New to tig, few pointers please

[pickupminimad]

Right just got my TIG at the weekend, now have a few questions.

I had a play about on monday on a bit of 1mm mild steel. I twiddled knobs, blew holes, tiddled more knobs got it right ish.

But is it easier to learn on a thicker bit of metal then fine tune towards the thinner stuff which is what i'll be doing mostly?

My earth clamp is plugged into the + side (but could also be in the - side) is this right

Also is there some sort of guide to what a good weld should look like, or whats gone wrong with it? ie how clean it should be as i seem to get a greenish deposit near the weld, hopefully thats due to running low on gas.....

 

[zzr1200]

The torch is connected the -ve side, if you connect to the +ve you will overheat the Tungsten.

 

[hotrodder]

Yep, thicker material will make your life easier as you can concentrate on technique without worrying about blowing holes. 2 or 3mm would be my suggestion initially

Runnach posted some pics recently, plenty of good examples of butts, fillets and outside corners on both steel and aluminium there

An example of the difference arc length makes here

As said torch negative, don't get the greenish deposits (pics would help) but welds should be free of scale/deposits, colours will depend on how clean the base metal/how good the shielding was- it simply denotes the temperature of the weld/metal when it was exposed to air as the torch moved

 

[pickupminimad]

Thanks for your help getting new bottle of gas today will have another practice and put up my results. Hopefully the local tig welding expert will be round later to give me a hand

 

[pickupminimad]

My first goes!!

Had a blast at Tig today, started off a bit rubbish, but after a few twiddles and a bit of practice after about half an hour of twiddling and playing about i've come to this.......

Bit poo, but haven't got my new gauntlets yet so cant actually feed the wire through my hands.

Think i might have pretty much nailed it on the corner weld. What do you think?