TIG newbie and struggling

[Reefer24131]

Hi, been on the forum a while but never really posted. Watched a few youtube vids and thought thats easy...lets go buy a tig welder.
I purchased my machine from r-tech, only a baby one just for learning.

Ive been playing today for the 1st time, heres a pic.



Can anyone give me some advice? Ive got here some 1.8mm plate (i think), ive got a #6 cup, 1mm tungsten and 1mm filler and 7lpm of gas.

As suggested by a vid, i had a go @20amps and a go @120amp to see what the differences were and to me it felt best around 45amps, would this sound about right?

I write with my left hand but find it easier to hold the torch with my right and feed filler with my left although ive been swapping hands so i can learn with both...
Sorry gor the life story lol

 

[Richard.]

Have you been through the forum tutorial.
It may answer a lot of your questions.
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&s...al.htm&usg=AFQjCNFZ7WaIAt2oU1XLPx2ZyxevBzx-yw

 

[norlander]

From my learning experience, I would say:

Move up to a 1.6 or 2.4 Tungsten
No 7 cup
Forget about filler rod for the moment
Just run beads along the plate no filler and concentrate on a tight arc and travel along a line

Aims of the exercise are:
relaxing the grip on the torch (you may find you are tensing up)
travelling and maintaining the angle and tight arc.
concentrating on the arc and puddle

Try to get some thicker steel to learn on.
cut it into pieces so you can let oe bit cool down while running beads on a another piece- you are probably putting too much heat in that sheet and running over oxidisation.

Its not ideal to guess what thickness you are welding at the learning stage. Know what the thickness is.
Amps is a ball park because sometimes you are welding on a heatsink (bench) and the job heats up, and if you can't speed up to cope, you might have to drop the amps.

I found if you try adding filler from the off:
you may get into a habit of long arcing to avoid touching in.
you do short runs because of that and also problems with feeding the rod
You become 30 mm welder.

So first aim: smooth torch travel; tight arc and constant angle.

Hope that helps.

 

[Richard.]

From my learning experience, I would say:

Move up to a 1.6 or 2.4 Tungsten
No 7 cup
Forget about filler rod for the moment
Just run beads along the plate no filler and concentrate on a tight arc and travel along a line

Aims of the exercise are:
relaxing the grip on the torch (you may find you are tensing up)
travelling and maintaining the angle and tight arc.
concentrating on the arc and puddle

Try to get some thicker steel to learn on.
cut it into pieces so you can let oe bit cool down while running beads on a another piece- you are probably putting too much heat in that sheet and running over oxidisation.

Its not ideal to guess what thickness you are welding at the learning stage. Know what the thickness is.
Amps is a ball park because sometimes you are welding on a heatsink (bench) and the job heats up, and if you can't speed up to cope, you might have to drop the amps.

I found if you try adding filler from the off:
you may get into a habit of long arcing to avoid touching in.
you do short runs because of that and also problems with feeding the rod
You become 30 mm welder.

So first aim: smooth torch travel; tight arc and constant angle.

Hope that helps.

While I agree with a lot of that I am a firm believer that tig welding should be learnt with filler from the first run.
Autogenous tig teaches nothing about the general technique required as it's simply holding a torch and travelling. As soon as filler is applied it becomes a different sport and your starting from scratch again. That's my view and I'm sure lots will disagree. I've taught lots of newcomers the basics and while I always insist on starting with runs on a plate I also insist on getting filler on the go straight away. The move up point is then applied with simple joints which depending on progress rate usually leads to finalising with the fillet joint and lastly tubes.

 

[norlander]

While I agree with a lot of that I am a firm believer that tig welding should be learnt with filler from the first run.
Autogenous tig teaches nothing about the general technique required as it's simply holding a torch and travelling. As soon as filler is applied it becomes a different sport and your starting from scratch again. That's my view and I'm sure lots will disagree. I've taught lots of newcomers the basics and while I always insist on starting with runs on a plate I also insist on getting filler on the go straight away. The move up point is then applied with simple joints which depending on progress rate usually leads to finalising with the fillet joint and lastly tubes.

Thats fine mate if you have an instructor with the student explaining, demonstrating and correcting faults as they occur.

Self teaching modules are better being broken down into building blocks as its usually easier for the student to master one element at a time.

If he is dealing with one aspect and its not going well, he only has to sort the faults with that one aspect.

direct access bike licence and acellerated free fall etc are fine because there is a one to one intstructor/student ratio with immediate fault correction. Distance learning requires a different programme structure.

 

[Richard.]

No not in this case due to the fact autogenous tig welding is a completely different feel to doing it properly.
You can sit and run your torch only up and down that plate all day I can assure you now the moment a lump of filler is put into the mix your starting right from the beginning again. You may as well start with the filler.
I can understand the doing it in stages if that first stage will lead to progression. In this case from my experience it doesn't.