First welds, advice please

[richy_B]

My first ever go with a tig welder,
Over view, started at left hand side in a blind panic! 3mm mild steel, about 90amps. 1.6 Tungsten (red), 6lts. per min Argon. I did grind the metal shiny all over, obviously not clean enough.

Not pretty

Sort of getting the hang of it.

The blobs are trying out lower amps settings (fail)

The back

Any advice gratefully received, thanks in advance.
Rich

 

[johnnywgk]

No expert here, but 3rd photo, also other photo of same welds, that bead you run there, you know the one, 7th from the right. You should have made a note of settings, no expert again, it might not have penetrated enough, but i don't know. if you took notes of settings etc, this lot can tell you what else to do. Don't look too bad to me.

I'm the same as you at the moment, make a beautiful bead, then, a big black sooty pile of mess.

I've only done Alu/Ali at the mo, wait for the experts, i love it here.

 

[richy_B]

Cheers Johnny, I will have a closer look at that one. I love it here too, and good luck with your welding.

 

[Andy from Workshopshed]

Just parroting back some stuff I've read.

Orange dust is usually a sign of a gas flow issue.

Forming beads or blobs is a sign of too low current and hence shallow or no penetration, if you look at the back of the metal that may give you an indication of penetration (assuming it's not really thick). Could also be torch too far from work.

You can see on the middle welds how far the heat affected zone has reached, a wide zone is a sign of too much gap or a really sharp tungsten.

I believe the "nipples" on the end of the weld is because you are removing the torch before you remove the welding rod. Take out the rod, then turn off the switch then once gas has stopped move the torch,

 

[Autolupus]

More gas, 8-10lpm, there's also cup size to take into consideration. Play with amps and weld speed/dwell time. More amps faster speed/lower amps more dwell.
Do you have foot pedal or torch button?
Your deposition consistency looks to be ok on some of your runs, shouldn't be too long before everything to start clicking into place.

 

[richy_B]

Thanks for all the advice. The penny has just dropped with the gas, I had the shed door open, so it was probably the draught messing the gas up. I will set up some kind of extracter.

Andy you are right, it is too much gap, the Z axis needs locking on my torch hand

Autoplus
No foot pedal, it does have a 2T/4T torch, I shall have a try with this next. One more question "Dwell time"? Do you mean the time between heating the weld pool and dipping the filler?
Cheers all Rich

 

[weldmeister]

calm down a but with the filler wire you dont need such a big bead but a couple of th middle runs look ace !