Welding Tips and Tricks

I did a little tig with a bottle of 60He/40Ar today, to see how much more oomph it gave the 200 amp machine I was using, and I realized I had no idea if I was better off setting the flowmeter according to the argon side, the helium side, or splitting the difference. I don't want to accidentally run 30CFH on a number 5 cup for a number of obvious reasons.

Secondly, I'm wondering if anyone just has some general tips, It ran absolutely fantastic on flat plate or clean T joints, but when I had to weld on some old dirty aluminum, it's like no matter how much I wire brushed it I simply could not get the two pieces to flow together and I ended up with worst most globbed up welds of my life. I finally got things to run a bit smoother by doing several cleaning passes and using the foot pedal to work the heat, but I'm not sure if it was the blend, or simply how nasty the aluminum was that caused me so much trouble.

I have the answer. But right now I am at Hooters. Will have to wait 'til tomorrow.

I use a bottle of 25% He 75% Ar. I run the flow as I would for 100% Ar. I do reduce the amps I use though because the He makes the arc much hotter.

For dirty aluminum, I use a lot more cleaning action on the balance and raise my Hz to limit the penetration. I can't imagine what 40% He would be like to weld with. Got to be a smoking hot arc.

cj737 wrote:I use a bottle of 25% He 75% Ar. I run the flow as I would for 100% Ar. I do reduce the amps I use though because the He makes the arc much hotter.

For dirty aluminum, I use a lot more cleaning action on the balance and raise my Hz to limit the penetration. I can't imagine what 40% He would be like to weld with. Got to be a smoking hot arc.

If he stated it correctly, he's using 60% helium!

G-ManBart wrote:

cj737 wrote:I use a bottle of 25% He 75% Ar. I run the flow as I would for 100% Ar. I do reduce the amps I use though because the He makes the arc much hotter.

For dirty aluminum, I use a lot more cleaning action on the balance and raise my Hz to limit the penetration. I can't imagine what 40% He would be like to weld with. Got to be a smoking hot arc.

If he stated it correctly, he's using 60% helium!

They don't call em a heliarc welder for nothing!

Yep 60% helium, it was ordered for a spool gun job that hasn't materialized yet, and since there were two full 330CF cylinders of it sitting literally 4 feet away from the tig machine as opposed to the argon cylinder that was clear across the yard, I asked if I could just use one. .

I used it some more today, and I can definitely attest to the lesser cleaning action, I find myself keeping the balance at 0 half the time. The saving grace for your tungsten is that you typically need lower amps. I welded a 1/4" aluminum T joint with 135-140 amps, penetration was fairly low, but the bead appearance and travel speed were completely fine. Honestly even when cranked up to 200 amps I didn't find the penetration spectacular, but then I realized I was also probably traveling 1.5-2 times faster than I would've with straight argon.