Welding Tips and Tricks

Hello everyone Im hoping someone could help me out here with my tig welding issues.
I have been stick welding for quite a few years and am pretty decent at that, but wanted to try tig so I just recently purchased an AlphaTig 200x. I am having an issue of some type of contamination. I am just practicing on 1/4"mild steel, 1/16" er70-s2, 3/32" lanthanated tungsten, 110-120A and about 12-15cfh on the argon. I am having issues with getting brown staining around the welds. I also having issues with splatter from I assume contaminated tungsten or lack of argon. At times the tungsten will suddenly produce a green arc like I dipped it in the puddle. I know this is not the issue because sometime it will do it when I initially light up and haven't added any filler. When I have the issue with the staining it also seems hard to make the puddle travel, that could just be me since im new.

That is a good example of the staining and in that case the splatter or eroding tungsten made a small cavity in the metal.

Here is another picture.
Now be easy on me I have only burned about 4 filler rods so far so you can say im pretty new haha.
Any ideas on a problem or tips to avoid this? I dont really care about the staining but the electrode eroding and splatter is obviously a problem and not good. Thanks in advance.

Greetings,

Just the basics that Jody drills in us (which is most appreciated), Arc length, any more that the diameter of the tungsten is like cutting back on the amperage, gets cold and erratic. My problem is I keep too short of an arc at times.. (aka. I sharpen a lot of tungsten...) Re-grind any contaminated Tungsten, if it hits the puddle. re-grind! Torch angle, slight tilt back is push angle. I use a bit of push angle when I need to see the puddle well.

Make sure the filler wire is clean, If the "hot" tip gets air on it, its contaminated. Keep it in the flow of Argon.

The arc color and staining is likely contamination as you say, really low tanks and the really small tanks "sometimes" will exhibit contamination on occasion.

You rig seems like it's new so check all the Argon connections and the flow meter, make sure you CFH is CFH, not Liters Per Hour. Take the hose off of the flow meter and open the flow, is the flow stable? yes, then hook the hose back up, if not the flow meter is subject. Then go from there checking for leaks and flow. Make sure the flow is stable (watching the flow meter) all the way out to the torch head.

Remove the tungsten from the torch - TURN OFF HF START or you will get shocked...- start the Argon flow, cup you hand over the end of the ceramic cup, does the flow meter ball drop? If not, you have a leak.

The brown staining may be that your pulling the argon away a bit too soon from the puddle, Hang around for a few seconds then pull away or just wait for the post flow to stop the Argon.

That brown film also comes from contaminated tungsten. Dip it, stop it, change it, You will eventually get tired of reconditioning/sharpening tungsten



Keep practicing!!

Thanks for the tips. It is a full 200 tank from airgas so I feel like the argon is good. I guess I will need to check for leaks tonight. And the staining occurs even along a bead not only at the end so it isn'f from pulling away. Maybe I can find a leak and it will solve the issue. Thanks again

Where did you get the base metal from. I've had real old and contaminated steel do things like that.

That steal is from this local metal recycling place. Pretty much get all my stuff there because its super cheap. Most stuff is a little rusty but I cleaned that completely down to bare metal with a flap wheel. Maybe there was still a little contaminants left. I was welding a little more tonight. The tungsten seemed to stay clean, still had a little brown stain but not as bad as before.
I messed around with my torch some, it seemed that the collet and body were too long and the back cap would not go on all the way. I kept the collet screwed out so the back cap would go on all the way. This time I screwed the collet in and just tightened the back cap in as far as I could. It seemed to run better like that. I guess what do you expect for a budget welder.