Welding Tips and Tricks

While welding I get an intermittent really bright yellow flare of light. It is so bright it swamps the lens and I can't see a thing.

The frequency of occurrence seems to be increasing. The weld puddle looks good at least as good as I ever do.

I have a Lincoln Tig 200 welder. I installed Jody's stubby gas lens kit.
Using pure Argon.

Welding DC around 90-100 Amps on mild steel square tubing.

Tubing is rust free, area around the weld is freshly ground and outside and inside of tube gets an Acetone wipe.

What is going on? Never had this happen with my old scratch start tig setup.

So after the flare the weld shows no sign of being contaminated or otherwise "messed up"?

Are you using an auto darkening hood? Could this be a malfunction of the lens?

If it’s an auto dark it may also be time for a new battery. If it’s actually the arc then it’s possible you are getting a bad connection somewhere. I e inside a torch or on a cable end. The machine may be seeing this bad connection and spiking the voltage to compensate.

I had a similar problem with a helmet that had all of it's sensors located along the bottom of the helmet window. So when I would be in a position where the welding table, or something on the table, obscured those sensors, the auto darkening lens would go light because it didn't think there was any arc visible. I solved the problem by getting a helmet that has one sensor in each corner of the window, and also has a mode that detects the RF from the arc. I use the RF mode most of the time. It could also be a malfunction of the autodarkening window, either due to a low battery or crapola on one or more sensors.

I use an autodarkening helmet. I have two and it happens with both helmets.

When the flare happens I can see bright yellow light from my peripheral vision from under my chin. ie the light is real not a failure of the helmet.

The closest thing I have experienced is gas welding Aluminum with flux and not having cobalt blue lenses. ie you can't see squat because of the yellow sodium flare.

The weld looks good and it is not bubbling like the shielding gas is blowing away. I get that if the back window of my shop is open or I have the welder exhaust fan blowing towards the work.

When it happens I think the penetration goes down. Hard to tell because its really hard to see the puddle.

You could setup a video camera, that should give a clear idea of how the light is changing and what color it is. Not to beat a helmet dead horse, but that would also definitively rule out something going on with the lens on the helmet.

I hate to say it but I once had a miller max star that started doing something similar. It got worse till it fried a circuit board.

Belated follow up on this problem.
I was sure this problem was related to my Tig200 welder. Because it never did it with my old scratch start setup and it did it with both my Jackson autodarkening helmet and a cheapy Harbor freight autodarkening helmet.
I gave the Jackson a new battery and there was no change.
As a last resort I pulled out my old single shade helmet. Guess what? No problem with yellow flares. Just a good view of everything.
So its time for a new autodarkening helmet.

My Lincoln 3350 is doing the same thing. Hmmm?

Advanced technology strikes!
At the beginning of the space race, an old story was NASA spent $$ on developing a pen that would write in the absence of gravity, while the Russians simply used a pencil.

Same problem. Just bought another ADF helmet. My Lincoln hood was solar, after too many yrs, too many recharge cycles, was getting undependable, getting flashed way too many times. Supposed to get my new Antra helmet tomorrow. $100.00, 1/1/1/1 clarity.

LtBadd wrote:Advanced technology strikes!
At the beginning of the space race, an old story was NASA spent $$ on developing a pen that would write in the absence of gravity, while the Russians simply used a pencil.

I love those Fisher Space Pens!

Oddly, took me quite a while to find a similar substitute, which I use with wood. They are pressurized like the Fisher Space Pens so you can mark at any angle, even upside down, plus they use an ink that is not susceptible to water, so if you're marking outside the rain it won't wash it away. They don't mark on metal though...

These are the ones I found, made in Japan, you can get a thin .7 tip. I mark timber with these and split the line with an Olfa cutter.

https://www.jetpens.com/Uni-Power-Tank- ... nk/pd/2904

I like the blue ink, it's easier to see than the black for me. I keep red also in case I make a mistake...yeah, doesn't happen often, I think I remember making a mistake once...

Alan

aland wrote:
I love those Fisher Space Pens!

Oddly, took me quite a while to find a similar substitute, which I use with wood. They are pressurized like the Fisher Space Pens so you can mark at any angle, even upside down, plus they use an ink that is not susceptible to water, so if you're marking outside the rain it won't wash it away. They don't mark on metal though...

These are the ones I found, made in Japan, you can get a thin .7 tip. I mark timber with these and split the line with an Olfa cutter.

https://www.jetpens.com/Uni-Power-Tank- ... nk/pd/2904

I like the blue ink, it's easier to see than the black for me. I keep red also in case I make a mistake...yeah, doesn't happen often, I think I remember making a mistake once...

Alan

Thanks for the link, I like a fine writing instrument, especially at that price

I just gave a friend of mine a spare working old auto dark helmet when his started malfunctioning like described. I told him to check if his old helmet had a battery backup and if so check it. It had an exterior shade control and when he pulled out the cartridge he found a tiny broken wire in the connecting cable that could have been jiggling around and causing the problems? I have just ordered a new helmet with all controls on the cartridge in one sealed unit.

LtBadd wrote:Thanks for the link, I like a fine writing instrument, especially at that price

You can get them on ebay or Amazon in packs of 10 for even less, like $1-$2/each when you buy in packs of 10.

You can still buy the Fishers, but they are like $15-$20/each the last I checked.

The way I got my first Fisher was through a friend of our family that would come over for the holiday dinner with our family, it always moved to a different house each year. The husband was an Aerospace Engineer who worked for McDonald Douglass. He gave me one as a Xmas present one year when I was a kid, in fact he gave all of my cousins one (8 of us).

So much we gain from the space program in an indirect way...I bet that is true for welding in general, but have no direct experience.

And to keep this thread on track. Let me add my limited experience with helmets. I have a non-auto-darkening helmet which can be difficult to use, but it's good to always one at least one non-auto-darkening helmet, IMO, take that with a grain of sale.

Even the cheap auto-darkening helmet can make it easier to weld, but they seem to have trouble at the bottom end of amperage, and that's the area that is especially important with tig.

I was thinking about buying the HF, but decided to get a Miller. Your eyes are especially important to you, if you don't take an interest in your eyes, the HF will probably do fine. If you do take an interest in your eyes, look elsewhere for lack of better pun/analogy...

tungstendipper wrote:My Lincoln 3350 is doing the same thing. Hmmm?

td, you might be able to get a new lens for your Lincoln 3350, or even contact Lincoln and see what they say, maybe they'll send you a new one for free! Stranger things have happened...

Alan