Welding Tips and Tricks

Hello
Well New to these forum things so let me give this a try.
Jody Talks about adding Helium when tig welding to Make a smaller machine act a little bigger. My question is this. I have Tri-Gas (90%Helium 7.5%Argon 2.5% CO2) can I add this to my Argon threw a Y In my supply line or will the Co2 give me problems. I will be honest most of my welding over the years has been mig and stick with very little Tig I can usually get things done with the Tig but I am by no means an Aerospace Tig welder.Well any help/Advice will be appreciated

Hello Doc.

There is a lot to be gained in mixing gasses for tig, but only very specific ones. Argon is usually the main one with little bits of helium added sometimes. However, if you are just doing hobby stuff, don't confuse yourself. Pure argon, thats the way to go.

On your exact question, That gas is for MIg, which is why it has the C02, to give punch to the arc. For this reason, you cannot use it for tig because the tungsten needs to be in an inert atmosphere, otherwise it will just disintegrate. (ask me how i know)

Yeah,

TIG needs an inert shielding gas. Argon is the main one and can be mixed in whatever ratio with helium to increase heat output, its mainly done for thicker aluminum I believe.

I use 100% argon for everything I do, never experimented with helium and Argon is all we use at work.

Yep. Just use argon for now. If you start doing a lot of aluminum jobs with 1/2" thickness and up, depending on the amperage range of your machine, then you may consider helium. Helium will take your 200 amp machine and let it do 3/4" aluminum, just barely. Now if you have a dynasty 400 or 700, then this isn't an issue, but for most of us we don't have these and if we are losing jobs because we can't weld inch thick aluminum then helium is maybe something you want, but argon is far more versatile. Yeah and any CO2 in your tig gas does fun things. Just like welding galvanized without removing the coating and then tiggin it. It is all sorts of fun.

As others have stated argon is all you really need, however in a production environment, welding stainless, the addition of 2-5% hydrogen can be used to provide more energy to the arc and the stainless will wet out a little better. Most shops do not use this but it is an option that is available.

LtBadd wrote:As others have stated argon is all you really need, however in a production environment, welding stainless, the addition of 2-5% hydrogen can be used to provide more energy to the arc and the stainless will wet out a little better. Most shops do not use this but it is an option that is available.

I am curious, hydrogen is explosive, electricity and heat plus gas that is explosive? How does this work? How is there explosion or fire?

Farmwelding wrote:

LtBadd wrote:As others have stated argon is all you really need, however in a production environment, welding stainless, the addition of 2-5% hydrogen can be used to provide more energy to the arc and the stainless will wet out a little better. Most shops do not use this but it is an option that is available.

I am curious, hydrogen is explosive, electricity and heat plus gas that is explosive? How does this work? How is there explosion or fire?

It's such a small % and mixed with the (inert) argon it's not an issue. For manual welding they don't mix it above 5%, just found this have a look, higher % are for mechanized applications

Stoichiometry. Any flammable has to have a certain amount of oxygen to be explosive. The hydrogen is dissolved in inert gas so it never gets any O2 to make it go boom.

Richard stole my thunder

So I wonder what kind of fun it would be with pure hydrogen or half hydrogen and half oxygen. That would be cool for a bout two seconds until your face burned off. Seems interesting! Don't anyone try it.

Farmwelding wrote:So I wonder what kind of fun it would be with pure hydrogen or half hydrogen and half oxygen. That would be cool for a bout two seconds until your face burned off. Seems interesting! Don't anyone try it.

In HS shop class we used to partially fill balloons with OxyAcetylene and wait til someone was in a booth welding and touch it off. Don't try it. It will get you kicked out...don't ask how I know

You know Jeff, that would echo through the halls so bad at my school they'd hear it in the office on the other side of the school. My brother had a pop tart and they used a propane torch to warm it because they didn't have access to a toaster. And then another guy took a pop tart and put it on the strip heater we use for bending plastic.
My dad used to take plastic water bottles at his old work place and tape the hell out of top of it and attached it to a massive air compressor. Let the valve go and made a blast like a bomb going off. Boss runs out-couldn't figure it out everyday for like a year.

exnailpounder wrote:In HS shop class we used to partially fill balloons with OxyAcetylene and wait til someone was in a booth welding and touch it off. Don't try it. It will get you kicked out...don't ask how I know

Is this how you got your start working with wood?

LtBadd wrote:

exnailpounder wrote:In HS shop class we used to partially fill balloons with OxyAcetylene and wait til someone was in a booth welding and touch it off. Don't try it. It will get you kicked out...don't ask how I know

Is this how you got your start working with wood?

Must bot have been the same teacher like we have here. Let me guess you are the one who made a sawdust canon in the middle of wood class.

Farmwelding wrote:So I wonder what kind of fun it would be with pure hydrogen or half hydrogen and half oxygen. That would be cool for a bout two seconds until your face burned off. Seems interesting! Don't anyone try it.

Oxy/hydrogen gas welding is used to torch weld aluminum by some that make motorcycle tanks and other parts.
It is said that it makes a nice clean weld.

Well that answers That Thank you all I was just hoping to use a gas that I all ready have and pay lease on the tank. I use the tri-gas when I mig stainless I have it set up on my Millermatic 200 that is set up to run Stainless only. I priced out a new Lincoln
PRECISION TIG 275 today. Well lets just say I will be waiting a while for that added machine ($4800). I need to get a larger Lathe first. I did order a Larger tig torch today though. An 17 air cooled, When I got my Squarewave 175 it had an LA-9 torch on it with a 125 amp rating so that was limiting me some as well Plus burning the crud out of my fingers when I would push it.
I think for now I am gonna do the heavier steel and stainless with my XMT 304. I will invest in a pedal and just lift start it. Oh boy something new to teach myself. lol

exnailpounder wrote: In HS shop class we used to partially fill balloons with OxyAcetylene and wait til someone was in a booth welding and touch it off. Don't try it. It will get you kicked out...don't ask how I know

We used ziplock bags.

LtBadd wrote:

exnailpounder wrote:In HS shop class we used to partially fill balloons with OxyAcetylene and wait til someone was in a booth welding and touch it off. Don't try it. It will get you kicked out...don't ask how I know

Is this how you got your start working with wood?

...nah I got booted out of woodshop a few times too. I see Poland 308 was in on the fun too

Oxy/Acetylene can be fun lol We Started with plastic oil cans quart then gallon then 2.5 gal then a 5 gallon pail and a 30 gallon drum. After we set off the 55 gallon drum we decided we had better quit before some one got hurt. It removed all the grass in a 20 foot circle and took several minutes for the lid to come back to the earth. Oh please don't anyone try that.

DrDogwood wrote:Oxy/Acetylene can be fun lol We Started with plastic oil cans quart then gallon then 2.5 gal then a 5 gallon pail and a 30 gallon drum. After we set off the 55 gallon drum we decided we had better quit before some one got hurt. It removed all the grass in a 20 foot circle and took several minutes for the lid to come back to the earth. Oh please don't anyone try that.

Sounds like a fun time! Good use of the gases to
Reminds of the first time we lit off Tannerite on the farm. We decide that shooting it wasn't worth it, so we took a bottle rocket and a shop rag and lit of 2 lbs 25 ft away from us. We surrounded it with unopened, empty diet cola cans. We haven't found it yet, but we are sure that somewhere in the back of the shop is an aluminum can that is shredded. Also scared the hell out of my grandfather-the house shook like a bomb went off. I guess the lesson is follow the insturctions and you won't learn and have no fun, but you may live little longer.

The LEL (Lower explosive limit) for hydrogen is 4% in atmosphere (20.9%oxygen at sea level). 5% in argon is a non-issue, as it's dispersal around the puddle much further dilutes it. It's not uncommon to have a slight "flare" around the cup when using up to 5% hydrogen, as it will still burn off once it meets oxygen while hot, but this is not a hazard. It's not unlike your butane lighter diffusing from pure butane to a mix that will burn in air a noticeable distance from the nozzle it comes from, and you're already looking at an arc of significantly high temperature.

Steve S

DrDogwood wrote:Oxy/Acetylene can be fun lol We Started with plastic oil cans quart then gallon then 2.5 gal then a 5 gallon pail and a 30 gallon drum. After we set off the 55 gallon drum we decided we had better quit before some one got hurt. It removed all the grass in a 20 foot circle and took several minutes for the lid to come back to the earth. Oh please don't anyone try that.

Was beer involved

exnailpounder wrote:

DrDogwood wrote:Oxy/Acetylene can be fun lol We Started with plastic oil cans quart then gallon then 2.5 gal then a 5 gallon pail and a 30 gallon drum. After we set off the 55 gallon drum we decided we had better quit before some one got hurt. It removed all the grass in a 20 foot circle and took several minutes for the lid to come back to the earth. Oh please don't anyone try that.

Was beer involved

What good story does not include beer. As the old saying goes, no good story started ¨I was eating this salad...¨

Farmwelding wrote:

exnailpounder wrote:

DrDogwood wrote:Oxy/Acetylene can be fun lol We Started with plastic oil cans quart then gallon then 2.5 gal then a 5 gallon pail and a 30 gallon drum. After we set off the 55 gallon drum we decided we had better quit before some one got hurt. It removed all the grass in a 20 foot circle and took several minutes for the lid to come back to the earth. Oh please don't anyone try that.

Was beer involved

What good story does not include beer. As the old saying goes, no good story started ¨I was eating this salad...¨

I hear that! Usually the trouble starts when you hear, "hold my beer"

Ironically there looking at bringing back propane as a refrigerant in cooling systems. And most of the new blends use butane as a stabilizing agent to make it less explosive but slightly more flammable.