TIG Welding - Puddle Control

Hey and hello don't just stand there and like a stranger come on in have us how about that video huh lots of love there and I want to thank you all for that I'm glad my ramblings could be of some help despite my insistence that I really don't know what I'm doing for better for worse you've talked me into a follow-up but listen now and believe me later for hobbyists getting this close and personal is rather intimate I've never let anyone peek under my cup before frankly I'm a little shy but I dug this hole and I plan to see it through not because I'm particularly good at this super confident we're doing textbook Welding far from it this video or these videos hopefully to help you get you out of your rut try something different I hesitate to say it but maybe even get better results I assume if you're watching this you're TIG welding gaming super mine isn't either but if we don't help each other out well that's not the world I want to live in so seeing as we're here now in that place I never thought I'd be making a welding video let alone a follow-up to a welding video let's jump right into the deep end this time I'd like to talk about puddle control quick recap of last week's episode before we get started firsts hold the torch with your hand second make sure you're comfortable now I'm assuming you're welding at a bench if you're under a car with your foot controller between your legs or at the top of a ladder screaming just a little more amps and it's all on you but if you're in the comfort of your own space sitting down well get comfortable try to keep the torch motion as smooth as continuous as possible point the torch where you want the heat likely you'll be welding flat so that means almost vertical again lean it back just a bit enough so you can see what's going on and try to keep a consistent arc length I brushed over that in the last video my bad but keep this tight of an arc as you can without dipping the tungsten in the puddle maybe an eighth of an inch tops three millimeters you can't have too short of an arc but it can certainly be too long if the arc coming off of your electrode sounds like a hissing propane torch it's probably too long if you just can't resist that urge to dip into the weld puddle well you've contaminated your super hot incandescent tungsten tip you're not stick welding with your TIG torch at no point ever should the electrode touch the weld puddle or your filler rod in fact it shouldn't touch anything ever the right thing to do is to stop regrind start again but if you're just learning honestly don't get carried away I mean after all you're probably not practicing your TIG welding on the cooling system of a nuclear reactor you're not right if the contamination is only a little bit if it easily lights again and keeps a reasonable arc you know I mean just keep going and now I'm gonna get for that you shouldn't do it the tungsten will contaminate your weld and you'll have less control over the arc but if you've got to stop every three minutes to regrind or change to a fresh electrode it'll get frustrated and pretty fast frankly and don't take this the wrong way if you're dipping that off and into the puddle you've got bigger problems than a contaminated weld I'd say just push through it keep practicing work on your form now don't misconstrue what I'm saying if you've dipped your tungsten and picked up five pounds of base metal you're gonna have to stop and deal with it but at this point form and sort of motor skill control really trump everything else now if looking at this big list of stuff is intimidating don't sweat it that goes away fast certainly if you've tried this and you've been having problems just see if one of those resonates with you you're not doing one of those things try to adjust for it but as you practice it'll become second nature in fact I neglected to mention arc length and not contaminating your electrode because that stuff no you quickly take it for granted it's like when I was teaching my kids to ride a bike I start off with very clear charts and step-by-step instructions down to the finest detail but they just wouldn't get it it wasn't until I put them on bikes and shove them down the hill that they figured it out now they automatically know not to fall on their face and I didn't even have to get the slide 38 to teach them that so let's have a closer look at weld puddles and puddle control I'd like to start off with a staple of my channel stating the obvious I'm still working with the same piece of mild steel I have moved down to a smaller cup size number six I think either that or a super high quality 9 that's not important now I'm trying to manage how much light this weld is putting off so I can film it and still keep you seeing something didn't mean to freak anybody out though we'll do the same thing we did last time just run a bead it's been a week easy since that last video so I'm sure you've all gotten your torch angle and motion down pat let's concentrate just on the puddle this time I'll strike an arc and give the heat a few seconds to melt the base metal to create the weld puddle if it takes too long or you blow a hole clean through your bench into your nice Sunday welding pants adjust your amp setting given your settings and the gap you're holding the puddle will only get so big when it's maxed out sort of stabilized and I'm happy it's a good size for what I'm trying to do I can start moving the torch now at this point something magic has happened we're working with a liquid liquid metal if I were to turn this piece over now that puddle would just roll off into my lap and again the Sunday pants now it wouldn't really do that but bear with me I'm being hyperbolic as I move the torch that puddle will follow along it should stay right under the electrode a little ahead of it actually because of the torch angle and in full sight right where I can keep an eye on it that sure is a nice spot for it isn't it as you move the torch the arc is continuously melting metal in front and the puddle is solidifying off of the back think of it like a rolling ball of Awesome picking up new material in front of it and losing some off the back I'm sure you see this solidified ripples and the bead that the puddle is leaving behind anything I do to the molten weld pool is telegraphed into the solid bead if I just pull it along in a line I'll get a little ripple pattern as that puddle kind of rolls its way along I made little circles I'd get little circles I made little hearts I'd get little hearts if instead I move the puddle along in increments say half puddle steps maybe an eighth of an inch in this case just like before I'd see that in the weld bead and this may start to look like the familiar fish scaling everybody likes to do if instead I were to do say a figure 8 well you might recognize that weave pattern - bottom line how you handle the torch affects the puddle which in turn becomes your weld bead they're all one in the same there is no spoon making funny shapes while you're moving your torch does have its place some joints are easier to weld with the fancy dance moves but for now for us it's not important as long as you follow those rules from before do whatever you want with your torch I recommend just long smooth linear moves at the get-go but do whatever you want if you're trying to get beads like the ones you see on Instagram that's gonna take a heck of a lot of practice it's like handwriting naturally everyone sort of got their own style you can't improve your handwriting change your style but it takes practice but for now the idea here is to get a feel for how your torch motion allows you to control what the puddle is doing and of course what the puddle will look like welds don't have to be pretty to be strong and ugly weld doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad weld like mechanically on the flip side a gorgeous weld doesn't necessarily mean it's a strong weld usually that's not as much the case with TIG as opposed to other welding processes in my experience stick and make can hide a poor mechanical joint it's harder to do that with TIG it's certainly possible it's just a little harder that's probably a discussion for another time now let's see what happens with too long of an arc or too much torch angle the end effect is similar here I'll pull the arc two two maybe three times longer than it should be at first glance other than the porosity I'm picking up because of poor gas coverage from being so far away there doesn't appear to be too much difference in the weld puddle itself right I mean it's still there it's round it's a bit smaller but more or less behaving have a closer look though at where it is with respect to the torch see how with this large arc length it's sort of lagging it's almost directly under the electrode instead of leading it because of that we've lost control to explain why we've lost control I have to jump ahead a few chapters will get deeper a little later but for now there's two things you really should know first you can't really weld without filler rod I mean in some instances you can but nine times out of ten you need to feed your puddle more material a starved weld puddle like the ones we've been making will usually break not to mention filler wire probably has lots of alloying elements antioxidants vitamins minerals everything of growing weld puddle needs second and this one's a little trickier the weld puddle itself should melt your filler material not the arc from your TIG torch think of it like soldering or solve during sweating pipe you really want the hot copper pipe to melt your solder not the flame from the torch the flame will melt your solder but it probably won't bond to your pipe it's not exactly the same intake welding but close the analogy hopefully should do the puddle melts your filler rod let's go back to the long arc if you try to add filler rod to this it did never make it to the weld puddle the rod would melt as soon as it enters the arc cone and it would just drip down onto your puddle instead of into it splish splash around cooling it down turning it into funny shapes and not the good kind of funny mind you we can't control this well because we can't control where we're depositing filler material and how it's settling in now sure you could just jam it in there it would melt but it wouldn't really end up looking so great but you already knew that didn't you and while we're here Wow just look at that porosity this would want more gas well technically it wants a shorter arc but as is the back of the puddle is still too hot when it gets out from under the torch and is now exposed to the atmosphere it's no longer being shielded or due to the large gap my argon flow is pulling air into the molten puddle this can also happen by the way if you have a leak in your line anywhere from your regulator to the torch itself if it draws in air it'll dump it into your molten weld puddle resulting in this sort of porosity so everything we've done so far between these two videos comes down to puddle control all that jazz about short arc length smooth consistent movements torch angle it all comes down to puddle control frankly all of this goes or any welding process certainly there's a lot more to welding prep joint design and penetration metallurgy temperature control distortion post treatment if there is any the list is long but mechanically speaking like academically as far as going through the motions hopefully this is a good start from here on out it's still about say it with me now Puddle control T joints vertical or overhead welds uphill or downhill round and funny out of position welds all while adding filler of course the next step usually involves moving to multiple pieces actually gluing two things together probably fusion welding meaning controlling the heat and weld puddle to fuse two pieces together without the help of filler material it might start off with two flat pieces side by side with no gap and have to fuse those this is called a butt joint by the way they call it that because it looks like your butt kind of width then you'd likely move to a lap joint here you'd likely do the same thing fusion welding it at first and then moving to filler but soon you'd move to T joints T of course stands for Toni or joints with large gaps in both of those you'll start to see more harder challenges controlling the weld puddle the puddle might start to act more like a spoiled two-year-old than the nice puddles we've been seeing so far maybe in a tea joint you'll have trouble getting the puddle down into the corner heck you might even have two puddles one in the vertical piece and one in the horizontal and they just don't want to come together without massive undercuts or in a gap joint you strike an arc and suddenly you're Moses opening the parts up like the Red Sea not to mention joints getting all cheeky and vertical there not only are you now toe-to-toe with gravity you'll also need to develop lightning-fast coping skills to get molten metal out of your ear out of your shoe anyway I'm starting to get loopy I need a nap and this video is getting long if you like how these videos are going though if you think you're getting something out of it let me know down in the comments and maybe we'll tackle one more as always thanks for watching

Channel: This Old Tony

Views: 586,376

Rating: 4.9631443 out of 5

Keywords: tig welding, tig filler, filler rod, adding filler rod, weld puddle, puddle control, porosity, learning tig, getting started tig welding, TIG

Id: Vfhz9anpaWE

Length: 12min 52sec (772 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 15 2018

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