Tungsten balling up, what's wrong

[diyjer]

Nice,

That bead-on-plate looks great now!

The proverbial planets are in alignment...

i'm happy now, in fact i slept with the 255ext beside me last night. i put it in a soft pillow as well

[christian]

Yeah,

It undoubtedly doesn't get much better than a 255EXT for TIG welding.

[Grizzly1944]

Glad to know that you slept with your newest spark machine. Don't let your wife or girlfriend know that kind of stuff, I can see some kind of unpleasant event in the offing.

Now many other challenges await! Good Luck!

[diyjer]

Glad to know that you slept with your newest spark machine. Don't let your wife or girlfriend know that kind of stuff, I can see some kind of unpleasant event in the offing.

Now many other challenges await! Good Luck!

thanks. i'm excited. i have so many projects lined up. i'm doing furniture with the combination of wood and metal (mostly for joints , etc). metal simplifies the structure because it's stronger than wood per volume. and that's where my 255ext will come in. and also, there are some fixtures in the kitchen where i'm not happy of what can be bought out there so i want to create my own. i'm now looking for a metal lathe and a milling machine.

Don't let your wife or girlfriend know that kind of stuff, I can see some kind of unpleasant event in the offing.

well, my wife already knows. my wife said said to me last night: i didn't know you have 2 welding machines?
i have no problem with my wife. she's supportive. and besides, the projects that i do are all for our house, or anything to do with our house. and my wife knows this is my
only vice. which reminds me of a joke which goes like this:

a man went to his doctor.
[man] doctor, i don't drink, i don't smoke, i don't womanize. do you think i'll live longer?
[doctor] what for?

well, if i'm that man, my answer would be: to (tig) weld!

kidding aside, it's true for me. no offense to people who do, but i don't drink or smoke or womanize..hahaha. that's probably why my wife is letting me have these hobbies on metal and wood which at times are expensive. but then, i normally recover my expense because friends and friends of friends would ask me do stuff for them and they pay me. nothing structural or anything that can involve serious safety concern. i know my limits and i know i'm not a licensed welder. i remember when i first bought my small inverter stick welding machine for $300+. a couple of weeks later, a friend asked me to do some welding for a few fixtures in his garden and he wants to use metal. he paid me $500. so there you go. ROI on my stick welder. things like that. then there's a couple of projects in my house (the wife specifically asked for it) not too long ago which will require welding. one of which is my front fence which is pure metal. three companies quoted me for average of $aud9,500. i've decided to do it myself. the materials would cost me $2.4K + $1.2K for a better welding machine which can do mig (you have to justify a purchase of toy, right?). i didn't know about everlast at that time (damn..) so i bought the cigweld 3-in-1 because it was on sale. anyway, i finished the whole project in the way i like it with better materials for almost $3K which included the primer and paint in the cost. i did the spray priming and painting as well. and i get to keep the welding machine. our neighbor who hired somebody to do their metal fence almost similar to mine told me that mine is looking better anyway...

so wife is happy because we saved more than $6K. as they say, happy wife, happy life!

ok, got to go back to my day job...catch you later

[StephenG]

I have had a similar problem... tungsten would immediately ball up; actually melt way.
Had not used the welder in quite a while, but the last I did it was for SAW.

I wanted to use the TIG torch to simply heat up some steel flat bar so it would bend easier in a bench vise.
l replaced the stick electrode holder with the TIG torch forgetting that DC TIG needs to be DCEN.

Newbie mistake.

[christian]

I can top that one.

Recently I was TIG welding and fouled/dipped my tungsten, so I removed it from the torch and left it on the bench, and then took a soda pop break.

I came back to the bench and took the 2" long tungsten and just ground off the little blob with my 20V/cordless angle grinder with a flap disc on it.

As I got back to welding, the tungsten quickly balled up and shrunk back almost to the collet...

Of course, I apparently wasn't looking closely enough when I picked up my tungsten, because it wasn't my tungsten at all. It was a stub of cast off filler that I sharpened and cinched-up into the torch.

Ha, ha, ha...