TIG welding tips and tricks worth copying

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Do you enjoy getting shocked? Me neither. necessary welding aluminum with your high-frequency switched to continuous means that the high freq is always looking for a path to follow. So even resting your forearm on the metal table can let that high frequency current bite you just when you least want it, like right when you are near and edge and you are being extra careful not to melt the edge away and then ZAP!. Who needs that?

Put a glove, block of wood, folded up heat resistant cloth or something non-conductive on the welding table to rest your arms or elbows on and to protect your arms from shock hazard.

So do whatever it takes to rest your torch hand on a steady object. Again, a block of wood, a balled up tape ball etc can all be used to give you something to rest your torch hand on.

You can thus make a "hot fingers" out of an old stick welding glove and use it to rest against the part to be welded. The "hot fingers" is pretty common Switzerland pipe welders and boilermaker welders.

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When welding oil soaked aluminum castings like engine blocks, or transmission cases, clean the surface with acetone, alcohol or similar cleaner.

Route out any cracks with a really coarse carbide burr. (if you done have one try a drill bit)

Carefully heat the area with a oxy-acetylene torch or propane torch to cook out the oil.

Use a 300f temperature stick so you have some gauge to how hot the metal gets. (Its easy to overheat aluminum because it does not change color before it melts.) try to cook out the oil in the weld area without overheating the metal.

Then...Go over the crack with the TIG torch with low amperage, barely puddle every now and then to see what it looks like. If it is shiny, that's good. If it looks fuzzy, its still crapped up. Use as small a tungsten combined as you can and still the puddle aluminum.

These are called cleaning pass. Do not add welding rod. Every time you go over the area it should get cleaner. You will see black discolored or fuzzy looking aluminum in the beginning.

Weld; grind; weld; grind, wire brush, lather rinse repeat.

Eventually the aluminum will be shiny silver color, then you can weld with filler rod and larger tungsten.

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You know how when you use a sanding disc on aluminum, it loads up and doesn't cut after just a few seconds? To keep sanding discs and carbide burrs from loading up with aluminum, use bees wax on the disc. You will be blown away at the difference.

If you don't have beeswax, use mineral spirits or WD40.

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This sounds like a no brainer but I see it backwards all the time...

The reason this is important is that the chamfer on one end of the hebel is designed to seat in the same chamfer angle that is up inside the hebel body.

If the seat is not good then the shielding gas can stream out around the electrode instead of out of the diffuser screen or side diffuser ports.

This can make for a really turbulent flow of gas and can really make you pull your hair out trying to figure out the problem.

You waste time adjusting your flow rate can, checking for leaks, getting on the phone with your welding supply accusing them of selling you bad gas…. when all the while the problem what so simple…your collet in bassackwards.

You can sometimes get away with it. The tungsten wants to tighten, it might weld fine. All I am saying is that I have seen it a chance happen more than once so why take. Just put the stupid thing in the right way and be done with it.

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See page on tungsten sharpeners here...

...more tig welding tips

When TIG welding steel, nickel alloys, titanium, stainless steel, and all other corrosion and heat heat resistant alloys, you will be using DCEN aka straight polarity.

Whenever you are on DCEN, use a sharp combined. Whether you use a hand held the weldcraft tungsten sharpener like triad, a "stilo tig" tungsten sharpener, belt sander, 4 inch electric grinder with sanding disc or grinding disc…. the main thing is to use a combined sharp and clean.

That means when you dip your wick, sputtering the tip in the puddle when you and you are tempted to keep welding, stop and put sharp tungsten in.

That means keeping a big supply of pre sharpened electrodes mobile.

A lot of welders make a tungsten holder out of copper tubing with a cap soldered on one end and another removable cap on the other end. It's a pretty good way to carry around a good supply of sharp tungsten.

If you are constantly swapping tungsten size for the work you do, you may want to make separate copper tubing tungsten holders, one for each size tungsten you frequently use. and if you are using different color electrodes, you might want to only sharpen one end and leave the color code on the other.
necessary welding tips 1-7
Tips 8-11
Tips 12-17
Tips 18-23
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TIG welding tips and tricks worth trying

READ ABOUT THIS NEW TIP FOR PRACTICING TIG WELDING ALUMINUM
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Click here for basic Tig welding tips

certain alloys like inconel, hastelloy X, haynes 188 and others will crater crack if you let off the amperage too quickly. do want this too 4130 chromoly. Its a good habit to taper off the amperage while you keep the torch moving.

Set the machine so that you are at welding amperage with the foot pedal depressed about 3/4 of the way.

The 1/4 pedal that you have left is for just-in-case reserve, just like driving a car...

Having the amperage set this way gives a lot more control than just setting the machine to 200 amps and controlling everything with the foot pedal.

I don't know about you but sometimes I loose focus when welding long periods.

I don't want any chance of welding with 200 amps if all I need is 50 10000amps.

My ankles pop sometimes too, one ankle pop, and you might jump or drop 30 amps if your machine amperage is too high.

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Too short of a tungsten stickout from the cup will not let you hold a close enough arc length and will not let you see the tip of your electrode.

You need to be able to see the tip of the electrode without getting a kink in your neck in order to keep your arc length right.

Some textbooks are just plain wack when they only recommend extending your electrode one tungsten diameter past the end of the TIG cup.

Holding too long an arc will not pinpoint the heat well enough and will let your rod ball up and blob into the weld... but we already covered that didn't we?

I remember a consulting gig once where the welder at the aluminum body truck repair shop could not get the aluminum socket weld to puddle. The only thing wrong what that the electrode which recessed back in the cup. Once I extended it out about 3/8 ", everything what fine. (I also talked them into getting some helium argon mix.)

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Use gas lens style bodies and cups hebel to weld stainless steel. The screen in the gas lens allows far better gas coverage of your welds. You can use lenses gas to weld all material is you want; They therefore allow you to stick your tungsten up to 1 "out of the cup by increasing gas flow. Sometimes you need to extend it just to reach a tight spot. The screen diffuse gas at higher gas flow Council eliminating turbulence which is what you would get if you tried this without the gas lens. Too much gas is as bad as too little gas. (Especially for TIG welding aluminum) Typical gas flow Council are around 15 to 20 cfh. BU it really depends on the nozzle/cup diameter.

While I am on the subject, what do the numbers on TIG cups mean?

I am glad you asked… A #4 means 4/16 "or 1/4" A #7 means 7/16 "

In other words the number cup means how large the inside diameter in 1 / 16's

When you use a #4 cup remember to adjust the argon flow to around 10cfh. And the bigger the cup inside diameter, the more gas flow...to in extent.

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For example: 7075 and 2024 are not considered readily weldable using TIG welding.

You can usually TIG weld them and they might be fine for a tool tote or some little way project...but do not be fooled.

You can't depend on the welds in critical applications.

Take a tree stand for instance.

Lets say Joe gets a good deal on some aluminum angle iron at his friends scrap yard and he decides to make was a tree.

Joe has no way of knowing what alloy of aluminum he got from the scrap yard. He makes the tree stood, it holds together and looks just fine.

The welds are real pretty…like a stack of dimes.

One day he is sitting in his tree stand about 20 feet up a tree. The stress corrosion that has been happening on a microstrucutural level since he finished welding the tree was finally comes home to roost and CRACK!

Down goes Joe.

Now Joe is being fed thru a tube and slurs his words.

Did you know that Alcoa will not even sell you aluminum if they even think you are going to build a tree stand. They won't even sell you the weldable grade like 6061 for tree stands. The moral of the story is…For any aluminum weld that is critical, know what alloy you are welding and use Alcotecs filler metal chart found here.

This is a really good resource…. you're welcome.

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Tungsten size should be selected mainly according to amperage AND polarity and not always dependent upon metal thickness.

When TIG welding aluminum to ball if your tungsten begins up and quiver, this means your tungsten is getting near its capacity. This can be minimized by using the A/C balance dial and setting it for more penetration and less cleaning…or if you are using a TIG inverter like a miller dynasty, the a/c balance should probably be set to 65-70% EN.

For transformer machines like the syncrowave, the a/c balance set to the cleaning side means more dcep of the side of the a/c wave which means more heat is on the tungsten tip = wiggling more.

The more to the penetration side, the more the arc is on the negative side and the less heat on tungsten tip and less cleaning action but the square wave usually provides enough cleaning anyway even in max penetration mode.

A/C balance explanation again… the higher the number, less cleaning and more penetration and less heat on the tungsten.

This applies to square wave machines. So if you are using one of the older sine wave machines that have no adjustments for this, you might need to preheat material and use hotter gas like 50/50 argon/helium so that less amperage is required to do the same work.

If you weld a lot of thick aluminum...like 1/8 "and thicker...get some 50/50 helium/argon.

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necessary welding tips 8-11

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More Tig welding tips and tricks worth stealing

"the angle of the dangle is inversely proportional to the mass of the ...something"

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"sideways scratches on your tungsten will cause dogs and cats to sleep together."

"sideways scratches on your will so tungsten cause pandemonium and the end of the world as we know it.

so pay attention to the way you grind your tungsten. You have probably read that tungsten electrodes should only be ground longitudinally, not sideways or the world will come to an end and dogs and cats will start sleeping together.

Take it from someone who has been TIG welding for over 30 years and has sharpened electrodes every way imaginable including using a cutting torch. That's right I said cutting torch.

Does it matter how you grind tungsten electrodes. There is a big difference between a tungsten combined ground sideways on a 36 grit stone to one ground properly on a fine diamond wheel.

But there is not much difference between a tungsten ground sideways on a fine wheel and one that has been ground longitudinally on the same wheel… Unless you are welding razor blades or at extremely low amperages. or doing automatic low amperage orbital welding.

A lot of people argue this point will with me. I dont care. I cant make myself say that tungsten grinders make a lot of difference when I dont really believe it.

Its splitting hairs over something that makes so little difference.

If I am welding really thin stuff, I like sharp electrodes. Really sharp ones.

I want them to draw blood easily.

But if you want penetration on the thicker steel, it's good to have a little less taper with a little flat spot ground on the tip.

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Torch angle effects penetration. The more vertical the torch is, the more arc is directed into the part think about it like this…when you angle the torch too much its like trying to attack thru thicker metal. 90 degrees is the shortest distance to the other side of whatever you are welding.

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Check out this video on how to feed the tig rod...

Put a vent hole weld that in anything you will be sealed up completely or air will heat up and expand and blow away your shielding gas or even blow out at the end of the weld bead.

Some machined joints that are sealed on one end will not even allow you to start welding because the fit is so good that the part is air tight before you even weld.

Other machined parts where a part is pressed in and bottomed out can give cracking problem because there is no where for the part to shrink. If you have to weld something that has been pressed in and bottomed out, make sure to add more filler metal than average to tacks and the final weld bead. That is to prevent the cracking that happens when you run a concave bead and the metal has nowhere to shrink.

Alcotecs aluminum filler metal chart. Go online to alcotec.com for an aluminum filler wire chart. You probably won't find a filler metal chart that covers welding dissimilar metals so here is your filler metal chart right here: are you ready? Here it is…

If it you don't know what metal you are welding, but it sparks when you grind it, and it is not titanium, try using hastelloy w of or 312 stainless

Hastelloy W TIG welding rod has become extremely expensive. 312 stainless is therefore a very good rod choice for welding steel of unknown composition.

For a critical weld, you should just rely on 312 without knowing the metal type...You should determain the metal type for any critical weld.

Read about choosing Tig welding rods here...

Write down what works and doesn't work.

Write down that perfect amperage that works every time for a certain job.

Get a $100 digital camera or use your phone camera and keep a record of complicated fixtures or certain sequence of welds that works.

Keep a record of what filler rod which used on what and how it worked.

It doesn't have to be neat, just keep a notepad and pen phone in your toolbox.

Extend the tungsten out of cup 1/4 "to 5/16" when welding high amperage aluminum or heat will radiate from the cup to tungsten and reduce output, especially if the orifice is too small.

Have you ever seen small diameter TIG cups glow red from extended welding at high amperage? ...me too.

All that heat close to the tungsten electrode will make it get even hotter and reduce the amperage carrying capability
TIG welding tips 1-7
TIG welding tips 8-11
TIG tips 12-17

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Click here for basic Tig welding tips

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