TFS: Top 10 Mistakes Beginner TIG Welders Make

so we've been offering professional welding and fabrication classes here at the fabrication series shop in Las Vegas Nevada on a one on one type of fashion or even in groups been doing it for the past couple years now and in that time I have noticed a very common trend if you will with the people that have never picked up a TIG torch in their entire life a very very common list of things that people do when they have zero experience now this is for you guys now if you have some experience already or you're a professional it might not be the video that you're looking for but if you've never picked up a torch before or you're trying to teach yourself and all the rest of that good stuff I got ten things right here that most people make and might help you avoid you know some of that confusion that frustration and everything else like that when you're trying to teach yourself now nothing will ever really replace that one-on-one instruction or that face-to-face kind of interaction you're gonna get from somebody teaching you how to do it but this might help you get started or at least get in the right direction a little bit quicker now if you want more information about taking a class here's your video card right up there make sure you click on that book your seats show up we take care of the rest it's that easy so here we go the top 10 mistakes new welders make when they first start TIG welding you [Music] number one getting wrapped up now I see this happening constantly when it basically boils down to is whoever is sitting in the seat or the first time that they're doing this they're basically looking at whoever was on you know Instagram or Facebook you know watching a video on YouTube or anything like that they basically see whoever the welder is sitting there wrapped up in their lead right there basically making it comfortable for themselves but the person usually in that video is kind of uh let's just say experienced right they know where their lead is comfortable they know how they like it and all the rest of that good stuff so if you've never done this before it's really hard to you know try to manage your torch or manage your lead now they do get heavy and everything like that and sometimes it's nice to have it loosely hanging on something but the way I see a lot of people doing this as they start wrapping this thing all around themselves in every which way shape or form and it really gets kind of oh I don't know complicated to try and you know manage the lead so in the beginning here try not to wrap this thing all over you instead the best place to really put your lead when you're first starting out welding is up through the center of your legs and on the inside of your torch forearm this basically helps prevent it from snagging or stretching the lead since your arm is in the position to actually pull it it can easily be pulled away or pulled away from a snag or anything like that it just you know it's it's a lot easier to move it along if it gets held up now this does add just a little bit of weight to it but one little trick is you can take a little bit of the slack and just put it in your lap number two floating now floating is elevating your arms your upper body and all the rest of that to aim for a spot that's only a quarter-inch or maybe a couple millimeters wide it's extremely difficult it puts a lot of pressure and a lot of tension on your core your upper body your shoulders your arms your everything and what happens is your brain is now focused on steadying your body more and trying to aim and do all this stuff than it is on the actual weld which you need a lot of concentration for now if you float or anything like that you're gonna pretty much be you know aiming for a failure right off the get-go so instead make sure that you're nice and relaxed your arms should be loose your whole body should be loose now we're not saying slouched all the time which I have made people do but make sure that you don't have if you've ever been in my class the chicken going on make sure that your your arms are and your hands are just kind of nicely rested right just just constrain along and just glide along that weld there if you've got shakiness or if you have a blotchiness and you're in you're feeding action or anything like that you're you're pretty much there's there's tension somewhere on your body so you've got to relax now we're not always going to get a perfect weld position like we are on a flat surface or on a table or anything like that but at the same time if you master this or if you get comfortable in the beginning you'll be able to go out of position much easier than if then if you didn't so it's always best to practice get yourself comfortable get relaxed don't float and no chicken wings number three a hop along this is the most difficult habit for me to break when it comes to people with MIG welding experience because they usually run in patterns but essentially the hop along is a pattern or a movement if you will that most newbie TIG welders make every MIG welder does this but a lot of tag welders can't really get the correlation between moving the torch hand at one rate and feeding the rod with the other rate or at another rate so a lot of people see this is kind of like I don't know or rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the exact same time which is very difficult to do but what a lot of people end up doing is getting into this pattern where the feeding hand pretty much takes over like the torch hand and it just literally goes elevate to big puddle then a little puddle then big puddle in little puddle it goes up down it just kind of hops along like a cute little pony this is something you have to train yourself to break the torch hand needs to be nice and steady smooth flowing constant height don't worry about back stepping don't worry about stacking dimes don't worry about elevation or anything like that in the beginning when you're focusing on the mechanics get the rod hand feeding in out the way it's supposed to and keep the torch hand moving nice and steady smooth neat and flowing number for being too analytical there there's some of my crappy well now I'm quite sure that this is gonna get misconstrued somehow or somebody's gonna you know take offense to it or you know throw a fit or anything like that and start a comments hate thread or whatever against you know TFS here but you know I gotta shoot it to you straight if you've never welded before you don't know what you're doing it's really that simple so if you don't know what you're doing you can't analyze it being too analytical about your welds when you don't even know how to weld is I don't know it's worthless there's no reason to do it now there's some obvious things that you can focus on right if you know that you took the tungsten for a swim well you know that it's gonna weld dirty so you gotta take it out and you got to reach up and put a fresh one in there and go at it again right the same thing happens is if you look at your tungsten you say oh wow that's a big old fat q-tip on there or a mushroom tip or anything like that and you know that there's a bunch of junk all over your weld and stuff like that it's obvious that you took the tungsten for a swim or you did a fashion good old fashion tip and did you know how to get past that part that's not being an analytical that's being observant but trying to figure out how to make your well better when you don't even know how to make a weld you can't do it so instead of being too analytical or trying to correct what you don't know how to correct instead focus on the mechanics of the weld you got to have a puddle you got to have the correct torch right you got to get the rod in out hellogoodbye you got to get moving on that thing right so focus on the mechanics of it now being too analytical also runs in line with something that we call Panna strolling what that basically means is that you are got all of that research and you got all of that knowledge and all of this like information about how to weld and you feel so good about it that you think that your first welds which you've never done are going to score the top points on all of the social media outlets and get you some seriously awesome cred well there's nothing wrong with doing all of your homework there's nothing wrong with being confident in what you do but don't get too confident or too cocky or put it too high up on that pedestal when you've never done it so the first one's your polygon lay down are most likely going to look like this maybe better maybe worse but at the same time don't get your hopes up too high just focus on getting to that point remember that the people that are being shared on all the social media outlets and stuff like that and getting all the top points and the most likes and all the rest of that good shout out action are the people that do this daily the people that have been doing this for years and years and years you have to get to that point so don't be expecting to land a top spot for the day on all those social media outlets remember that you got to practice remember that this takes time don't get your hopes up too high all right number six and seven predicting and rushing now this is actually relatively difficult to explain so let's take a look at this weld I'm not focusing on what's going to happen until it happens there is no such thing as predicting where that weld is going to go if your brain is predicting what's gonna happen about ten dabs from now as opposed to seeing what's in front of you and working with what's in front of you it's going to most likely happen so focus or concentrate more on what's actually happening in front of you everything is reactive not predictive we don't predict where the weld is going to go and we don't work with anything that hasn't happened yet so only focus on what's in front of you don't predict anything that hasn't or won't happen just work with what's in front of you but that also works at the exact same time with rushing now a lot of people will pick up the filler rod or the torch for the first time smash on the pedal Jam a whole bunch of filler rod in there and try to get going nine times out of ten it turns into a big ol friggin fat q-tip on the end of that tungsten or a mushroom tip if it's like steel or stainless or something like that it's not gonna work you can't get into a rush so like basics here if you don't have a puddle you can't weld it quite seriously only look and work with what's in front of you don't get into a rush don't predict something that hasn't happened number eight thinking only X&Y now thinking only X and Y is literally like saying only thinking two dimensionally now this is not like some Marty McFly stuff where you gonna take fourth-dimensional or whatever the case is but consider it this way a lot of people when they sit down and they square up with their piece of I literally square it up and they think they can pretty much only well left to right some people will naturally grab it and I'll see if they have to move from far away to close and you know what it works for a lot of people but consider different ways if where you're sitting at right here is not comfortable if you can't get a nice smooth flowing weld out of it if it doesn't seem right then it's probably not right so think of a different method to use you can do things like welding off the edge of the table maybe welding on the corner of the table or even changing your grip to be kind of idle no almost diagonal about it there's different ways that you can weld in order to achieve a good weld and become comfortable doing it now again we're not always going to get this you know this perfect opportunity or this you know great layout in front of us but again we're practicing we're learning this is what we're doing so make it the best get friggin comfortable and think of other ways to do it not just this way or this way or anything like that number 9 extreme angle height and ramping now this is one of the best visual representations I can offer and you can do this on your own now if you take a flashlight and point it at the floor the closer you get to the floor the smaller the light area is if you lift it up the larger the light area is if you tilt it on its side it projects the light area forward across the floor now the exact same thing happens when you turn or lift or move a TIG torch in a different direction at the end of the TIG torch you will often see a little cone that cone essentially becomes the size of the puddle so if your torch is low you have a very small tight and very controlled puddle if your torch is high you have a very wide loose and uncontrollable puddle the same thing happens if you have an extreme angle the puddle projects forward now when it gets to this point of being too big or uncontrollable that's when you start having a whole lot of problems and those problems wouldn't be there if you were able to monitor your torch height now one thing a lot of people do is they'll start out very conscious of their torch height and by the time they get to the end it becomes extremely high when the piece is already heated up and that condition is called ramping that's pretty much means it's going to go south immediately so you've got to make sure that your torch height stays consistent the entire way through no extreme height no extreme angle no ramping number 10 welding in the wrong direction how do you weld in the wrong direction well some people might be asking that right now here's the answer see a lot of people doing this if they're Daisy fresh never picked up a torch in their life or they're just getting into it right now and you can actually see it sometimes in people's welds when you see them like post up or whatever saying hey can I get some advice here's the deal the correct direction is in the direction of the filler rod now we're excluding the the side feeding or the you know the diagonal feeding or even you know the top feeding like this which a lot of people do we're excluding that you haven't gotten there yet you got to get to that point first so the correct direction is in the direction of the filler rod so if you're right-handed you're gonna be going right to left if you're left-handed you're going to be going left to right that's the correct direction in the direction of the filler rod so one more just before we get out of here is a little bit of a bonus I wasn't sure if I was gonna put this in or not but you know what hey let's do it if you can't see it you can't weld it so make sure that wherever you're looking at it you're actually able to see it and just in case you didn't know you're supposed to be staring at the puddle not the tungsten not the rod not the area around it you're supposed to be staring at the puddle and if you can't see it you can't weld it very simple so I really hope that this list helps you out and actually helps you go and maybe get through some of those hurdles just a little bit faster now if you need to get in touch with us you can always hit us up on the fabrication series.com website Instagram at dot fabricator or facebook.com slash the fabricator series I want to thank you guys for watching as always don't forget to subscribe to the fabrication Series YouTube channel for more really awesome content and I will see you guys on the next episode

Channel: The Fabrication Series

Views: 1,356,108

Rating: 4.8840337 out of 5

Keywords: Top 10 welding, top 10 tig mistakes, beginner TIG, first time TIG, what to know about TIG welding, How to TIG weld, TIG for Beginners, #TIGSimple, How to TIG weld beginner, First TIG Welds, New TIG welder, Newb TIG welder, Season 4, The Fabricator, The Fabrication Series, #GetStrong

Id: FvsyKo8WRx8

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 14 2018