Welding Tips and Tricks

Hi, I'm an electronics engineer and doing firmware development for living. Metalworking has been my hobby for quite a few years now.

Yesterday, my new miller TIG welder has just been delivered to my home shop today. I rushed out to get the necessary supplies for it so that I can experiment with it over the weekend. I'm mainly interested in aluminum and mild steel welding, so I got #6, #7, #8 nozzles, green, yellow, and red tungsten, 4043, 5356, and 70S6 filler rods. Came home, set up the machine, hooked up the gas bottle, sharpened my green tungsten, and at that point i realized that I didn't get the torch collet! Arrrgh ...

Guess I'll have to wait till monday to buy it and do my first arc strike

Welcome. Do yourself a favor and grab this:
https://weldmongerstore.com/products/ti ... are-bundle

Welcome to the forum.

cj737 wrote:Welcome. Do yourself a favor and grab this:
https://weldmongerstore.com/products/ti ... are-bundle

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm in Turkey, can only buy local cause of customs restrictions.

I looked for stores that were open today and found one that carried welding supplies. I did get a collet and a collet holder and went back to the shop. But while the collet holder can be screwed into the torch tip, the nozzle cannot be screwed onto the collet holder. Arrrgh again ...

The nozzle has a much larger diameter thread compared to the collet holder. And I also realized that the miller rep didn't send me the power cable for the water cooler ... Didn't get off to a good start, I hope things will be smooth once everything is sorted out.

Welcome aboard mate! What machine did you get?

Farmwelding wrote:Welcome aboard mate! What machine did you get?

Thank you! I got a dynasty 280dx with water cooler. I have also gotten the wired foot pedal and the classic series mask. For the torch, I went with a local generic brand instead of a miller torch, because the miller torch didn't have the on/off switch on the torch and so couldn't be used without a pedal. I'll report on my experience using it, but I wish I could compare it to a miller torch and see if there is a difference. Here is the torch I have received:

http://www.vegamak.com/vegamak/tr/torcl ... veg_18.php

I have done a lot of oxy acetylene gas welding mild steel before, and I have been told that the feel for gas welding helps a lot with TIG welding. I am really curious to see how true that is

I have also attempted to do gas welding on aluminum, but no matter how many different fluxes I have tried for that, I just couldn't get a satisfactory weld result. It's really hard getting information about the flux technical details here, the sellers sure don't know them so it was trial and error and I finally gave up.

My first use for this machine will be welding the segments and bushings of a scissor lift that I have been building. All mild steel. Next will be a CNC for PCB drilling, where I will use thick aluminum for rigidity and accuracy.

Ok the big thread nozzles were "gas lens" type nozzles. As I didn't get a gas lens, I wasn't able to use them. But today I got a box of #7 regular nozzles and set out to do my first weld. The power cord for the water cooler was not delivered (they forgot to include it grrr), so I set the amperate to 120 Amps.

The first weld job was a bent 9mm diameter round rod to be welded head to head. Think of it like a circle made up of 9mm rod, but cut at one spot, and I am going to weld that spot so the circle is whole again.

Well, it kinda worked, but in a completely unexpected way. I was so eager to press the torch button and to start welding, and that's what I did. But later I found out that I failed to open the argon cylinder, so no shielding gas, and the machine was set to lift arc ... I just got closer and closer to the work and eventually touched it, huge explosive arc, pulled the torch back, cursed ... But the 9mm rod was welded to the other end