Welding Tips and Tricks

I saw the video on it great vid by the way. Having a little trouble though. Its very messy and I wonder if I am using too much pulse? I don't believe the machine has a balance adjustment. It is in AC as the vid says. I am using a 2% tungsten and slivers of the actual brass sheet metal for filler. I have the pulse almost fully turned on. No idea what the pulse count is. I turned up the heat to about 55. Its a Lincoln machine. Don't know the model. I will get the model tomorrow I know that may help out.

What I am going to have to do is weld corners together. They will be machined and shaped after that. I believe the plates will have a brushed finish on them. The plate is about a 1/16 thick or maybe 20 gauge or so. Maybe 22 gauge. Not sure 100%.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. The brass smokes like crazy so I think I may be burning off the zinc. White powder is present after I am done. That make sense? Again any help would be appreciated. We are running pure argon at about 25 psi too. Please excuse all the tech term mistakes. Fairly new to tig welding though I do have some experience in it. So I may seam a tad dippy as far as my description goes.

Again Thank you very much for this site and all the info on it. It has helped me out a great deal already. It is very much appreciated.

Greg

Oh should be noted too that we only do about 30 of these pieces a year. So its not likely that they will spring for helium argon mix. I wish they would be he kind of scoffed at it. I will have to work some miracles to pull this off. I really hope you guys can help me out. I found at 55 amps I was able to run beads with no filler in the brass but laying in filler was a PITA. Any tips much appreciated.

What no one knows from whence I speak?

The machine I am using at work is a Lincoln precision 225. I t does have a balance setting on it. Any tips you guys or gals can give me would be appreciated.

Hi there,
If you need some extra special help, try contacting Jody directly. There is a contact us button in the menu of the main welding tips and tricks page. He may have time to answer you. Also you could try the Lincoln Electric website. They have alot of technical info that might help.

Mick

i know exactly what your are talking about. i weld brass where i work frequently. there are many alloys of brass. it usually smokes too! don't breathe too much of that in, its bad for you! what i think you need to do is get some aluminum bronze rods. the trick is to use enough heat to melt the rod but not the base metal. you will be amazed how well this works! hope this works out for you!

Ok thanks Nova. Much appreciated. I will give that a try.

Using a filler from the base metal as you are doing is the way to go for color and compatibility. Try Oxy /Acet brazing instead of GTAW on the thin stuff with a copper chill bar for backup and heat sink. Piece of cake.

They don't have oxy acet or I would. I tried a copper backer I laid in a pretty yucky bead. They guy could only cut me 1/8th pieces though 1/16th would be better. I put the machine up to 105 amps and it went fairly ok but the joint wasn't filled entirely when I ground it down. I will have to try again on it. See what happens. I might grind the filler pieces down a little in the edge sander to make them smaller. I think it might help.

Went to the welding supply. They put me in touch with an ace welder that is their customer service rep. He said I am not using enough amperage. Also that I should use a bigger tungsten. I am using a 3/16 and should use a 1/8th. The amperage should be up around 180 and negative DC. He also said preheating would help me out too. He offered to come by and show me some tips. I will let the supervisor know and see what he says.

Got the brass down pat guys Whoo Hoo. I will post some pics later but What I did was switch over to A/C with full Penetration. I managed to get the top edges of the metal melt into the weld and just poured in the brass filler rod into the gap. I was so stoked to have it happen. The base metal was 12 gauge solid brass and the filler was 16 gauge sheet cut to 1/8th"

I started at 90 amps and had very little penetration with it. Except at the very end of the weld. I turned up by 10 amps with each test weld I did. I noticed that the penetration of each weld was getting longer till it was half way down the weld with the second last test. So I started preheating the metal and then welding it. I got to 6 preheat passes and that is when the entire weld had decent penetration. Success.

On the final test I had decent penetration but nothing fantastic. I could see minor bubbling of the base metal on the back. Showed my boss and he was in awe lol.

These pieces do not have to have perfect penetrations at all. They only need to be decent welds on the top of the brass. We grind the corners down and shape them with a barrel sander to round them off. After that we use a stroke sander to put a sanded finish on the metal.

So I ground it down and it looked perfect. Everyone was ecstatic that I was able to pull this off. I wound up at 115 amps with the final weld and I was so happy. That is what I love about Welding. Being able to master something you know damn well you can do and nailing the hell out of it despite second guessing yourself.

Nice!!

Hey there,

Great to hear that you're kickin' goals. Thats real grass roots stuff, Having a problem and having to work it out by yourself. Really good job. Now to ask the boss for a pay rise. (Not LOL)

Mick

Well I am there through a temp agency but they said that once the contract is due they are going to negotiate a higher pay for me. She told me no way that they should be paying for a welder at the rate I am getting now. I am expecting a 10 to 15% boost next month. Yay

Ok here are the Brass Pics boys. Sorry and Girls if there are any. I am very proud of figuring out how to do this. Thanks for looking.

looks good to me

Regards: M J Mauer Andover, Ohio

Oops tiny mistake there.