Hi,
You're most welcome Lyn and thanks for the compliment.
I still turn out rubbish welds but with each one I gain more experience and tend to get a little better; for a guy in a home workshop without anyone experienced in TIG welding for guidance it's a case of making the same mistakes many times; there's just so much to take in all at once; I tried with welder settings all over the place but with help from the guys like Hood & Munkul on here I narrowed down the parameters; one really good rule of thumb is amperage; 1A per thou thickness is an excellent starting point and with AC balance at 25%/30% and AC frequency around 70hz I made lots more progress each slight difference in settings makes itself known. I can't advise much because I've so much to learn; I'm straight welding without using pulse function and I don't own a foot pedal so perhaps I'm learning the hardest way but I'm definitely learning and enjoying myself when I can get into the workshop.
Kind regards, Colin.
I made two of these "third" hands and what a huge difference they make.
I cut dozens of these welding blanks out of sheet aluminium using my woodworking bandsaw with a 4tpi band fitted; the cut was very coarse but then I ran the edges on my home made belt grinder and removed burrs with an engineers file; making these blanks is a tedious job but they needn't be big just for practice; 4.5" x 1.75" of 2mm or 3mm thick are big enough. Heavy gloves are needed when grinding the edges otherwise scorched hands will be the result; they rapidly heat up.
You're most welcome Lyn and thanks for the compliment.
I still turn out rubbish welds but with each one I gain more experience and tend to get a little better; for a guy in a home workshop without anyone experienced in TIG welding for guidance it's a case of making the same mistakes many times; there's just so much to take in all at once; I tried with welder settings all over the place but with help from the guys like Hood & Munkul on here I narrowed down the parameters; one really good rule of thumb is amperage; 1A per thou thickness is an excellent starting point and with AC balance at 25%/30% and AC frequency around 70hz I made lots more progress each slight difference in settings makes itself known. I can't advise much because I've so much to learn; I'm straight welding without using pulse function and I don't own a foot pedal so perhaps I'm learning the hardest way but I'm definitely learning and enjoying myself when I can get into the workshop.
Kind regards, Colin.
I made two of these "third" hands and what a huge difference they make.
I cut dozens of these welding blanks out of sheet aluminium using my woodworking bandsaw with a 4tpi band fitted; the cut was very coarse but then I ran the edges on my home made belt grinder and removed burrs with an engineers file; making these blanks is a tedious job but they needn't be big just for practice; 4.5" x 1.75" of 2mm or 3mm thick are big enough. Heavy gloves are needed when grinding the edges otherwise scorched hands will be the result; they rapidly heat up.