I learned to hate Android the honest way, by working on it.

LOL... I learned to luv Apple when I'd update the OS then wait 3 months while they tried to figure out how to fix what they had broken! hahahahha....

I got away from Apple 2 years ago... Might go back if I decide on a life of crime and I don't want the local PoPo crackin' code on my phone!

[DougW]

On my wife's S10, in photo mode select more, then live focus. Then you can touch screen to focus on part you want.

OK Great!!! If I get permission to post more photos I'll give it a try!

[TraditionalToolworks]

LOL... I learned to luv Apple when I'd update the OS then wait 3 months while they tried to figure out how to fix what they had broken! hahahahha....

That doesn't sound like MacOS as much as it does Windows, although turn months into years...

Although I converted my wife and kids to Mac over 15 years ago, I'm a Linux engineer. Mac is UNIX though. I did it because trying to support them on Windows was painful. Mac is decent software, and I do use an iPhone. Android just always seems 85% polished, just never gets those final touches that Apple provides. If Android works for you, definitely use it. And the Apple watch can't be beat for swimming, I love it.

OK Great!!! If I get permission to post more photos I'll give it a try!

You don't need permission, but do everyone a favor and practice a bit. We've seen your welds! Tig takes time...

[cj737]

Not to nag, but... if you are tepid on running 180 amps on 1/8” material, you’ll go absolutely freak show on 1/4”. You’ll need every bit of the 220 amps your HTP can deliver to get that to wet out.

For your current practice, 160-180 amps, 3/32 filler. You’ll find better balance between beads and wetting with thinner filler, still getting adequate strength. If you jump to 1/4”, you’d likely want 1/8” filler wire. Move towards 68-72% balance. You’ll get better cleaning.

[DougW]

Not to nag, but... if you are tepid on running 180 amps on 1/8” material, you’ll go absolutely freak show on 1/4”. You’ll need every bit of the 220 amps your HTP can deliver to get that to wet out.

For your current practice, 160-180 amps, 3/32 filler. You’ll find better balance between beads and wetting with thinner filler, still getting adequate strength. If you jump to 1/4”, you’d likely want 1/8” filler wire. Move towards 68-72% balance. You’ll get better cleaning.

It's not so much that I'm tepid on running 180 amps on 1/8" material. Every weld I've made with the exception of the last few made @ 150a w/1/8" filler I've been using 1/16" filler. I simply don't have the skill to run at 180 amps. I've tried. I got all the blow-outs and melt through you'd ever want to see. I've got 3/32" filler and guess I'll move to that. Everything I've read, heard, seen screams "USE 1/16" FILLER!!! YOU CAN ALWAYS ADD MORE BUT YA' CAN'T ADD LESS!!!!!!!" So... I been working with 1/16" and dabbin' my butt off. The welds @ 150a and 1/8" filler was actually pretty easy. More so than working with the 1/6" much slower cadence with the dabbin'! I'm at 65% balance now. Thanks for the help! Much appreciated!!!

And... TTW - I didn't think I needed permission to post more photos.... I's just funnin' ya'!

[TraditionalToolworks]

And... TTW - I didn't think I needed permission to post more photos.... I's just funnin' ya'!

I typed a long response to your post, but I'm going to refrain from commenting. There are times I'm better keeping my mouth shut and I think this is one of them.