Hi, Jason invited me, so it's his fault ;c)

Butt plug!! LOL

 

Oh my life, I will never live this down LOL X-D

Well I might have to get me some generic stainless rod and get practising. Once I realised that I had a small leak in the TIG back cap, aluminium was easier than I had expected it to be, just lots of amps due to the high thermal conductivity. But once I got the settings dialled in, it flowed really nice. I also have some SIF bronze filler rod for when I get to the bronze castings, both for fixing defects and making larger pieces.

Oh, I do have a question about welding mild steel. What is causing the filler rod to stick as I try to dab the puddle? I think it might be the rod is too thick for the amps I can deliver or something. I did get some 3.2mm? tungsten but haven't tried this out yet.

You guys are great!

 

I am having a bad time trying to tig aluminum. I think I don't have the power supply for it. Only working on a 30 amp breaker. My machine can draw up to 96 amps out the wall so it is being wayy under powered. A nice 50-60 amp breaker would be perfect but its just never going to materialize.

I use 3/32" SS rod and 3/32" bronze rod. Welds really well with 140 amp output DC. What rod were you using?

Also just make sure the bronze filler rod doesn't have Zn in it or you'll screw your welds adding it to Si-bronze.

 

Ha! Zn filler wire! Anyone want a couple of pounds of that nasty trash? I made that mistake in the beginning. So much for expert advice from airgas.

If your steel filler is sticking to the puddle, yeah it's cooling the puddle either because it's too fat or you don't have it hot enough. I do 99% of my welding with 3/32" tungsten, but I do alternate between 3/32" and 1/16" filler wire. Depends what I'm doing. 3.2mm tungsten sounds big to me, that's 1/8". Tungsten size is dependent on how many amps you are running. You welding really thick stuff?

Hey! You think aluminum takes some amps? Bronze isn't much better. This stuff sucks heat super fast and once your part is hot, it will be hot for the next hour! That's when ya gotta be careful, you'll sink in an area before you know it. When I was welding that porch light, I went through the roof on one corner But that texture was easy to reproduce with a dremel. Those are the things ya gotta keep in mind way way back in sculpting phase. How will you deal with issues down the road.

 

I use 1/8 and 3/32 tungsten. For touchy welding I always pre-warm what I’m welding.

For aluminum welding you want to switch to AC and you want to use pure argon, not a mix. You should have a scrap piece of aluminum to pre-ball your tip. And pre-warming base material is helpful. I usually pretty warm 200-250°C. I also use the green stripe tungsten which is 0% Thoriated, Or pure tungsten.

My go to stainless steel filler is ER316L and I usually buy 10 pounds at a time. But, I stainless steel weld A lot of dis-similar metals.

If your having problems sticking you have one or more of these three problems,
- The filler rod is too big
- you don’t have enough amperage
- Base metal is too cold

If you preheat the base metal most problems disappear. Be careful preheating aluminum and brass and bronze and as they have a lower melting point. A good rule of thumb is bringing the base metal up to 1/3 of its melting point. This does a lot of things (especially in harder metals and castings) stabilizes, aneals and prevents hair line cracking.

Cooling is just as important. You want to cool slowly.

Welding cast iron (for the last 6ish years) I’ve been using nickel arc Rod’s. I just hammer off The flux coat and use TIG. The pre-warming on cast-iron is an absolute must. As well the slow cooling. I usually just put it back in the homemade stacked brick forge that I used a Propane bush burner for the pre-heat. On large castings, it’s taken over 12 hours before I can handle the block.

 

This was the biggest welding job I have done so far. It was not easy, but I didn't know that the TIG back cap was leaking at this point, porosity problems etc. Apparently when there is a leak anywhere in the argon plumbing, air gets entrained into the argon stream and you have a big mess. I adjusted the back cap and now all is dandy.



The steam coming off the mould is from where I filled it with water to test for leaks.

The filler rod I was using is 3.2mm (3/32's) I just checked, and the tungsten I think is smaller maybe 1.6mm (1/16th). So I know that I didn't push it over 150 amps for fear of blowing the fuse. I think the angle iron (mild steel) is about 1/4" but lots of mass.

 

Hi OMM,
I am running pure argon, but due the the back cap issue, it was an argon, oxygen, nitrogen mix X-D I've fixed that now though.

Yes I knew to use AC on aluminium, for the cleaning action, but had to turn the balance away from cleaning as it was melting the tungsten, this is why I bought the 3.2mm (1/8") tungsten (ceriated).

I didn't know that pre-heating was so useful, I'll have to do that next time. Also I understand what you're saying about slow cooling too. Upping the amps past 150 will likely need me to get an electrician in as I'm not comfortable messing with that in the industrial unit.

But for now I'm slowly building up my skills and making some useful stuff in the shop.

 

Yeah always plan the areas that need to be welded away from highly detailed areas. Otherwise you'll find yourself trying to get good with the dremel in a hurry.

I haven't had any issues with bronze welding drawing too many amps. I can weld all day at 140 output on very thick 1/2 to 1" sections of bronze without running into issues. But aluminum screws me even with 1/8 to 1/4" thick sruff. I'm also using 1/16" pure tungsten rod. I've been looking for a reasonably priced single 1/8" tungsten rod but no luck yet.

 

With TIG you ALWAYS run 100% argon unless you're augmenting it with helium. AC/DC, steel, aluminum, bronze, magnesium or even hard cat poop. Argon only!
Mig mix is for MIG.

That ingot mold looks good. Good clean welds. Have you seen the devils eye welding steel yet? When you do. STOP welding. I had to learn this lesson the hard way. You think you can out run that eye, but it will catch you. It's usually caused by dipping. The correct procedure is to stop, grind out that area and start with a resharpened tungsten. Here is where this gets nasty. I tried to outrun it and had to build more thickness over that area. BOOM goes the puddle and that's when I saw the grand canyon under my 1st weld. For fast jobs non critical jobs, I'm a fan of the laywire technique for steel. Lay the filler in the gap, fire up the torch and drive over it. When in doubt, I cut, polish and etch with some naval jelly. This wont work for stainless however. That's when a battery charger and a cotton ball dipped in salty water comes in. That will show you that weld nugget nice and clear by electro etching the area.

A tip guys to put in your toolbox... Don't discount the power of welding steel together with sil-bronze. I know it costs more, but tig brazing gets a bad rap sometimes. Again, for non structural stuff, it really wets in there nice and it's 3/4 the strength of steel filler wire. I dont recall the psi numbers, but it's a lot stronger than you think and its FAST and looks bad ass. On thin stuff, you don't have to use so much heat and ya get less warping too.

 

Sorry for the late reply, when you said hard cat poop I immediately thought of this @ 5:19 :-



So far I have only used 100% argon, except for when my back cap decided to include the nitrogen / oxygen mix ;c)

Excellent information here again Jason, the only thing I wasn't sure about was the "devils eye". What does this look like?

Many thanks.

 

Oh when you weld steel and dip, you'll see it! That SOB will stare right back at you and swirl around. You'll try to outrun it, but make no mistake, it's there! Miller welding says when you see it, you are welding perfectly. That's not my experience or maybe I'm calling it the wrong thing. If you haven't seen it yet, you will. I think it's contamination from the tungsten or a tiny part of it fell off into the puddle. It wont burn off that's for sure.
Grab some scrap, clean it up and light up on it. Dip your tungsten and hold the arc. You'll see the blue/green flash from dipping and stay in there. Try moving a bit, dip again if you have to. It'll show up. Wish I could film it for you. Happens to me most often when doing a butt weld without backing behind it to trap argon. I took a 3/4" piece of copper pipe slit long ways and pound that sucker into a 12" long flat piece of copper. That was the best thing to overcome the loss of argon when welding way outta position on crazy butt joints. I made a pair of 44" tall steel gas lanterns 2 years ago. This was my first tig welding project. What a learning experience! I tried to sell them and after a year with no takers, my wife said F-them we are keeping them. Now I have to build a damn pool to put them by.
This old tony give excellent tig advise. I was leaning pretty hard on him to get the HTP221. I was tickled pink when he bought one. I have the same machine.
I remember that chili pepper with the cat. Funny stuff.



I made every part you see here by hand! The mounts are raised 1/2" off the wall. Each lantern weighs over 40lbs. The glass
is easily removable for cleaning and replacement. SOMEONE here WAS going to figure out how to temper at home, but I'm still waiting! (ANDY!)


Takes the right house or hotel for a pair of these suckers. Took me 6months to make.
The inspiration came from this http://www.alloyavenue.com/vb/showthread.php?11378-Project-Gas-Light&highlight=lantern
So it's my wifes fault for picking them up at a garage sale.
More photos found here https://www.handcraftedlanterns.com/steel-lanterns