Stainless Steel Welding 101: Most Common Mistakes (AHP AlphaTIG 201XD)

oh hi I'm the camera guy ups taking some personal time and mancubs on vacation Jason's been in the bathroom all morning doing god-knows-what I've been tasked to give you three videos a week so here we sit I'm gonna teach you five ways not to weld stainless what are you doing you're in the bathroom all morning I've been in a meeting don't ask my chair let's go we got stuff to do hey guys welcome back to well calm today we're gonna do some TIG welding on stainless we're gonna show you five common mistakes and how to avoid them alright guys we got a couple weld samples here different examples of good wells and bad welds we're gonna get into some of the basics here to try to help you guys avoid some of the most common mistakes teach you how to get your your bad welds into some good welds so before we do that we're gonna go ahead and check out the equipment so today we're going to be using the new a HP alpha TIG 201 XD we're gonna keep this very basic we're not gonna run any pulse or anything fancy like that we're gonna keep it very simple try to narrow down the amount of perimeters that we have we're gonna be running on dc- two-stage pedal no pulse about 100 amps they did take into consideration they saw our last video and they upgraded their foot pedal so now each one of these machines is going to come with the Innova foot pedal it also comes with this roto flex torch with a number 17 head and a replacement number nine head so you can use either one of the the heads on the same body it's a pretty slick design pretty comfortable in the hand yeah I haven't used one of these before that's my first time using it I'm pretty impressed with it you have the ability to swivel and lock the torch into any a number of positions to get comfortable so comforts always key always be comfortable I think this helps out a lot be able to get in there and work on those welds alright so let's get started so this first weld is an example of proper technique so with this basically you want to watch the size of your puddle you want to make sure that you're tying fully into the top edge of the plate as well as the bottom of the plate the puddle should be shaped in almost a teardrop shaped form if you're getting a c-shape was a small hole in the middle that means your torch angle isn't adequate okay so adjust your torch angle and make sure you're getting that teardrop shape form the leading edge of that teardrop it's gonna be the penetration into the weld joint that's where you really want to focus your eat the tip of the tungsten should be about 1/16 of an inch off the puddle if it's too far back it's gonna increase your voltage thus increasing the width of your poke you don't want that we want the weld size to be roughly the same height as that plate so this is at a two inch plate you want about an 8 inch leg on that pillar world so overall this is a decent weld I mean you can see we're tied into the top it's really good didn't corrode too much of it away we've got a good tie in fusion to the at the bottom plate here but as you look across and see the colors you can notice that at the far left you have that silver hue that's kind of what you want to the right it's more of a straw color both of those would be acceptable as they're you know low oxides in there you know a lot of people like the different colors and stuff like that but essentially what they are is an indication of what temperature that base metal was at when it came in contact with oxygen so if you look at this next well you see a lot of deep purples and blues and and stuff like that that's kind of what you want to avoid unless you're doing artwork where you want those colors to stand out and pop dabs Wellington on Instagram he does an amazing job and he can predict exactly what color he wants to appear and and where at you know just by travel speed and heat input and how fast he's moving through that joint to get the desired color one additional thing you could do is if you you know you if you're trying to stray away from those colors is use a gas lens and a larger cup size so you know you get into like number 12 cups things like that it it tends to have better shielding better cooling properties keeps the weld shielded longer as you're moving through the the weld joint you know providing more shielding gas to the weld you know so it once it interacts with that oxygen it's at a much lower temperature so you don't get those oxide layers built up on it all right so now that we've discussed what to do let's take a look at some examples of what not to do our first common mistake is removing the filler metal from the shielding gas envelope underneath the cup okay so for two reasons you want to keep the electrode as close to the arc as possible okay reason number one is every time you remove the filler metal from that shielding envelope you're contaminating the tip of the electrode and you're putting oxides into the base metal you may not be able to see it visually while you're welding but once it's done you'll notice you've got a lot more oxide on the surface that well you want to prevent that the second reason is because when you keep that the tip of the electrode wood up close enough to that arc its preheating it so you get a nice smooth transition into the post okay so a lot of times if you pull the rod back and forth out of that shielding envelope away from that mark you're gonna notice that electrode has a tendency to stick to the plate okay so keep it in there tight keep it close to the arc and it's gonna preheat it for you so a little it'll absorb it at that puddle a lot easier alright so as you can see the world's pretty much the same profile a little bit shallower because you know when you're pulling that fraud out you're not keeping your puddle consistent so the puddle is gonna lack consistency plus you're gonna have scaly deposits on top of the weld you want to try to avoid that so it's best just to keep that electrode nice and tight to the arc keep it you know right on the leading edge of that puddle under the shielding gas envelope you know so it stays contaminant free our second common mistake is moving down the joint or running an excessive amperage both they're gonna give you the same results so you'll notice in this one I'm traveling too slow so what that's doing that's giving me a watch much wider puddle that I actually need for this joint it's completely eroding the top edge of that plate which is I don't want to do that I want to keep this weld roughly the same height as I do is that vertical wag of the filler so too much heat into this I'm gonna get sugaring and oxide layers on the surface of my weld and I'm gonna make that weld too wide and not get enough penetration into the joint it's gonna be more long to the top edge of that plate something you want to avoid too slow take 17 all right so as you can see here the weld number one it's too wide number two I have excessive oxides on there I mean the welds just smoked it's gray don't even look appealing I burnt up all the chromium and nickel that's on the surface at well that's gonna give me my corrosive properties or anti corrosive properties gonna keep the material protected from different oxides once it's exposed the elements so you don't want to do that so just maintain a good consistent travel speed watch the wedding into the toes try not to erode that top edge and as long as that puddle is moving forward and you got a good beat height just just roll with it and that's traveling too slow now it's furred Friday but we've got an awesome furred sample pack to give away all you have to do is post in the comments your most common TIG mistake we've got an encapsulated wire wheel I've got a hard rock circ wheel cutoff wheel I don't even know what this thing is but it eats steel like a got a flapper wheel and a badass beard brush also used on steel and now back to the video our third common mistake is moving down the joint too fast now this is probably the most common mistake that I see when people are learning how to take whoa the first thing you want to do when you light up on that piece of material is establish your puddle between the material and the electrode of your tungsten before adding any filler metal a lot of times people add the filler metal before the even established I tell people that that's that initial puddle the etosha miss well between the plates that's like your master cart okay you don't want to leave home without it so if you start welding and adding filler metal but prior to getting that puddle established you're gonna get a high ropey beef profile you're not going to tie in at the plates equally you're gonna get poor penetration things just aren't gonna go well for you and you know you can also see that along the joint you're not tying in properly so get that puddle of established in the very beginning and just push it along that joint all right so with this one everything that could go wrong went wrong I mean you gotta what you really have to wait for that puddle once you put your hood down your whole life revolves around that puddle you just kind of got a nurture it along the way I mean this one is a way to fast slow down a little bit I mean I know you could be welding pretty quick on stainless but you can't get overzealous and leave the puddle behind you start leaving the puddle behind there goes your weld the next common problem is that as you're working your way along the joint you know you're stable everything's going good you get a little rhythm you're getting a groove and all of a sudden either your your hand this hold the torch gets caught up or your your hand put in the filler metal and gets a little overzealous and you contaminate ah yeah as you can see the arc just two characteristics that arc just completely changed I now have a much wider arc in there it's very unstable it's hard to control things just aren't going well as soon as you contaminate you want to stop you don't want to try and push through that and make it work okay you're just gonna make things worse on yourself it's gonna be more difficult and the walls it's gonna look like crap when you're done one of the things I recommend to a lot of people is sharp on both sides of the tungsten so it something like this does happen you just whip the tungsten over you get a quick change and then you know you only have to go out to the the grinders and half the time all right so in the beginning you can see as we were going down the joint everything was running smooth nice tight arc length everything's going good good wetting the toes everything's washing in right along mine our own business and then BAM I don't know where that tungsten gets contaminated and you you can see exactly the transition right there how erratic that arc became it's really difficult to control the puddle at that point you're not going to get consistent results it sucks I've been there and you know I still contaminate myself every once in a while but you have to convince yourself stop resharpen the tungsten dress it back up or flip it around and then restart I mean you're just gonna run into you know you're not going to get inconsistent results welding with a contaminated tungsten regardless of how small it is plus you know if you burn that tip off in there if you're doing any qualification testing or anything that's going to get x-rayed the tip of that electrode you know if you break it off in your puddle due to contamination that things gonna it's gonna shine as soon as they put it in the x-ray machine so just get in the habit of if you can't am innate sharpen that tungsten back up and then get back to work don't force it okay now we're gonna talk about core chambers you know just want to start this up I get the puddle going everything's going nice and easy and the travel angle is completely wrong I'm pointing straight into the end of the joint 90 degrees the puddles not flowing near as well as it should be probably getting too much penetration to the backside which can cause sugaring on the backside of the plate because all my heat is focused down through that joint okay that doesn't do well on very thin materials you want to angle that give it a good 5 to 10 degree push angle okay now we're gonna look and see what happens when you have too much of an angle so now we're pushing more along the lines of a 45 so that means I'm not getting adequate coverage you'll see that the arc length as I rotate my hand back the arc length starts to get a little bit longer now when that happens it's gonna be harder to posit that filler metal bleeding-edge the tungsten her the filler metal is gonna want to fall up and just drip into the puddle that's not what you want you want to keep that letter of that filler metal right at the leading edge of the joint keep it preheated watch that travel angle and it should flow off nice and smooth for you so neither one of these situations are ideal one we have you know straight in punch to 90 degrees down we're not you know it just doesn't give you a consistent puddle there same thing with you know having it too steep neither one of these are appropriate make sure you maintain that 5 to 10 degree travel angle and keep your filler metal 90 degrees perpendicular to your tungsten that way you can ensure you're gonna get a good bead profile good weld aesthetics and good penetration throughout the full joint all right guys well thanks for watching I hope you were able to learn something today I also want to give a big shout out and a thank you to weld metals online for provide all the coupons and stuff for us good check them out weld metals online.com give you some coupons practice at the house if you guys have any questions go ahead and drop them in the comments section make sure to LIKE and subscribe to the YouTube channel follow us on Facebook and Instagram and until next time make every well better than your last hey folks welcome back to another segment help me welcome so today's submission is from Tanner Clark and he's on the Facebook group he's running some 3/32 7018 at school it's the second day want some tips on body position or any tips at all he's finding it harder to get comfortable it's gonna cause him to be very inconsistent he says thanks well tanner today is your lucky day let's going back to the table and I will show you a couple little tricks that I picked up along the way and some stuff that I told my students to help them get more comfortable and get better with their welding so essentially what you want is three points of contact okay that's gonna make you more stable so two feet on the floor and what I typically do is I plant an elbow if I plant my elbow right here here's my base metal plant your elbow take your fingertips touch that to the tip of your knuckles here just very slightly ever so slightly you don't want to hold like this because when that rod starts to shorten up you're gonna get into a bind and you can't get your electrode holder down close enough to your material but if if that happens all you have to do is just make a fist and then you can go one-handed so and that's as this rod gets shorter so basically post up plant your elbow on the table put your hip up against the table that's four points of contact now strike the arc and as you weld let this hand slowly lower you down this hand all that has to do is maintain that angle okay as you touch in the material you strike and then you just start moving down okay and these two these hands will start working together and then you develop a muscle memory you can do the same thing when you get into a 1g or a groove weld or one F doing filler welds same practice when you get into two F filler Wells horizontal you can go this way you just come in at that 45 degree angle to the plate okay so I hope that helps drop any additional questions in the comment of your original post and we'll be more than happy to help you out from there man take care good luck oh hi there I'm the camera guy Bob's taking some personal time and mancubs on vacation Jason's been in the bathroom all morning take we're going to show you how to get your bad welds into better welds doesn't make any sense hi I'm the camera guy bird Friday because you know what that means maybe you don't okay I'm trying to work here dammit you can't smirk you can't smirk because I've seen it under the little little thing here this little speaking grin you got going on it's not working

Channel: Weld.com

Views: 100,189

Rating: 4.9436374 out of 5

Keywords: welding, weld.com, mig monday, tig time, how to weld, learn how to weld

Id: GmtvpOSV0Dg

Length: 15min 54sec (954 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 19 2019