Welding Tips and Tricks

Hi everyone,
I've been FCAW and MIG welding for a little while (a couple of times a year, for 4 years now), but haven't had proper training. I picked up a Millermatic 211 last year and have been slowly working on dialing in my welding. I've also just begun to learn TIG welding from a professional welder using his early 1970's vintage Miller Syncrowave 300. I've had about 4 hours of arc time so far and it's coming along slowly, but I'm enjoying it immensely.
The aluminum is a little over 1/8" thick. I am pretty pleased with how my first welds turned out. My first beads are on the top, finishing on the bottom. I thought I was tapering off the pedal slowly enough to avoid craters, so I'm thinking I need to add more filler at the end. Some of the ugliness is from experimenting with the pedal and torch manipulation. The big crater is from going full pedal to see how the tungsten would hold up. I'm finally starting to practice feeding the filler wire to graduate beyond a 2" welder
I'm looking for a bit of feedback on my latest AL practice. I bought a Dynasty 200DX and have been playing with settings to see the influence balance, frequency, etc had on the weld. Anyways, all of my welds had grainy beads. I was using 3/32" ceriated tungsten, #6 gas lens, about 10-12cfh Argon, 4043 1/16" filler and the base metal was 6061 flat stock. I ran beads on several of these pieces and they all came out grainy regardless of whether I wire brushed or acetone'd them. I was using a AL dedicated stainless steel brush. I don't really have any theories that explain the grainy beads.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to venturing deeper into welding.

4043 seems to have a tendency to get "grainy" with a lot of heat. 4943 filler seems to remain quite a bit cleaner/silvery after welding.

I have the same unit as you, I prefer to run 150Hz, balance at 65%, 2% lanthanated, and a #7 or #8 with a gas lens. I run my CFH higher than necessary, and I crank the post flow to 10-11. I would rather spend a few pennies on Ar than to destroy a tungsten, a cup or have crappy looking welds due to cracks.

cj737 wrote:4043 seems to have a tendency to get "grainy" with a lot of heat. 4943 filler seems to remain quite a bit cleaner/silvery after welding.

I have the same unit as you, I prefer to run 150Hz, balance at 65%, 2% lanthanated, and a #7 or #8 with a gas lens. I run my CFH higher than necessary, and I crank the post flow to 10-11. I would rather spend a few pennies on Ar than to destroy a tungsten, a cup or have crappy looking welds due to cracks.

Thanks for the input, I suppose my travel speed is still too slow while I'm deep in learning territory. I did like the directed arc at 150Hz, but I felt that I had to dwell in one spot for too long for the puddle to grow and wet out. Again, probably due to the fact that I'm learning... moving too slowly, not using enough amps and then using too many amps, etc.

arc length is critical in TIG. Once you find the correct heat level with aluminum, adding the filler and letting it wet in becomes the next hurdle. Learning to watch the leading edge of the puddle begins to tell you when and how much filler to add. Its helpful to be able to see the puddle behind the tungsten as you learn (aluminum TIG) to understand how long to loiter, adjust your travel speed, modulate your filler.

You're off to an awful good start, so just keep buying and learning

Alex, welcome to the forum.