Welding Tips and Tricks

Situation. Welding some hot rolled round stock to a piece of 304 SS using a 1/16 dia 309 filler at 125 amps DC inverter welder. For some reason as soon as I introduce the filler a glob developed on the tungsten. Had lots of splatter going on so maybe I should have cleaned better. A new tungsten, no filler and welded nicely. What can this be do you think?

The simple answer without seeing a picture of it is you touched the filler to the tip of the tungsten, or you dipped the tungsten into the molten puddle as you were dipping the filler. Why not post a picture of the tungsten and the weld part?

Oscar wrote:The simple answer without seeing a picture of it is you touched the filler to the tip of the tungsten, or you dipped the tungsten into the molten puddle as you were dipping the filler. Why not post a picture of the tungsten and the weld part?

Agree as with no filler I had no issues. I am experienced with tig and don't think I touched the tungsten with filler as I dabbed but could have. No pics sorry. Was throwing together a third hand from scrap and my tungsten has been reground and put away. It was weird as the filler seemed to jump on to the tungsten as I dabbed. Maybe tungsten was so close that a dab made my pool just big enough to touch the tungsten.

bruce991 wrote:... Maybe tungsten was so close that a dab made my pool just big enough to touch the tungsten.

This is fairly likely.

The puddle will swell when you dab. More than just the amount you added... the material swells from the heat. This becomes extremely obvious when you first begin welding aluminum, but also happens with steel, if you are good at keeping a very tight arc.

Steve S

Being a novice I am sure that I have done this many times and have had to regrind many tungstens. I now try to raise the torch slightly as I dip the rod to counteract the growth of the puddle. I'm not always successful mind you