Well I read the ‘how to’ guide and ‘machine setup’.......... Read the EWM machine manual too and felt totally inadequate!!
Had a few passes over 2mm box and thought it wasn’t too bad aside of worrying if I could maintain a constant tungsten gap AND feed filler? To be honest; I was struggling to hold the torch steady with two hands a rest and 100% concentration! Forgot to breathe on a few runs!!
First picture shows one of my attempts without filler, just chasing the puddle. Yes, I did turn the gas down lower than anticipated and it did get hot!
The weld was very narrow, filler rod there as scale.
To be honest I was struggling with it. Not happy with weld size/width. Running 60 Amps and some with 1.6mm tungsten & 100% Argon.
Decided to play with the machine and turned off ‘Automatic’ pulse. Then decided to turn off ‘activArc’ despite thinking this function should help a novice with varying tungsten to workpiece gap??
Second picture without filler and weld size seriously increased due to settings change alone.
Third picture shows 1mm sheet welded to the 2mm box and above another 1mm sheet welded to 1mm sheet.
I know it’s not massively pretty but as a first attempt at joining two work pieces I’m quite pleased with it.
My point: knowing your machine and being able to set it up correctly or not really makes all the difference. I’m sure the features these machines have may be of use at some point but as ‘Richard’ mentioned in a post I read the other night...... Most of us don’t need the features over and above basic settings??
This is going to be a steep learning curve and hopefully rewarding in the end.
Looking forward to picking up the torch again for another practise.
All the Best
Peter
