TFS: TIG Simple - Does it Matter How You Sharpen Tungsten?

Hey look no green-screen check this out we're getting downright forensic about tungsten today how to grind it how to sharpen it what the results are when you fire it off in different ways I'm gonna show you all about that the reason why well recently we've been doing all the TIG classes at the shop now you click on the video cards and see all that stuff or in the description below it'll tell you all about it but as far as the TIG simple series is concerned this is a great way for me to really investigate what it takes to sharpen tungsten how it is done the best and all the rest of that good stuff to answer all of your questions only on this episode of the fabrication series [Music] all right so let's start with three thirty-seconds the 2.4 millimetre eat three purple tungsten then it's all about 57 millimeters or two and a quarter inches long they're all cut at about the same length neither one of is sharpened but I did take a little off the edge now I'm gonna go about a two finger gap when I chuck this up into the drill it's just to kind of normalize it I've been trying to you know get rid of any variances if there are any when it comes to sharpening well throw the bench grinder turn it on here and this one's actually been used before keep track of time you see the clock there when it's in red we're actually grinding and as soon as we're done it'll go green and tell us exactly how long it took to sharpen that tungsten so normal pressure just getting it sharpened pretty much the way that we normally do I'm going to stop when we get to a nice point man five just shy 14 seconds so that 28 on the right there that's actually my frame counter so there's 30 frames in 1 seconds so it's just shy of 14 so bench grinder down let's use an actual tungsten sharpener as I'm borrowing this too just the same as I borrowed the bench grinder so this was actually sped up and of course I'm not gonna chuck it up in the drill there cuz that little diamond wheel gets kind of hot so once we get done with this by just over 31 seconds to get it to a decent decent point there and all I see how Paulie could have gone a little bit more so two down two to go let's try the grinder now of course they do always say use a brand new or dedicated cutting tool for whatever you're gonna use but you know what's this is just kind of you know well you don't worry about it we'll just put it that way so we'll check this up same two finger gap and of course this had to be sped up as well just to do it but again you know I mean obviously this is dirty and I know some of you guys are just gonna tear my head off about that but you know like I said don't worry about its kind of compare and contrast so just shy have 20 seconds to get that one sharpened up here and finally we usually see a disc or a belt sander now I'll be honest with you my machine here is I think I've sharpened one too many Tungsten's on it because my disc actually split and it catastrophic Lee failed so we'll just use the disc aside this is a 36 grit disc and we'll fire it off that was actually no kidding it just shy of five seconds to get that sharp and that's probably the fastest way I've ever seen it sharpen a tungsten that's pretty cool so let's getting kind of close and actually take a look at these here we'll get our bench grind out of the bluff tungsten grinder flat disc this sander now this is gonna be the exact same orders they're always going to appear on the screen throughout this video so let's take a close look here our bench grinder a good nice sharp point on it has a very heavy green goes in line with the tungsten which is uh it's pretty typical lob you're not curious to see how that works then we'll go to the tungsten grinder now this has the same inline grain to it but a lot finer and I didn't get that great of a point on it now this is still fractions with a very very small amount then compare that to the flat disc there is almost no green on it whatsoever and way I sharpen is just a little bit more blunt now the disc sander has a nice helical grind into it and that's kind of neat now I want to see how that actually compares so here's what we're going to do I'm gonna fire up my everlasting 255 ext and it has a unique feature that I'm gonna use on it which is the spot timer so as soon as I get it up to set up we're gonna go on DC welding of course we're gonna weld some coupons set my spark timer toggle over to the menu for the spot timer control I'm gonna go exactly 5 seconds so what happens is when I actually set up the amperage which I'm going to start this off at 10 amps because that's a typical low point in the machines I'm gonna push the pedal it's gonna fire off exactly 5 seconds and we'll uh you know there's gonna be no variance in that one so full power 5 seconds the whole way on maximum amperage which I set for 10 amps on these coupons let's line them up and fire a lock same order the whole way through and we'll take a look here now after analyzing this just a little bit here starting on the left with the bench grinder when I looked at it really carefully at all the footage here I noticed that there was not a lot of focus now it did fire off right away and the arc was very stable but it could not actually focus and pinpoint the actual place so it looks like all it did was just sit there and create this nice little heat ring around it which was uh that's kind of unique it wasn't really expected I was thinking it was gonna pinpoint and just fire right away start digging its way through now the tungsten grind now this was kind of interesting because I didn't get that really fine fine tip on it I mean maybe it's about I don't know 15 20 thousands of an inch blunt and not to a you know almost perfect point but when you actually take a look at it the footage shows that it was not it did not focus immediately it kind of wandered a little bit but as soon as it did focus the result on it you can see it was very pinpointed and started to actually uh you know like maybe even melt or penetrate into the actual metal I mean it's only you know a small amount but the heat affected zone around it is also very minimal as well now we compare that to the flat disc now this is kind of uh it had a really nice point on it but no grain and it was not as sharp or as it was a little more blunt than it wasn't a narrow or a little wider sharpening than it was narrow sharpening so it didn't really match the rest of them but it had no focus on it at all it didn't wander much it just straight up just did not focus so just kind of sack there like a stupid and didn't really do anything now this is another one of those areas where I guess I just made you didn't take a minute to double check but my torch my girl my arc link was really high when it came down to the actual disc sander so the interesting thing that we have to look at here is it did focus after I mean it did wander a little bit but it did focus and once it did it started digging in and it started to look almost like it was with the tungsten set up there looking almost identical except it took too long to actually focus in and my arc length was high so I'm willing to bet that the the actual tungsten itself when sharpened with a disc center in that helical grind is going to be actually kind of similar to the tungsten grind so but either way that's just at 10 amps it's really tough for a lot of machines to focus in on ten amps so I'm gonna reset the machine I'm gonna go up to a hundred amps and of course I'm gonna verify again that it's all set the same the line all three of them up and fire them all up five seconds of peace and here's the results now this is kind of interesting as well now the bench grinder piece on the left you notice how it just it immediately just fired right in there and it's ready to go that would be kind of the heat signature here that it's dark and gray and you see a whole lot of metal that actually came up and bubbling it looked like it was actually fired at twice which was really unique but it's a little bit sloppy but the reason why is because we had absolutely no movement within that five seconds so this actually fired in like almost immediately and it was like okay we're ready to weld here we go now we put that into the tungsten grind and this might be just part of the reason why is that that dull point on there where I didn't get a nice sharpen point it looks like it was just about ready to get rolling before we actually started going I mean it looks like it was right there ready to roll and then we combined it to the actual flat disk grind this is the actual grind that I'm used to it's it was also ready to roll and it was starting to get pretty hot which is actually kind of surprising so I mean it's like I said it's uh looks like it was good looks like it was ready to go and then we come around to the disc sander yet again and he noticed it was it was a lot like the the tungsten grinder result I mean it's it's it's very very similar just about exactly the same but just didn't get a whole lot of heat in it now I did notice again that the there was some arc wandering on the higher gaps or the greater distances between the two of them so it was actually the the tungsten grind and the disc grinder for the disc standard grind they both had a little bit higher than normal arc length on where the other two were just like right on top of it it looked very very steady tight arc length so that might have had something to do with it but seriously though I've already decided that there's going to be a follow up on this video now the reason why is because there were a few different mixed results in there that I think that I could actually iron out and do a lot better job if I follow up but I also decided that I really want your guys's input on this one so tell me what do you think about these ways that I sharpen the tungsten huh what do you got that are other ways that you could possibly sharpen your tungsten which ways do you like to do it what kind of results do you see and maybe you find other ways that I can right out this is kind of like a response to let's see what you guys come up with and I'm gonna give them a shot I really want to actually try this out so your participation is highly encouraged now that's gonna wrap it up for this one don't forget to check out all the other videos that we got popping up on the screen here and also down in the description below if the tics simple series playlist the whole works I really hope you guys have already subscribed and if you haven't please do so now because we got a whole lot more coming up but I'll see you guys on the next episode

Channel: The Fabrication Series

Views: 535,010

Rating: 4.7777777 out of 5

Keywords: tungsten sharpening, how to sharpen tungsten, tungsten, tig welding, tig simple, how to tig weld, tig welding basics, tungsten sharpener, learn to tig weld, the fabricator, the fabrication series, tfs, season 3, merrill performance, mp merrill performance, the fabricator series, tig welding classes

Id: mdz2vrQ5m8c

Length: 9min 44sec (584 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2017