Welding Tips and Tricks

Hey all, been lurking these forums for a while now and decide to finally sign up
Ive got about 2.5 months left in welding school down in South Texas, we were supposed to start TIG this tuesday but my teacher had me skip ahead yesterday to start doing TIG.
Currently running open root 1G welds on quarter inch carbon steel plates.
My main concern is a couple of things, my instructor told me to turn my argon up to 35 cfh. On many videos i see people using lower, is there any problems you will run into running that high?
And i was also curious about my amperage. My root pass was about 55-60 amps on the machine (although the machine runs pretty hot. For my hot pass and everything else i turned it up to 75 amps
i am using a #8 cup, 3/32 tungsten, & 1/8 filler rod.
what amperages do yall use for your various passes?
the camera on my phone only works when it wants to, i had a buddy take a pic of my root pass an send it to me, ill upload a pic below.
any tips or advice yall could give me would be great, im a good stick welder and mig welder, but new to the tig game and want to come in on monday and put down some good welds. thanks

here is my first tig pass ever

If you're in a booth, some schools ventilation systems are quite drafty. Maybe that's why he had you turn the gas up. Also, maybe he is trying to get better backside of the root quality if you are using forward travel with your butts on purge plates.

I usually use 10-15 cfh indoors and adjust accordingly for outdoor welding.

What welding books are you using in school. Ours was Hobart School of Welding. They gave all the values and ballpark settings. Those were always a good place to start.

TamJeff wrote:If you're in a booth, some schools ventilation systems are quite drafty. Maybe that's why he had you turn the gas up. Also, maybe he is trying to get better backside of the root quality if you are using forward travel with your butts on purge plates.

I usually use 10-15 cfh indoors and adjust accordingly for outdoor welding.

What welding books are you using in school. Ours was Hobart School of Welding. They gave all the values and ballpark settings. Those were always a good place to start.

Yeah i am in a booth. the books we are using are "Welding Technology Fundamentals"

how many amps do you run on your different passes while on DCEN throughout a groove weld?

Hey, MadBro,

Your "first ever" looks awesome. There's not a thing in the world wrong with that.

There's also nothing wrong with 35 CFH, when you're not buying the argon...

Seriously, with a large cup, 35 CFH is fine. I use that flow for aluminum all the time, and occasionally for stainless when I have a long stick-out. It's a little "overkill" for the carbon steel weld in the picture, but the result speaks for itself.

Nice work!

Steve S

Are you using a gas lens?

Hey Steve, thanks for the input on the picture. I was pretty surprised I was able to handle it that well, when I first started stick it took me a month for my welds to not look like nasty globs. Seriously, it was bad. my teacher even said he gave up on me at one point but finally everything clicked. And then when I started doing mig/fluxcore I ran into a few problems too. So I was pretty surprised that this one actually clicked for me from the start. Still a lot of room for improvement though obviously!
I guess I will just continue running 35 cfh while at school.

As for a gas lens, I am not using one. Our teacher didn't give us one with our torch set up we each got assigned. If you think it is worth me buying I will go buy one as I don't want anything holding me back from progressing.

Also ordered some TIG fingers, can't wait till they get here!

I was just wondering if it was a gas lens setup as that flow rate would be way overboard. All I use is gas lens's, but their not required.