Welding Tips and Tricks

I am new to TIG. I've got a good handle on aluminum but trying to figure out mild steel and stainless. First the setup...

3/32 blue tungsten
1/16 filler
1/8 steel and stainless coupons
Tried #8 standard and #8 gas lens @16-20 flow
110amp max
No other fancy settings

I feel like my welds are good, little shaky at times and sometimes I move a little quick I think, puddle gets a little tear drop shape. But my color just isn't there. On the steel I went from flat grey welds to getting my tungsten buried into the joint (doing lap and T) and thats gotten me some slightly shinny blueish welds on steel. But I've noticed its not shiny and bright like I see it should be on videos. I've even done the same setups as some videos but I get different results. I notice that when I get to the end and post flows going that the welds shiny like it should be until post flow ends, then it changes immediately. One video I saw his welds were nice and shiny and he was specifically talking about gas flow and the weld appearance. He was using a #5 cup with 10 cfm but im using a bigger cup with worse coloring. If I do a short little bead the colors right at the end or even my tacks are perfect in color but the beads aren't. Am I too hot with 110amps on 1/8? Seems like its just too hot for the gas coverage but I'm completely copying this one guys setup. I feel like my torch is buried because I have poked the puddle a few times. Any help is appreciated, I am very new to TIG.

Sorry not sure why the pictures posted upside down

Also it seems that my HAZ is really large with about a 4" weld. Not sure what's normal or not.

One important part that we cant' see that is difficut too describe is: travel speed. If you move too slow, it cooks the metal (overheats it). Since it is not usually measured, it's hard to know what is "fast" or what is "slow", because it depends on one's own perogative, as they see it. The grand equalizer is video recording. If you record yourself, then you would be able to go back to count inches-per-seconds, or seconds-per-inch.

Have you seen this? If not, shame on you!
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Recommend practicing your heat control (travel speed is most critical, as Oscar mentioned) on stainless more than plain steel since stainless gives the best feedback on your performance and is also a bit more fussy than steel so will build more skill, IMO. Once you get enough hood time, you can even start glancing back at your bead as you're welding to keep an eye on how things are going a few dabs back as that portion exits the gas coverage.

Practice, practice, practice. Get cheap stainless at your local scrap yards or on ebay.

Good luck, keep posting pics as you progress.

Also, recommend you don't focus too much on color early-on as you are learning. Focus on the mastering the basics first, and then let mastering the color (heat control supremacy) come in a bit a later once you have a firm grip on the essentials.

Don't let pretty youtube and instagram welds distract you too much as you are learning. If you use that as a standard to match right out of the gate, it may just make your learning experience longer, harder, and more frustrating.

To answer your question, 110 amps is pretty hot for 1/8” material. Adding 1/16” filler, I’d still be under 100 amps. Running a straight autogenuos weld (no filler) on 1/8”, I run 90-95 amps.

A #8 cup is the smaller I’d use, mostly prefer a #12 and 25-30 CFH. Increase your postflow to at least 10 seconds too. The moment you see the weld pool changing color to red, nearing blue, stop and use post flow. Then let the material cool for a good while. Stainless retains heat for a very long time

That video was good, surprisingly I have not seen that one yet. I will definitely work on my travel speed, I will try and record it too so I have an idea on what I am doing. In the bead I posted do you guys see anything thats worth pointing out that I should keep on my mind besides just getting more hood time? I dont have anyone local to watch me weld so I am trying to read and watch videos to try to advance my skills. Thanks again.

Adam35C wrote:That video was good, surprisingly I have not seen that one yet. I will definitely work on my travel speed, I will try and record it too so I have an idea on what I am doing. In the bead I posted do you guys see anything thats worth pointing out that I should keep on my mind besides just getting more hood time? I dont have anyone local to watch me weld so I am trying to read and watch videos to try to advance my skills. Thanks again.

It looks pretty good, but too hot. Lower your amps and run it again.

With stainless, you want just enough heat to wet the metal, and you need to move quickly. Travel speed is key to prevent cooking the base material. The filler cools the puddle, so you need to modulate the heat, the filler and travel speed to get perfect stainless welds. Very tough to do “on your own”.

So I did some more this afternoon. No filler wire. Backed it down to 95 amps and put on a #8 gas lens (didn't have an 8 in standard). Results are much better and I gotta be going fast and with the tungsten buried in the puddle. I only have 3/32 filler for stainless and when I try that it keeps sticking in the puddle so I guess I need to get some 1/16. I am not sure if I will be able to keep that speed with adding filler. I did a few beads without filler on steel too, nice and shiny for the most part but then they got darker and I couldn't figure out why.

Well I did have 1/16 ER70S so I tried that (not worried if this rusts obviously) and it wasn't all that bad. Definitely need a lot of practice on adding the filler but much better. Is it possible to get a good shiny weld with a small #8 lens? Always seems that people doing these colorless welds are using big #12 cups. The picture below is with filler.

Adam35C wrote: but then they got darker and I couldn't figure out why.

Are you grinding the mild steel down to shiny bright metal and not just polishing the millscale?

Oscar wrote:

Adam35C wrote: but then they got darker and I couldn't figure out why.

Are you grinding the mild steel down to shiny bright metal and not just polishing the millscale?

I have done it both ways with no real difference, those few little shiny ones were on untouched steel. I was playing around with torch height, speed and amps but went back to my first setting and it made no difference

So for fun I made a little cube up with stainless and welded the corners. My tacks were nice and shiny or bright colors but when it got to welding the seams I kept getting the darker colors like I over heated it. I kept a super tight torch, touched the puddle a few times, and even backed the amps back to 65. 1/8 plates. The colorful weld on the lap joints is the same material, filler rod but done at 95 max amps. Does it look like I was too hot on the cube? Would torch angle effect that? I'm not sure I could go much faster but it sure felt like the same speed as the lap joint.

too much torch angle = longer arc length, even of the linear distance from the tip to the material may be small, the fact that it is angled is causing the arc to fan out. It's like a right triangle. The hypotenuse (the arc), is always longer than either of the other two sides (the linear distance from the tip to the material).

Oscar wrote:too much torch angle = longer arc length, even of the linear distance from the tip to the material may be small, the fact that it is angled is causing the arc to fan out. It's like a right triangle. The hypotenuse (the arc), is always longer than either of the other two sides (the linear distance from the tip to the material).

Thanks for the feedback. Must have been because of being raised off the bench, I will have to try again and see. Angle is about the only thing I didn't tweak

Different alloys react differently when welded (of course), stainless is one that requires all the stars aligned to get the puddle to behave if your going for an instagram look, this is, to some degree a generalization and seems to fit well IMO.