Welding Tips and Tricks

@ Bernard - it's a long shot but I'm in the UK - there are maybe 1 or 2 others - where about's are you ? sure someone could spot the problem straight off if we could see your set up in person.

I live in North Devon. I am going to try and get one of the local engineering firms to come over and see what is wrong. Hopefully also provide me with a half day lesson.

As I am a retired electronic engineer that is only a hobby welder I am not threat to anyone's income stream.

I have confused some of you as since the beginning of this post I have upgraded my welder to an r-tech AC/DC 170 digital. It looks to me like a rebadged Everlast. https://www.r-techwelding.co.uk/tig-wel ... ig-170ext/

I have watched a number of videos including a series by Pacificarcwelding that go through everything from aluminium prep, torch hygiene including Tungsten grinding and how to tack weld coupons and two videos on fillet welding 2 mm and 1 mm coupons. On one of them he uses an Everlast 210 ext which has an identical front panel to my welder. I have rigorously followed all the processes and setup that he uses but I still get a rubbish weld.

I am definitely on AC and I can hear it. I am getting cleaning action at 35% but how ever long I wait I don't get a neat puddle. I have tried different tunsten tips shapes pointed, balled and rounded. I have tried currents from 80 A up to 130A on the 2 mm coupons. I have tried frequencies from 80 Hz up to 240 Hz.

Anyway hopefully I will get some local help in the next week or so.

Sorry your on the wrong side of the country for me to help - I hope you get it sorted soon - have you tried talking to Rtech ? they are actually pretty helpful & as I understand it if they believe after talking you through the obvious things it could be the machine they will pay to ship it both ways just to check it over or repair it.

This is a long shot but does your welder have lugs inside which allow you to switch from EP to EN, and they are set wrong?

Bernard wrote:I live in North Devon. I am going to try and get one of the local engineering firms to come over and see what is wrong. Hopefully also provide me with a half day lesson.

As I am a retired electronic engineer that is only a hobby welder I am not threat to anyone's income stream.

I have confused some of you as since the beginning of this post I have upgraded my welder to an r-tech AC/DC 170 digital. It looks to me like a rebadged Everlast. https://www.r-techwelding.co.uk/tig-wel ... ig-170ext/

I have watched a number of videos including a series by Pacificarcwelding that go through everything from aluminium prep, torch hygiene including Tungsten grinding and how to tack weld coupons and two videos on fillet welding 2 mm and 1 mm coupons. On one of them he uses an Everlast 210 ext which has an identical front panel to my welder. I have rigorously followed all the processes and setup that he uses but I still get a rubbish weld.

I am definitely on AC and I can hear it. I am getting cleaning action at 35% but how ever long I wait I don't get a neat puddle. I have tried different tunsten tips shapes pointed, balled and rounded. I have tried currents from 80 A up to 130A on the 2 mm coupons. I have tried frequencies from 80 Hz up to 240 Hz.

Anyway hopefully I will get some local help in the next week or so.

your original pics looked like its a gas issue.
either you have a bad bottle or you have fitted a gas lens and didn't get it fitting right.
some common issues is not swapping over the insulator.
if in doubt post up some pics of the torch and regulator.

your pics look a lot like someones put mig gas into an argon bottle.


having seen a fair few threads with contaminated gas, i suspect what can be happening is some people like to leave the gas valves open when the tank is empty (for whatever personal reason) which lets air into the bottle. then the gas supplier gets a bit lazy in purging the bottles and ends up with a bit of air mixed in with the argon.

The EP and EN are definitely the right way round. I checked.

I changed the insulator to the one supplied with the gas lens. It gives a good gas tight seal round the lens body.

Gas quality is possibly an issue I have no way to check. The bottle is nearly empty. I have used up lots of gas trying to get this to work on my samples. The gas is BOC Argoshield. I bought the Argoshield Universal which was probably a mistake as I now see it is optimised for welding martial 4 mm to 10 mm thick. I should have bought Argoshield Light which is optimised for material less than 4 mm which is what I am always using.
https://www.boconline.co.uk/en/products ... argoshield

The Argoshield Light has 7% less CO2 and more Argon but the same level of oxygen.

Bernard wrote:The gas is BOC Argoshield. I bought the Argoshield Universal

that explains everything !

you bought mig gas. it doesn't work for tig.
for tig you need straight argon.
see how you go with a bottle of argon.

edit: boc calls their argon either just "argon" or "welding argon". easy enough to confuse it with "argoshield" which is their mig gas.
i suspect it work okish on steel because steel can absorb the carbon from the gas and probably handled the oxidation especially with filler. aluminium however cannot handle the carbon in the mig gas and the oxygen just makes more aluminium oxide which funny enough can look black.

Wow!

Thanks, that is a relief to know what the problem is.

I will get some straight pure Argon.

Bernard

Bernard, get a tank of 100% ARGON. Also, if you are cleaning the material as well as you say, you can most likely turn back the cleaning action to 30 or a bit lower. The lower frequency will also give you more "power" at the arc. Once you get going and you wish to make any changes to the machine, make only ONE change at a time--i.e.,,change the frequency to a higher value by only 10 at a time and watch the results. Also you can expect the coupons to get heat soaked and you will have to use a different coupon.
Good luck and keep us posted.
gramps

And even worse, it has OXYGEN! The gas you are trying to make sure doesn't make it's way into the weld puddle during TIG.

Bernard wrote:Machine setup.
Gas Argon tried 7.5 l/m and 10 l/m

Oscar wrote:its the gas or gas delivery

Oscar wrote:The problem is something that he thinks is right but it really isn't. It's just that we can't tell because we're not there.

Called it! It's always the last thing you think of. Good to see you finally found the problem.

BOC guys are retards for supplying that gas.

Glad you guys figured it out!

Yesterday a local friend called me with a similar issue (he's new to TIG) so I had him bring over his machine. Long story short...he had the collet in backwards on a 17F torch so the larger section was blocking most of the gas flow. He could weld steel and even stainless but aluminum wouldn't cooperate. Easy fixes are the best

Glad you have it figured out - sorry none of us caught it sooner - it always looked like a gas issue as Oscar said - if we knew you had argoshield we could have saved some time and grief - in BOC speak their 100% argon is branded pureshield - in theory they should have sold you the correct gas assuming you said it's for Tig welding ! but don't feel bad - many experienced in other processes have been caught out like you - hope you now have success with the new machine.

just wait til we see how good a tig welder he is with all the practice and holding the torch correctly.

Bernard, just change the gas and carry on.