Welding Tips and Tricks

Hey guys,I just started working at a new company and the last guy who worked here was not organized at all. I was wondering if there is a way to tell what type of tungsten is which type after the color band has been worn or ground off. I have about about 50 pieces of tungsten of various sizes and I dont know what they are. Any help would be appreciated as I dont like to waste things and I dont know what to do aside from throwing them out. Thanks

Yep the color on yhr back is the type of tungsten. Red is two percent thotiated green is pure and blue is 2 percent lanthanated. Those are the most common.

I know how to identify tungten with a color band. I am wondering if there is a way to distinguish what type of tungsten it is besides color. The last welder that worked at my company left a whole bin of used tungsten (about 50) without color. All the color has been ground off or worn off. I dont have time to go thru and test each and every one, and I dont want to contaminate them while trying that.

Some of them you can. If you are using a transformer stly machine than it will be easy to find the pure tungstens just by how they ball up on AC, if not it gunna be a crap shoot. Some of them break differently and the sparks will look different when grinding but that is by no means a good test. My best advice would to go ask your person who the ordering and ask for the records of what he ordered. Sorry for misreading reading your question earlier.

Hello bknox33

First congratulations on the new job. I can understand not wanting to waste good tools or consumables so I have a suggestion on how you can determine 100% which of your tungsten electrodes contain Thorium, or are “thoriated”.

Thorium is a naturally occurring radioactive metal. As thorium decays, it primarily emits alpha particles. These particles can be detected using a simple Geiger counter. You can gain access to a Geiger counter at a local high school's physics departments or at a Junior college in their physics department ( perhaps a junior college that also provides welding classes) . I am certain if you contact , a school and explain your query, they will be more than happy to help, because doing science is always fun!

Checking the electrodes is fast and simple. 50 electrodes can be checked individually in less than 10 minutes by simply holding the Geiger counter over the sample. If the electrode contains any thorium the Geiger counter will confirm the presence of ionizing particle radiation. If the Geiger counter does not react, the electrodes are not thoriated.

Here is a link to a video that shows a Geiger counter being used on some thoriated tungsten electrodes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXfDrUlRKLA

Hope this helps some

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