Welding Tips and Tricks

Hey All

I am new to the forum and new to tig welding but doing ok. I am just starting out on aluminum with my 2018 AlphaTig 200X, using E3 3/32 tungsten also 2% Thoriated 3/32, 25% cleaning, 60hz and I am noticing that the tungsten is getting weirdly contaminated. Please take a look at the shaft and tip. Could someone help me understand what might be going on?

Hi and welcome.

This could be as simple as too short of a post flow of argon. It should be about 10 seconds. Or it could be some moisture in the gas. To eliminate this, try another gas cylinder. You can also make an in line moisture trap with a desiccant material.

I'm not an expert, but a couple of things come to mind. First off, you don't want to use 2% thoriated on AC aluminum. With your machine a good general rule would be to stick to 2% lanthanated or one of the E3 type blends (usually purple or lime green colors) for AC aluminum. There are others that will work, but I think it makes sense to keep things simple in the beginning. In fact, 2% lanthanated is probably more forgiving compared to the E3 style blends which excels in robotic applications with essentially perfect parameters.

Second, as already mentioned, make sure you've got enough post flow. Is the problem happening with both kinds of tungsten? What sort of amperage were you running?

Lastly, one thing that will really make odd stuff happen is using a tungsten on aluminum that has been used on something else previously without a fresh grind. If you use a tungsten on steel and then go straight to aluminum without at least a quick touchup, you're going to see weird stuff happen.

It is my experience that running theorists tungstens and 25% cleaning will tear the tips up very quickly. Swap to Lanthanated and run closer to 35% and you should be better off. If anything, the tip will ball up instead of tear out.

cj737 wrote:It is my experience that running theorists tungstens and 25% cleaning will tear the tips up very quickly. Swap to Lanthanated and run closer to 35% and you should be better off. If anything, the tip will ball up instead of tear out.

Not sure if you are talking about terrorists tungsten, or theoretical tungsten. The first one blows up your puddle, and the second won't hold an arc.

VA-Sawyer wrote: or theoretical tungsten... and the second won't hold an arc.

In theory it will!

VA-Sawyer wrote:

cj737 wrote:It is my experience that running THORIATED tungstens and 25% cleaning will tear the tips up very quickly. Swap to Lanthanated and run closer to 35% and you should be better off. If anything, the tip will ball up instead of tear out.

Not sure if you are talking about terrorists tungsten, or theoretical tungsten. The first one blows up your puddle, and the second won't hold an arc.

bloody atoucorerct!
I think that technology was developed by women; always telling a man what she thinks we ought to say

cj737,
I see that you turned off your spell checker.

Women are NOT the root of all evil! Every once in a while it happens without their help.

To the OP,

Sorry about the Hijack, but I can't pass up a chance to razz these guys. It is all in fun.

In response to your question, the little blobs on the end of your Tungsten seem to be typical of Thoriated used on AC.

Tungsten used to weld Aluminum is pushed a lot harder, than when it is used on steel. First off it is subjected to AC current, which means that part of each cycle the electrode is Positive. During the EP( Electrode Positive) part of the cycle, heat is being pumped into the electrode, instead of into the puddle. This makes it run hotter.
Second, Aluminum is a better conductor of heat. For a given thickness of material, it takes more current to weld Aluminum vs. Steel. More current, means even more heat for the poor electrode. It runs HOTTER! , which means it takes longer to cool off at the end of the weld. Extend your Postflow time to keep oxygen away from the electrode while it is hot.

On my torch, if pushing the AC current limits for a given size of electrode, I notice the collet seems to want to loosen up after a few starts. I have had it slide down against the work when getting ready to start an arc. It has never seemed loose during a weld when the Tungsten is hot, it just seems to happen after it has been hot multiple times, and then allowed to cool to room temp. The loose collet can cause pitting on the electrode shaft, and on the collet. I assume it is also causing pitting in the gas lens, but not sure of that. I plan on getting wedge style collets next time that I order some.

To reduce the bifurcations on the tip, either blunt the tip a bit when sharpening, ball the tip before welding, or swap the tungsten to the larger size up. Also recommend 2% lanthanated as others have mentioned.

To me, the contamination on the shaft doesn't look to be post flow related. Looks to my eye like a bit of aluminum oxide build up, meaning that you either lightly duffed the electrode, or a tiny bit of AL spattered onto it while welding and then migrated out. Either way, cut off completely the contaminated portion and resharpen.

Edit: And FWIW, even with my inverters, I find myself balling my tungsten before the welds more and more these days when welding AL above 150A or so. The welds aren't quite as pretty since you lose some arc stability with the balled end, especially at the arc start, but it makes life so much easier. Let's you focus more on running beads, and less on your rapidly deteriorating tungsten tip.

As mentioned by others, thoriated tungsten just isn't ideal on AC especially at 60hz. Bump up the frequency to 120hz or so and it seems like you can get away with it a bit longer, no idea why. I also see tungsten do that when it's simply pushed too hard for too long, I don't believe you ever mentioned what your amperage was?

I assume you are talking about the little nodules near the tip...

I am no expert. All I weld is filthy aluminum in the boat repair business I have.

I had the same thing with the E3 Radnor tungsten I was using. 3/32" nothing less than 150amps. I suppose once I am into a weld on some thin pontoons i am under 150A but I couldn't tell you how much under. I switched to the trimix from wolfram and the problem mostly went away. I also switched to 1/8" around that time. In all fairness, the nodules didn't really seem to create a problem for me, they just bugged me. At most they were bothersome when tapering off and crater filling at the end of a bead.

My .02c ( in addition to what the others have advised ) is to buy a name brand of tungsten, such as CK, or those on Jody's
Weldmonger Store.

By doing that, you are eliminating one variable; there's too much chicom garbage out there.

LtBadd wrote:

tungsten chart.jpg

Wait wait wait wait wait...........wait............


1/4" tungsten?????

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Yup, and it is pricey! How many 10 packs would you like?

JayWal wrote:

LtBadd wrote:

tungsten chart.jpg

Wait wait wait wait wait...........wait............

1/4" tungsten?????

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Well what will you use when welding with your Dynasty 800?

Jay....heavy tungsten for welding equipment for that truss company. LOL

I'm just wondering what kind of gloves you'd wear . Granted with a bigger torch your hand will probably be further away from the arc, but with a watercooled 20 you can light up at 250 amps and see smoke flash off your gloves.

sbaker56 wrote:I'm just wondering what kind of gloves you'd wear . Granted with a bigger torch your hand will probably be further away from the arc, but with a watercooled 20 you can light up at 250 amps and see smoke flash off your gloves.

Honestly I think any TIG work done using that large of tungsten would probably be in a machine torch, but someone has probably done it, CK's largest hand torch is rated at 500 amps

Weld.com had a few videos of welding at 1,000 amps with a 3/4" electrode. You can, but its made for a machine torch apparently. I guess a 1/4" tungsten would be in the same class as that electrode. Leave em to the robots.

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+1 for dirty aluminium opinion.


I notice your welding in a used radiator (my trade).


Even if you wash the inside out you'll still have a varnish so to speak of coolant and who knows what else.


That tank is probably 14guage to 18guage depending on manufacturer.


My guess is the contamination pulls from the back and jumps at the tungsten and causes the nodule ball things.


My tungsten's often wind up like this, from what I've noticed it only happens when I'm welding on used material. The brand new stuff let's me keep whatever I want the tungsten to be.

Try practicing a few beads on some brand new material of the same thickness where you can clean both sides. See if the nodules carry over or not.


My two cents.

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It is my experience that running theorists tungstens and 25% cleaning will tear the tips up very quickly. Swap to Lanthanated and run closer to 35% and you should be better off. If anything, the tip will ball up instead of tear out.

cj, I just have to go there......those theorists tungstens are great bunch of fart smellers...roops. smart fellers. My spell check does come up with some WILD translations when I'm not paying attention, which btw is most of the time.

Jamie,,,,,I "think" that I had a tungsten come up with a nodule on it with a lessened post flow and my shakes were really kicked in. I also "think" that I noticed some terrorists lurking in the weld beads on the radiator while you were laying beads and the nodule may have come up and attached to the tungsten.

Thanks everyone for the replies! A little mistake on my end on the first post was that I was using Blue Lanth and Purple E3 when welding. I am running between 5 -10 sections of post flow, ive been playing with both, but I do need to double check my flow rate. I have a weird regulator that came with this machine so I will see what it says on there. I did grab a new bottle of argon as mine was close to running out and some brand new 1/8" aluminum tabs to practice on so I will try those out soon to make sure it isnt contaminated metal or water in the bottle. The arc seems to be jumping/dancing around a bit but the puddle is stable so I am not sure if that is just aluminum welding vs steel or what.

JamieFred wrote:Thanks everyone for the replies! A little mistake on my end on the first post was that I was using Blue Lanth and Purple E3 when welding. I am running between 5 -10 sections of post flow, ive been playing with both, but I do need to double check my flow rate. I have a weird regulator that came with this machine so I will see what it says on there. I did grab a new bottle of argon as mine was close to running out and some brand new 1/8" aluminum tabs to practice on so I will try those out soon to make sure it isnt contaminated metal or water in the bottle. The arc seems to be jumping/dancing around a bit but the puddle is stable so I am not sure if that is just aluminum welding vs steel or what.

5 seconds is probably too short for post-flow...I'd put it at 10 and experiment with other things.

Arc wander can be caused by too long of an arc, a contaminated tungsten, a tungsten on the large side for the amperage and even how you grind the tungsten. As I said before, I'm not an expert, but I doubt the arc on aluminum will be as stable as you're used to seeing on steel, but it shouldn't be totally all over the place.

Make sure you start out with a fresh grind on the tungsten each session...even if that's just a quick touchup. I've welded on steel for a ten second bead and forgotten about it, then went to weld aluminum a day later and the arc was dancing all over the place. There is a bit of transfer to the tungsten from the parent metal and that's all it takes to contaminate it and not cooperate with aluminum.

I'd try starting with maybe a sharper point, shorten your arc and see what happens. Set the machine around 125A, 60Hz frequency, and 30-35% cleaning and see what happens.