Welding Tips and Tricks

I am having trouble with my tungstens. I have 3/32, 2% Lanth tungstens from Welding City.com and once I use them down to about 3" they start balling up on the end. I don't dip the tungsten, don't jab it with the filler, and am running DCEN on steel. The metal has been prepped with a sanding wheel. I have never had trouble with them until the 3" from the band down. Any clue?

I have tungstens from there as well, but I don't have any worn down to the lengths as yours.

How are your 2% Thoriated tungstens behaving? (for comparison). If other tungstens are doing the same thing, it might be the machine.

That's weird. I use the 2% Lanthanated from them also but have had no issues.

Matt,
Cut one back maybe a 1/4" and see if it still balls up. It might just be a spot in the tungsten that is lacking the Lanthium, you may have a small section that's pure. All tungsten are a mix of pure and other rare earth elements and some manufacturers' quality standards aren't quite up to snuff. That's about the only thing tungsten related that I can think of.

Len

I had the same trouble with the same electrodes from the same place when I first got them. Switched to another from the same pack and the problem went away. I figure I had a bad one. Still don't know what was going on and have lost track of the "bad one".

It has me confused. I switched to a different electrode from the pack and it is doing the same thing. My 1/16" don't do it. I am running around 120 amps on clean steel. I did weld something the other day that had a little rust on it and it balled up after that. I am going to check one other thing. My gas lens has some spots on it and it may be a gas issue. It is kinda acting like not enough shield gas.

/\/\/\ That was my next guess.

Did this tungsten ever work normally? May be it is a package of defective\fake tungstens?

All the tungstens worked fine until the last 3". It was half 3/32 and half 1/16 and they all worked fine. I just did an experiment and after 4, 1/2" long beads on clean metal and it balled right up.