Welding Tips and Tricks

so before this new shop I've always used e3 tungsten. I got some for the shop and it does not work the way it usually does, it continuously burns through the tungsten while i can use the grey ceriated and pure tungstens but I can't either to work as good as my previous job. I'm using a older syncopated 200 and a few others currently. Any suggestions or advice or ideas?

Maybe try a different batch of the E3. Could have been a bad pack. Hard to say, you didn't provide a lot of info.

Sounds like your machine is misconfigured, from the little you’ve said. The tungsten shouldn’t burn up.

TraditionalToolworks wrote:Sounds like your machine is misconfigured, from the little you’ve said. The tungsten shouldn’t burn up.

I concur. Fix your machine completely, correctly, and entirely and all the problems will go away.

Are you welding on AC or DC? Does this happen on both voltages? What amperage? What size tungsten?

I would investigate a gas leak at the torch and confirm that. And perhaps duoble check the gas bottle is 100% not MIG accidentally (since you’re at a new shop).

At first I thought you meant you were only having problems with the E3, but that the ceriated and pure were working fine. But now rereading it seems you may also be trying to say that you are having problems with all three. Which is it?

are you driving on AC or DC or both and getting the same results ?? Are you getting the same results on "the few others" or just the scyncopated welder? Is the balance all jazzed up ? Are the leads connected properly? Got PROPER gas flow?? ARGON ??

Its fine on DC but not AC im running 180-200amps ive played with the balance, ill change out all the torch setup and see if it helps, never had this problem before this shop. I can use Grey tungsten and have more luck, ran out of the green because i bought e3 like I've ran at every shop. Thanks for the input

If it’s an ac only problem then that really screams frequency issues.

I think it’s likely an AC Balance issue. If you are new to Miller machines, the balance setting may be opposite of your prior machines. If you are setting it to 70% say, that’s 30% on the positive side. Double check that before you go too far afield.

So after playing with it some I found out the head welder here had the wrong torch setup for 3/32 tungsten, and I played with the balance from 2 all the way to 8, I've got it to were its not killing the tungsten as bad but having trouble getting it to stay with a nice ball and when I go full pedal at 180amps the ball starts to shake and almost blow up. Before this shop I used dynasties and the miller multimatic 220 ac dc with no problems. I think I might be having a contamination issue though because it's working decent on some joints and terrible on others,, I used a fresh flapper, and acetone. Just confused because I have never had this problem before this shop