TIG Welding Basics Overview

hey this is Jodi with welding tips and tricks' calm what I want to do today is start part one of TIG welding basics in this part one of the TIG series I'm going to do a big big overview so I want to show you lots of different applications where TIG welding is used some of them you knew some of them you may not have thought about and then I want you to ask questions in the comments section of this YouTube video and then in the next following parts I'll try to answer those questions along with doing the abc123 series on TIG welding machines torches electrodes different material types different techniques different positions all that stuff this is going to be the big big overview and remember to ask questions in the comments section I'll try to address them throughout the series let's go let's talk first about the most simple type of TIG welding the most basic kind of TIG welding scratch start TIG so basically here's the setup I've got a stick welder here it's an ac/dc Miller thunderbolt XL about a bottle argon a regulator flow meter an air-cooled TIG torch with a valve an inert gas hose coming out of the flow meter here and the torch the torch is connected with this little adapter thingy here and then to get power to the torch typically you just take the stick electrode holder and clamp it there now there are plastic guide guards whatever sheaths that that can go over this thing for safety's sake but you know this is just I'm just showing you how how it's usually done here air-cooled TIG torch with a valve turn the valve on weld finish welding turn the valve off you got to remember you're live all the time at the electrode you know you got power there all the times you can't just set it on the bench or stick it in your pocket not a good idea in the hands of somebody experienced with scratch start TIG it's very surprising the quality of work that can be done but at the same time there are limitations you're strictly limited to stainless steel and steel you might do a cast-iron repair in a pinch but crack sensitive materials like cast-iron don't like it when you snap out of the puddle suddenly so you know you just better off all around if you can if you can afford it to get an ac/dc to take welder with high frequency start ok I've set up a little mock-up weld here this is very common joint that you would find on a handrail or on something like a roll cage and it's just inch and a quarter of schedule 40 pipe so it's about 140,000 wall thickness scratch start TIG would work just fine on this and it's often used on stuff like this but like I've said many times before the problem isn't starting it's stopping and when you have to whip out like that you lose argon coverage momentarily and you have to go back in with a file or a grinder and brush it and shine it off before you start back or if you weld to it it's not a problem on some materials carbon steel it's not a huge problem but stainless steel you lose your shielding and it can be a problem especially on some foodservice type stuff even though scratch start TIG is used a lot for foodservice now I'm going vertical uphill here and take welding is affected a lot less by gravity than MIG or stick welding just because of the puddle is much smaller much more controllable and also just generally using a little bit less amperage than you are with MIG or stick alright one trick to keep from having to lose your coverage when you come out is to put a piece of copper toward the end of the weld when you're using scratch start if you really need a good clean area you can pull the arc over to the copper like that let the metal solidify maintain a little shielding and it works a little bit better another area where scratch start TIG is still used an awful lot is in pipe welding it's used a lot on pipe welding tests like this 6g test I'm coming up here with a hot pass on 6g that's the second pass over top of the route and the reason it's used for testing is because it's used in the field so much so they test with the same stuff that you're going to be welding in the field it's used in the field because it's portable and simple and cheap you don't have to have a separate welder for everybody like if you had a Mac star for everybody welding on a job they would probably walk off the job site another place is is a that scratch start is still used a lot is sanitary stainless tubing for dairies and food and beverage type work and generally no filler metal is used except when it you know absolutely necessary and the reason is you could introduce oxides with the tip of the filler metal and they can float to the inside of the root pass like that and screwed up a really quick commercial here now I've had a lot of people ask about a bigger tick finger that they could fit two fingers in or just somebody you know that's got really big fingers that can't fit it in a regular tick finger I have the tick finger in the XL version now available at weld monger comm all right let's talk about lift arc DC TIG simple lift arc machines is a good example this is a Miller Mac star 150 STL STL stands for stick TIG and lift arc the way this little miller max star works is when you when you touch off the machine senses that and then it turns the argon on for you with a solenoid inside the machine and then it bumps the amperage up so that you can establish an arc so normally you're holding a very low amperage so it's a little bit safer as opposed to scratch start when you pretty much got a live tip all the time scratch it like a match or another trick instead of scratching the tip is to swipe the tip of the rod against the electrode while it's close to the base metal and then sometimes even flip the rod around like a drummer flips a drumstick you know to avoid any possible contamination on the rod so swipe the rod flip the rod around a trick used by a lot of old-time pipe welders when they want to pass x-ray tests now a little 150 amp machine like this can weld some pretty thick metal by using multiple passes but you have to keep in it within the duty cycle let's talk about lift arc multi-process welders now there's a lot of those out there and this is one of them this is a thermal arc fabricator to 52i it's capable of doing MIG TIG and stick runs a nice nice stick puddle because it's got some settings like hot start and dig function so it runs a really nice stick bead which is kind of convenient because sometimes you just need to do stick I'm using the Lincoln Excalibur 7018 here so it does a really good job also well it's pretty good on MIG being able to have that in a job shop along with DC lift arc TIG is can be really helpful again this machine is a lift arc tick and it came with the torch control which I've never really been a fan of a torch mounted amperage control just doesn't give you the control that a foot pedal does you can use a foot pedal of this machine but anyway either way you can maintain shielding on a piece of stainless steel like this now I've got this in a little purge box so I'm providing shielding to the backside but I want to maintain shielding on the front side too until it fools so it doesn't turn all gray let's talk about high freq start DC only machines now now high freq start I've taken the ground off of this you can see what that high freq start looks like it's kind of like a spark plug it jumps an arc gap so that you can establish an arc without having to ever touch the electrode to the part and that is a good thing here's an example of a machine like that it's very affordable it's Everlast 160 s th stick TIG high freq and so for little small parts like this where you don't want to have to touch off and drag the part around the table if you don't want to clamp every part down like if I had a hundred of these to do i wouldnt want to have to clamp each one down to the table I just want to lay them up on a backup block or a piece of copper and start filling up holes and little tedious little jobs like this you would jerk that thing all over the table again and by having to touch off to it so high frequency start is definitely a plus and 160 amps is enough to do a lot with I chose this little project here it's a scrap piece of 2 inch round stock welded to a one inch handle just to show how thick you can well just use in multiple passes and by putting a little bevel on something every now and then where it looks like it needs it you can usually get a stronger weld just by doing a little joint preparation a little chamfer here and there to get deeper penetration TIG welding is only going to penetrate so deep no matter how much amperage you use so 160 amps will weld almost anything and I'm putting a second pass on this just because I don't want a hammer head flying across the shop when I'm hoping on something all right and then actually this little hammer project what I did is I overlaid the face of it with silicon bronze that's something else you can do with a with a DC high freq start unit like this is you can do some delicate art work using silicon bronze rod in this case it's not artwork it was very functional I wanted a softer face of a hammer and one that I could hammer on stainless steel parts without you know risk of you know contamination from from the carbon steel these units are very light very portable and pretty darn capable very simple you got TIG stick function and get a lift arc and high freq function because there are some areas that you don't want to use high frequency like around computers and and maybe automotive stuff where you might damage some circuits or some computer chips in there so it's got amperage and then post flow and that's it that's all the settings on there now this machines will also stick weld which is really handy to have a portable machine like that that just you can actually throw it you know in the trunk of your car or using a shoulder strap or whatever and they'll burn a 3/32 electrode like this 70 18 all day long and will burn a 1/8 I don't know how long that you can burn a 1/8 but I burned several of them without the machine ever ever timing out and they got a really really smooth arc especially if you use a good rod like a Lincoln xcalibur 7018 slag will just come right off if you got the machine set right so on a job like this with a lot of lap joints where you have to stop and start and stop and start to you know to limit Distortion being able to stop and start with high frequencies start without touching the part is a big help it's going to help the part look a lot better in the end and will also just it'll just go better and you can avoid distortion by being able to stop and start at will one construction job where the the test was given using a high freq DC machine with a foot pedal and and actually all the welds on on the jobsite were done that way and electricians came and wired you in a new machine whenever you had to move to a new location but that's that's pretty darn rare but having a high freq with a foot pedal on a route pass like this i would choose it every time as opposed to scratch start just gives you that much more control that much less filing and grinding when you have to stop it's just it's just better it's just that you know some jobs it's just not possible just not offered but it sure did help the route pass go in good on this one next up is just very basic ACDC TIG inverters like the entry-level type machines these are kind of I don't want to say dumbed down but they basically have a lot of the controls preset inside the machine so the diversion 180 there is doesn't have AC balance doesn't have AC frequency doesn't have anything just got amperage and material type selector the Everlast power TIG 185 micro i think it's called on the left has AC balance as well as AC frequency and you can stick weld with it and you can swap out torches whereas the diversion that torch is hardwired in I definitely prefer to have an AC balance setting because you get you encounter all kinds of different levels of oxidation and corrosion and things with aluminum jobs and I'll show you that in just a minute but these two machines perform pretty well both of them have enough amperage to do pretty thick steel using multi pass also with aluminum they'll weld up to probably you know 3/16 of an inch before you have to start thinking about adding helium or something to the mix to extend the the capability of it let's talk about full-featured ac/dc TIG welders now and I'm really talking about inverters here because that seems to be what I get ahold of these days here's three of them that are very similar in capability they're both around the 200 amp range there's the Miller Dynasty 200 DX the lincoln in vertex v 205 t and Everlast 210 EXT all of them are around the 200 amp range all of them have pulse and AC balance and AC frequency adjustment EP also has all those features and is also quite a capable machine they're all laid out slightly differently on the touch panel and touch panels are getting smaller with more and more features so a lot of the settings are in the back end where you have to hold the button and let it let that let the display blink and then set something but you can do a lot of things you can pulse TIG on thin wall aluminum tubing now on this particular clip here I'm actually pulsing manually with the torch switch in at about 0.7 pulses a second and do the same thing if you had to do a lot of these joints that you wouldn't have to worry about pressing the switch on and off all the time but I'm just experimenting here with a little technique I've read some stuff about guys pulsing with the torch switch and so I figured I'd give it a try and actually it works pretty darn good also you need be able to weld really thin stuff sometimes and having a full-featured TIG inverter ac/dc that most of them most all of them go down to 5 amps some of them go down as low as one like the dynasty but 5 amps is low enough to light up on a razor blade pretty much and they're all capable of welding really thick stuff now I'm welding some really thick 4140 here high strength alloy steel it took a 500 degree preheat but I'm only using 160 amps and that is because I'm complying with a procedure that called for 160 amps so really I could probably do this job with one of those smaller machines believe it or not like that little one 160 sth definitely would want to use high frequency start though on this low alloy steel because any arc strike could could could make for a little hard brittle area and that could be a problem I'm using a little technique here called Al a wire technique often times you dip the wire in and out of the puddle to create that little stack of Dimes effect but you know it's just not always necessary and sometimes seems like a lot of wasted effort so on something big and thick like this especially because I'm going to come across this with a second pass so that I can get an adequate weld size to comply with the drawing there's no point in taking the rod in and out and doing anything I just put two passes on it also with TIG welding sometimes you add filler sometimes you don't I'm adding filler on this edge joint this is two pieces of thin 18 gauge sandwiched together and I added a little Rob there but sometimes there are applications where you don't add rod and you can just get by with just a little fusion pass like this the word is a Taj inist I always hated that word so I don't use it much having an ac/dc TIG inverter with high freq start and AC balance really helps on a job like a boat prop repair because aluminum that's been in service of any kind whether it's marine service fresh or saltwater is not going to weld as clean as a sheet of aluminum right off the shelf and being able to set AC balance as well as AC frequency which is a big big benefit on a job like this unlike an edge well and you can see I used a little piece of copper to kind of back it up and trap the argon on that and it reminds me of some pictures of one of my viewers sent me a while back on this wheel repair now an automotive aluminum automotive wheel is not going to weld the same as brand-new material either but he did the same thing he backed it up with a with a piece of copper and just took his time bead after bead close that thing up we've been welded it from the other side blended it off and a good repair there's a lot of times in job shops when you have to do weird stuff like there could be a chunk of metal missing here that the the end mill went crazy and cut a big chunk of part out and you get you have to put it back and so I'm using a big chunk of stainless for backing here I've got an awful lot of metal to fill in there but it helps to not only trap the argon and help that aluminum weld cleaner but also it helps contour the bead when you use backing now I wouldn't advise using sheet metal backing here who probably melt but this is a big chunk of a stainless steel round I'm keeping an eye on it to make sure it doesn't melt but just by welding bead after bead after bead and kind of welding a hot enough to where the the metal rolls all the way down against the backing makes a job like this go pretty well and it actually didn't take all that long before I had welded both sides and then had something that would would have been able to put in service now this is just a piece of scrap that I pulled out of a dumpster out of the scrap dumpster just to show but often times jobs are just not welding two pieces of metal together but building back metal that's gone this is a magnesium gearbox and that's like a hundred beads on there done by a expert magnesium welder Vinnie Berg ante but that is some good work and the way you get good at that one way to get good at it is by doing something I call the aluminum drill and that is just get a piece of eighth inch thick aluminum and run beads and figure out all the settings on your machine play with the AC balance play with the Freak and see use different tungsten preps add metal often spread your ripples out wider go right hand go left hand and then you'll get you'll just increase your skill dramatically by welding aluminum and by intentionally doing different things purposefully a one area where you really need AC balance is on aluminum castings they can weld like mud and like a mushroom feel and if you can't adjust your AC balance there's just not a lot you can do other than weld clean weld clean weld clean and hope it cleans up whereas justing the AC balance to more cleaning action can often make a big big difference and make it well nice and clean like this also with the TIG inverter you with with pulse capability you can take advantage of what I call the rule of 3333 pulses a second 33 percent on time 33 percent background it makes that puddle stand right up at attention makes you makes it stay where you put it especially helpful when you're welding near any edge or welding on an edge now you can see with TIG welding most of the time you feed rod from the other side and go in the other direction but you know there's there's always an exception to the rule and I'm using that I'm using 33 pulses a second here and welding backwards to weld a bead on an edge of a piece of 18 gauge and there's also weird things that you might want to do with pulse I'm using alternating current here and one pulse a second welding with aluminium-bronze on carbon steel in you're going to wind up finding situations where you wish you had a few more amps and a cylinder of helium with a Wye can really help weiying helium in at around 50 50 can let you willed a lot thicker stuff than you normally would be able to also lowering the frequency if you have frequency adjustment low actually lowering the frequency can put more heat into a big thick aluminum part it's why that tip of that electrode looks so funky because I've got it down set on 50 Hertz that's even lower than a transformer machine at least in the USA but it really helped do this really thick one-inch thick aluminum part by dropping that frequency down to 50 and by adding helium to the mix and adding helium to anything over 1/8 of an inch just helps period alright another area where a 200 amp machine really excels is for doing chromoly tubing in motorsports or aviation now for that you don't really need pulse but it can really help I'm just using a straight current right here the metal is clean the fit ups pretty good no no real problem but in situations where you have any gap at all you can revert to that rule of 3333 pulses a second everything said on 33 and it will fill a gap in easier than without it look right now at that rule of 33 using this HTP TIG welder I'm going to weld right now right next to the edge and you can kind of see of course it doesn't look like 33 pulses a second but that is that is an effect of the shutter speed of the camera it looks a little bit different to the human eye than it's actually looking here but you get you can see the how the puddle is staying where I put it it's not one to wick over the edge of that corner and that's because I've got pulse on that this could be done without pulse but I'd have to really really really pay attention really watch that puddle and even then it might you know wick over and roll over the edge but with the pulse it just makes it go a little easier same thing here on a part maybe that's got a chamfer knocked on it that shouldn't maybe it was a mistake just helps to put that metal exactly where you want it and makes it stick make it so you can kind of get a bead profile that's favorable to something that's going to be machined off later like if this was going to be decked or milled off to a sharp corner that's about the kind of bead that I would that I would want on it series on TIG welding we're going to go into take torches gas lenses all kinds of different cups but the stubby gas lens will take a 17 or 26 torch which is pretty big and make it a lot smaller and make it more maneuverable and I really like them so in just a minute we're going to use this gas lens I'm going to weld on the edge of a piece of 16 gauge aluminum doing that is just to show you what a benefit it is to use an inverter to have a sharpened electrode be able to adjust the frequency I've got it set on 100 Hertz here it makes that bead point right on the edge and also having that gas lens provides good coverage for me over an edge like that also welding down in a corner like this with aluminum it's hard to make it go into the corner sometimes but by using a tapered electrode and increasing the frequency up to 120 or even 200 it really drives it in there alright let's talk about TIG welding techniques just a little bit and mainly just two different ones for now we'll get into lots of different ones later in this series but walking the cup versus using a TIG finger or free-handing walking or wiggling the cup looks something like this it's not always permitted like you can see in this close-up shot this polished stainless it now has all kinds of little scratches on it and that is a bad thing sometimes in certain industries they don't want anything on that on a polished surface but in this particular case this this all this metal is going to be Rhema Sheen and that shaft is going to be turned down to a smaller diameter you can even see some knurling on there all that will be turned off and this weld will be machined into a radius but I'm doing two passes on there by walking the cup and that worked out really well but this works really well too and the reason for the TIG finger is after that about half of that first pass this thing is pretty smoking hot so I wouldn't want to rest my bare TIG glove on there for very long without it Adam you know maybe I inch or two I could but it gets pretty hot pretty fast so I'm using a little bit different technique there dipping the rod in and out just going in kind of a straight line dipping the rod and then I'll come over that with a little weave pass just like I did when I was walking the cup and you can see a little close-up of the the the technique used here in just a minute I've got the tick finger propped and I'm basically just mimicking the same motion that would would be walking the cup so I'm kind of like wiggling or twisting the tick finger a little bit and it's nice and slick so on stainless like this it really slides along just about like it should and if I when I wiggle it it just makes the torch wiggle just like this and wind up with something that looks a whole lot like I had walked the cup on it industry you're in you may not ever get a chance or need to learn how to walk the cup but oftentimes you need to be able to put multiple passes on something with TIG and oftentimes that thing is gets really hot after that first pass so this is just using a tick finger kind of trying to make it look like walking the cup and the same thing here now this isn't really meant to be a hammer you over the head take finger commercial but that is how I support my video habit so if you've been getting hot pinky fingers and hot knuckles and blisters and everything you know what I'm talking about so if you think this would help you with your TIG welding by all means go to weld monger calm and learn more about them pick one up I think you'll be glad you did also make sure to remember to leave your questions in the comment section so we can try to cover them in the coming parts of this series please hit the thumbs up button if you liked what you saw here and hit that subscribe button if you want to make sure not to miss any of the following segments on TIG welding

Channel: weldingtipsandtricks

Views: 782,969

Rating: 4.9462161 out of 5

Keywords: tig welding, how to tig, tig welding aluminum, tig welding stainless, tig welding technique, tig welding tips, tig welding basics

Id: h0oiq7BIT4Q

Length: 26min 17sec (1577 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 19 2014