Help with TIG welding

[DecK]

Hello first time posting but been learning from here with a while regards mig welding. Im a farmer so luckily my welds dont have to look great. Have a good grasp of mig at the moment but tig welds are coming out shoddy looking.
They are porous and just not right. Running argon at 8 lpm and 2.4 tungsten on 6mm plate at 90 amps. Not too sure if its something thats wrong or that I just need more practice. I've read through the tig tutorial a bit and cant pinpoint whats wrong with the setup.

I threw on a few runs of mig just to show I can use that...badly..

This is the stickout I'm using. About 5mm on a NewArc Viper 2000s run off a powcon 400SM power source. Dont really know of any other info I can give but ask and I'll try to answer and thanks in advance for any help or ideas.

 

[Richard.]

Are you using Tig consumables.
Rods designed for gas welding don't work for tig. Is the rod stamped at the back.

 

[wheresmejumper]

Gas leak somewhere probably.screw on that gas lense cup tight,get soapy water or leak detector spray and check every connection

 

[DecK]

It's supposed to be a tig rod anyway. Stamped with "R45" at one end. I'll give a check to see if I can find a leak. One thing is my ceramic shroud dosn't actually tighten fully. Screws on so far and then thats that. Just turns freely on the torch. Could that be it. Thanks for the help so far lads

 

[wheresmejumper]

Yeah that needs to be nipped up,hand tightish.screw the gas lense on fully first,then the shroud up tight.if theres something not right still,youll have to disassemble the bits and get a pic of em

 

[hotrodder]

It's supposed to be a tig rod anyway. Stamped with "R45" at one end.

That's a gas welding filler rod, aka A1. The proper TIG filler wire would be er70s-2, aka A15. ER70s-6 aka A18 would also work, unlike R45 / RG45 / A1 they have extra deoxidising elements in them

 

[DecK]

Yeah that needs to be nipped up,hand tightish.screw the gas lense on fully first,then the shroud up tight.if theres something not right still,youll have to disassemble the bits and get a pic of em

Went back and tightened up the shroud as best I could. It actually did tighten in the end so thats my own fault there. I have a habit of cutting threads off nuts and bolts so when I saw ceramic i said i wasn't going to go that tight with it. I did a bit afterwords with a Stainless steel filler rod and there was definitely an improvement. After that I went back to my mild steel filler again and had pretty much the same porous welds with it spitting sparks at me.

That's a gas welding filler rod, aka A1. The proper TIG filler wire would be er70s-2, aka A15. ER70s-6 aka A18 would also work, unlike R45 / RG45 / A1 they have extra deoxidising elements in them

This explains a lot. Dosn't explain why my local welder supplies place sold them to me in the first place. At least I'll know better the next time.

Thanks for the help fellas

 

[DecK]

All right fellas. Been busy with work and didnt get a chance to have another go at the tig till yesterday. I got the proper rods and the results still weren't great so went and got a new gas defuser this mornin cause it was the last thing to replace and it made the world of differance.

I also tried my hand at stainless but the results were no where near as good.

The stainless was about 1mm so knew I was gonna be testing myself but happy with the results on mild steel.
When I got the welder it was second hand and thought all was good on it. Never thought about changing much on it and only saw this morning the diffuser had seen better days. I was using 1.6mm tungstens in the old one which turned out to be a 2.4mm diffuser as well so I was really making things interesting for myself.
Again lads, thanks for the advice

 

[Richard.]

Gas lenses, collets, tungstens, ceramics and even back caps IMO are all consumable wearing/breaking parts and if I had bought a welder I'd expect to have to give the torch an overhaul with these parts. After all they are not expensive and you should be keeping some on the shelf really. The results on steel look like excellent progress.

 

[Leetig]

Hi deck. The beads on the mild steel look cold. You said on your first post you were using 90amps on 6mm. If that's still the case it's way too low. Bump it up and see the results.

 

[DecK]

Yea, should have known better to be fair and done the whole lot when I got the welder. Well stocked up on stuff now as well cause I got a selection of everything in 1.6 and 2.4 today.

I'll up the amps as well tomorrow when i have another go on it.

 

[Richard.]

Nice one. Did you buy collet bodies or lenses.

 

[DecK]

I got a shot of ceramics in different sizes, collets and bodies, gas diffusers, tungstens, and a few of the heat shield washers. Might have got a few other bits too. Just asked my local supplies fella for a mix of everything for the tig torch I had in my hand. Whats the story with the lenses, are they better?

 

[Richard.]

Well what you have bought ie collet bodies is perfectly adequate for tig welding so the last thing I want to do is make you believe you've bought s##t kit because that's not the case. Gas lenses are a bit better in the respect the create a better gas coverage in the form of a straight down blanket evenly distributed through a fine mesh. Exotic metals like stainless,duplex and especially titanium should be welded with a lens as they require good gas coverage and titanium requires nothing less than perfect coverage. Big lens with big cup as a minimum.

 

[DecK]

Sorry, it was actually lenses that I got as well as collet bodies. It was the gas lense that was bothered when I looked this mornin. Called it a diffuser earlier for some reason. It was when you mentioned "fine mesh" that you got me thinking what was i after getting. Probably little reason to get both but in fairness, like you said earlier they are cheap and didn't break the bank.