16 ga steel settings?

[Trip59]

Got some hood time today, got a bit confused. Cleaned the zinc off of a piece of exhaust pipe cutoff, tried to run beads around the edge. Keep in mind this is essentially the first time I've TIG'd in 13 years or so...



Top right was first, top left was second and the bottom was third. First TIG welds in earnest since I got the machine set up.

Having a bit of an issue with the filler balling. Nice clean arc, slow puddle forming, but the filler is balling and dropping before I can get it into position. Been running between 45 and 65 amps or so, on this and some 16ga square tube.

Welded up a 45 on some 3/4 square tube then propped it up with the peak up and bashed the hell out of it with a hammer. One joint bent, the others broke. OK looking beads, crappy penetration (beveled the edge half thickness, no gap) Again, filler balling up before I can get it to the edge of the puddle. Using 1/16 Lanthanated, 1/16 ER70S-2 filler

Thoughts?

[zoama]

Exhaust pipe is usually aluminized rather than galvanized.
Here's a video that may help... it's not the same situation but you can extrapolate from it.

[Trip59]

So I should have gapped the joint, rather than just beveling and fixing with no gap? But what about the filler balling before I can get it close enough, bigger filler?

[Rambozo]

So I should have gapped the joint, rather than just beveling and fixing with no gap? But what about the filler balling before I can get it close enough, bigger filler?

The gap will let you see that you are getting all the way through. Without a gap, if the lands are thin enough, you can just melt through with a little more power, but you will not be able to tell that you got full penetration unless you inspect from the other side. By having a gap and being able to see the inner walls breakdown, you know you are all the way just from what you see on the outside.

As far as the filler balling up, there are so many things that can cause that, too small for the amount of power, holding the rod too close to the arc while waiting to dip, torch angle and direction, travel speed, and probably more that I'm forgetting. Ideally you want to keep the rod inside the argon cone, but away from the arc, you can also rest it on the base metal between dips to help draw some heat out, then sorta scoot it into the puddle as needed. Mostly it just takes practice to read what is going on and make adjustments. I would say that for your edge welds, 1/16 is about as big as you would want to go. .040" might be a little better. For a 13 year break, it looks like it's coming back pretty fast. By the time you got to that third bead, it looks like you pretty much have it down.

[Trip59]

I think the most challenging part is remembering. Feel like an idiot some of the time, I just have to remind myself that the last time I turned a TIG machine on was July of 98 and it's been a busy few years since that.

Thinking now, it may have been torch angle contributing to it, I was having a bit of a time with the monster of a handle. I think a nice WP9 or WP20 is going to be the next purchase I make once I can afford it.

Overall, the motion came back a lot quicker than I thought it would, I was overall happy with appearance on what I did yesterday, considering I did half while wrestling the cable before I remembered why I built my cart the way I did... added a hanger and supported the cable at table height rather than having it hang off the edge. Made it a bit easier.

Thanks for the advice!

[ShaneJackson]

You may want to flip on the low freq pulse and play with it on the edges.

[Trip59]

Haven't done much with edges since then, but I did a bunch of 3/4 and 1/2 square tube. Did a butt weld on the 1/2, about 3/4 pedal with the machine set to 80. Bead looked meh, but I put it to the hammer test, hammered right on the joint with one end propped up, bent it to 45, then flipped it and reversed. Joint didn't crack or break, actually bent off to one side when I reversed it. I'm happy that it was a solid weld with solid penetration. I'll move on to some things I can cut and etch next weekend.

Did decide to do something creative, I have a bunch of these little HF vise grips in different styles. The small ones are hard to release, the tabs on the release lever bend out and you can only get them undone with a screwdriver. Yeah, I got my hand stuck in the side of one, clamped to the table, 9' away from the nearest screwdriver... that was fun.

I know it wasn't the right metal, but a little bit of filler and a little heat, will file it back a bit when I go back out. Looks like beaded on the surface, but I got it burned in good on the few I did, this was actually just on top of the original bead to give it a bit more meat: