Welding Tips and Tricks

I have an older Lincoln Squarewave 175 Pro that I am having some trouble getting a good focused arc with. The welds are good quality, clean and all, but the heat affected zone and the weld is bigger than I like to see. As anyone familiar with this machine knows the 175 Pro has no adjustment for anything regarding freq.,up/down slope, pulse, etc. However, it is supposed to be auto-balanced, there are no other front panel adjustments. I use a stubby gas lens with 2% Lath ground to a medium taper with about 3/8 to 1/2" stickout on 1/8" plate & 10-12 CFH of Argon and nearly wide open on the Amp dial with the stock foot pedal. The issue is with fillet welds, laps and corners are fine.

What I am asking is any advice on fine tuning that I can do to improve arc focus shot of a new IGBT inverter machine (which I am thinking about anyway).

First of all, when you're on AC TIG, is the torch connected to the Negative output of the machine?

rbaldie wrote:........ but the heat affected zone and the weld is bigger than I like to see. ........ I use a stubby gas lens with 2% Lath ground to a medium taper .......

see a heat affected zone on aluminium ?? or do you mean etch lines?
what size cup?
i would use a blunt taper.

rbaldie wrote:I have an older Lincoln Squarewave 175 Pro that I am having some trouble getting a good focused arc with. The welds are good quality, clean and all, but the heat affected zone and the weld is bigger than I like to see. As anyone familiar with this machine knows the 175 Pro has no adjustment for anything regarding freq.,up/down slope, pulse, etc. However, it is supposed to be auto-balanced, there are no other front panel adjustments. I use a stubby gas lens with 2% Lath ground to a medium taper with about 3/8 to 1/2" stickout on 1/8" plate & 10-12 CFH of Argon and nearly wide open on the Amp dial with the stock foot pedal. The issue is with fillet welds, laps and corners are fine.

What I am asking is any advice on fine tuning that I can do to improve arc focus shot of a new IGBT inverter machine (which I am thinking about anyway).

I used a Lincoln precision tig 275, and even with that with AC balance, I can say it's got a very smooth arc but not a very focused arc, I couldn't work out how to get it more focused short of just using a very blunt tip and lower amps to reduce balling. Since that I've gotten an inverter machine and those are way easier to get focused arcs, it's more or less just down to the settings at that point, though not to imply it's easy, but it's easier.