Welding Tips and Tricks

Hello everybody!

New here and to welding in general. I'm a self taught from YouTube, and step by step trying to learn though all the problems.

My latest problem that I don't manage to overcome is this: I manage to form a puddle but when I try to add the filler, the filler blobs on the rod and doesn't fall into the puddle.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated !

Thanks in advance !

Aluminum or steel filler? In either event, add the filler to the puddle, don’t expect it to “fall off”. Your filler wire should touch the leading edge of the puddle, be melted into it, then you move your torch along.

The ambient heat of the welding arc will melt the filler back if you don’t get it close enough to the puddle.

Aluminium. I don't expect it to fall. I touch the puddle with the rod, but instead of melting and falling, it's meting and stays attached to the rod.

Too little heat then. How about some more info regarding metal size, amps, cup size,tungsten, filler diameter..?

I think this was my problem too starting with aluminium, trying to add filler before the puddle is hot enough.

You need to watch the puddle til it looks like a mirror, then add filler.

That along with the nearly 45° angle new tig users tend to use. Torch angle is critical because even if you do have a puddle, extreme torch angle will still melt the filler away. Gotta stay less than 20°from the vertical.

AndersK wrote:I think this was my problem too starting with aluminium, trying to add filler before the puddle is hot enough.

You need to watch the puddle 'til it looks like a mirror, then add filler.

+1. Get that puddle nice and shiny. And watch your torch angle. Too shallow an angle and your filler will ball up.



K

Oscar wrote:That along with the nearly 45° angle new tig users tend to use. Torch angle is critical because even if you do have a puddle, extreme torch angle will still melt the filler away. Gotta stay less than 20°from the vertical.

I start thinking that might be something wrong with our inverter, as we have hard time and get very frustrated trying to make nice puddles in aluminium . Hopefully I'll manage to bring someone to take a look at our setup...

One thing that I notices helps with the filler sticking to the puddle is keeping the filler at a lower angle to the welding surface. Before, I was keeping it at about 45deg. Lowering this to something like 20 seems to help.

Some more info:

Material thickness: about 2cm aluminium, unfortunately don't know the specific allow, it's from the scrap bin
Amps: tried from 60 up to 90 amp
Cup size: #8
Argon: about 13CFH
tungsten: 2mm, 2% lanthanated
filler: 1.6mm aluminium 5356 (on the bill it says it's AlMg5)
AC Balance: tried from ~ 40% up to 70%

Thank you everybody for all the help, very much appreciated!

PS: I just found a video that sais a good idea would be to form 90deg between between you electrode and the filler metal

Yes 90 degrees give or take between rod & torch so filler rod should be like 10 > 15 degrees from base metal - also when learning 1.6mm filler is quite tricky as the small diameter balls more easily than larger rod - try 2.4mm rod will make life easier - also if your material thickness is 2mm ( you state 2cm which is over 3/4" ! ) your on the low end of amps - unless the piece is very small ( which itself will make learning very hard with heat soak ) you need to hit the amps hard to get a shiny puddle within around 3seconds of arc start & then move or the piece will heat soak & it's all going downhill from there - 2mm is around 80 thou so 90 > 100 initial amps to form a clean puddle is where I'd be - then reduce as the puddle & forward travel dictates.