Why are my tig welds GRAY?!🔥(DO THIS INSTEAD!)🔥

have you got a problem with gray looking tig welds today i'm going to give you some tips to fix that hey everyone welcome to another episode from pacific ark tig welding my name is dusty i'm a welding artist from vancouver island canada i do welding projects on both two-dimensional and three-dimensional surfaces and on my youtube channel i love showing off and teaching the art of tig welding so if you're new to the channel be sure to bounce back check out the previous episodes there's a ton of episodes there for you to watch so i got a lot of messages sent to me of people having problems with their tig wells looking great whether it's stainless steel or mild steel gray welds are a very common problem so today i'm going to explain how to take care of that and move on to some shiny stuff so what causes a gray tig weld it's a forming of excessive oxide on the surface of your tig welds there's a couple things that can contribute so i'll break those two things down the first thing that will cause this problem is excessive heat input into your metal the second thing that will contribute to the same problem is inadequate gas coverage and they both kind of work together on this one so i'll explain them here so number one excessive heat input into a piece of metal so how do we get too hot obviously excessive amperage is the most simple solution to this one i definitely recommend that you do some research into how much amperage you should be using for a piece of material there are charts online where you can basically look up what type of metal you have how much amperage you should use as far as heat input into these things but i can totally say from experience to seeing some common mistakes that's not always the problem you can set your machine for a totally perfect amount of amperage but it all comes down to having proper tig welding torch technique i personally always rely on my travel speed and torch angle over amperage settings like i said you can set your machine for the perfect amount of amperage but if you have a jacked up travel speed where you're going too slow or your angle is totally whack you're going to overheat the material even if you have a perfect amperage setting i personally set my amperage even a little bit higher than i probably should that way i know i have enough and i control it with the foot pedal the main thing that i want to focus on is having a proper travel speed so the most common problem is a lot of people have too slow of a travel speed what happens when you have a travel speed that's too slow is the heat affected zone around a weld will get too big take a look at this photo here you can see the weld area is only this much right here but take a look at the heat affected zone the heat affected zone has blown out way past whatever gas is going to cover this area so basically once your heat affected zone gets too big it's beyond help it's a little bit out of your control at this point here even with proper gas setup proper gas screens and gas lenses when your heat affected zone has gotten this big it is almost beyond help look at this pass here we have a really small and narrow heat affected zone this narrow heat affected zone is much easier to cover with gas which means you're going to get a proper coverage which means less heat input into the material which means you're gonna have less oxide form which means you're gonna have shiny tig welds that's what we're after so you wanna make sure that when you focus on having a smaller heat affected zone quicker speed adequate filler rod these are two things that are gonna keep your heat input a lot lower which means less oxide forming which means your gas coverage gets to do an easier job of keeping a nice clean finish so the second thing was inadequate gas coverage i always tend to set up running a little bit more gas through my regulator than i think i need i'm always going to ballpark it anywhere between 20 to 30 cfh and i'll adjust accordingly after i've done a couple passes when you're working with a piece of material that has just had a weld put across it you're going to have to adequately shield the weld area with post flow post flow should shut off after your pass is done glowing and then i usually give it an extra two to four seconds again that's just my opinion and just from my experience that's enough to make sure everything is totally covered properly obviously with different setups with different types of joints and stuff you'll have to adjust as you see it happen in front of you but generally that's where i set up with my timer on my post flow having awesome gas lenses and gas cups helps a lot but as long as your heat effective zone stays small even basic cups and basic gas lenses are gonna work great for you in my studio here i have furic lenses i have edge lenses i have all kinds of dope gas lens set up for my torch but as long as my heat affected zone stays small even the most basic gas lens setups are going to work great so basically a good rule of thumb is anytime you have a tig weld that turns out gray there's been excessive heat input into your material anything you can do to put less heat input into your piece that you're about to work on the better you're gonna have a better finish things will turn out cleaner and shinier you might even get some cool colors if that's what you're after so if you got any value from this episode here today here's how you can repay me you can go today and do a random act of kindness for a complete stranger i don't care what it is big or small just do something to spread some positivity in the world right now we need it so thank you everybody for watching today i hope you're doing well out there again for pacific arc tig welding my name is dusty we'll talk soon peace

Channel: Pacific Arc Tig Welding

Views: 233,954

Keywords: tig welding, welding tips and tricks, tig welding tips, tig welding stainless steel, how to tig weld stainless steel, tig welding how to, tig welds, Tig, tig weld, welding, tig welding for beginners, how to tig weld stainless steel for beginners, tig welding basics, Welding for beginners, how to tig weld for beginners, how to tig weld, how to weld, how to weld aluminum, welding tricks, tig welding tricks, welding tips, tig welding settings, welding settings

Id: LXP3uWHWGOM

Length: 4min 55sec (295 seconds)

Published: Thu May 06 2021