[mebrett75]

i am a beginner at tig welding with some experience using a lincoln 175 tig at work. i felt comfortable enough with the welding i was doing at work so i decided to purchase a tig for home and bought the everlast 200dx. i can produce nice welds with a mig, stick, and tig at work but can not get the everlast to even start a puddle on aluminum without gouging ( it kind of reminds me of an air arch lol ) also just burns up my tungsten and makes the cup glow after a few seconds. i have watched many of your videos and cant seem to figure out what i am doing wrong or if possibly the welder is damaged. it had a dent in the side when i recieved it but everlast assured me that this wasnt the first time a welder was dented during shipping and the welder would be fine so they sent me a new cover. all i am trying to do at the moment is make a long even puddle without welding with filler, to get the feel and tune the settings on my new machine but havent had any luck. on a piece of 1/8 and 1/4 aluminum, i am using a #8 cup, 1/16 2% thor. and anywhere from 6-15 on argon. amps were from 60 to 120, all other settings were used from your video. i also have tried a #7 and #10 cups, a 3/32 2% thor, plus tried moving the settings from your video + and - one at a time to see if anything helped but no luck. all it does is it looks like it is burning the aluminum or just melts the tungsten. i recieved the tig last wednesday and have been watching your videos which i think are great but cant get this to even come close to working correctly. here are a few pics of what it is doing PLEASE ANY HELP WOULD BE GREATLY APRECCIATED!

bad weld.jpg (93.73 KiB) Viewed 2043 times

[RedIron881]

From your photo it looks like one problem might be a gas issue. When you press down the peddle are you hearing a good gas hiss or putting it up near your cheek feeling the flow? If your tungsten is turning black and burning up, gas is the problem. Could be that your tank is getting low and the regulator is stuck giving you a false reading, or have a leak somewhere, or your collet body or collet might be damaged. Take everything off the torch and check the flow. I'd also move down to a standard #5-6 cup with a 3/32 tungsten with about a 1/8 stick out, 15 cfm should be just fine. If the gas flow seems fine another thing to check is the ground. I know the Everlast ground clap is a bit... cheap. I changed the one on my PowerPro 164 first thing.

Have you had any problems welding on DC with it?

[Otto Nobedder]

I'll repeat RedIron's question, any trouble with DC?

All the heat at the tungsten and cup suggest the arc balance won't set, and is at 0% (cleaning only). I've had this happen on water-cooled torches, and it wasn't arc-balance related, though that's how it behaved. The same machine would not weld DC- either, with the same kind of apparent trouble.

The trouble came from using really crappy tap water as the coolant.

Are you using a water-cooled torch?

Even with an air-cooled torch, you should start with the arc balance at 60-65%, so more heat is on the work than the tungsten. On clean and fresh Al, I'll go 80% on arc balance, so I can get a bit more heat out of the same size tungsten.

The next consideration is the gas. Someone here VERY recently had an issue similar to yours. It turned out he'd been mistakenly given 75/25 in a bottle labled for pure argon. (Assuming you have good flow at the torch.)

Steve

[fargo]

Even with an air-cooled torch, you should start with the arc balance at 60-65%, so more heat is on the work than the tungsten. On clean and fresh Al, I'll go 80% on arc balance, so I can get a bit more heat out of the same size tungsten.

The arc balace on my Everlast are oriented backwards to most machines. I ran into a similar problem when I first set up my 250EX.

So to achieve DCEN 60-65% the knob has to be set arounnd 40-35%. I learned this the hard way after I balled up so tungsten and made the tig cup see thru

[mebrett75]

i want to thank all of you for your help. the problem was with the gas in the torch head. there is a little brass collet that holds the tungsten in place and it was in backwards not allowing the gas to flow correctly. i am glad it was a simple mistake, not a problem with my new welder and was fixed easily with your help. once again thanks here is a pic of the welds now which are not great but for a beginner with a tig i think i am off to a good start