Your Very First TIG Welds with EXTREME Detail

right so a recent survey of over 4 700 tfs viewers revealed that 87 of you have less than a few hours of welding experience or tig welding training so uh and even half of that half of that 87 have none so this is a very bare bones very first welds you're ever going to lay down in fine extremely detailed tfs fashion this is months of what you would experience encompassed in 240 some odd minutes here so make sure you leave me a like if you liked it smash the thumbs up share it with your people drop a comment down below if you want to learn more or whatever the case is uh remember that we've got classes we got everything else so back to my garage in this style right here nothing fancy just straight up friggin welding good luck to you hope to see you on the other end of this video your first tig welds are going to be really really tricky and not really because it's that hard or that difficult to do but it's all the stuff that you should know about before you actually sit down and do this so that's what we're going to really aim in on this one and really hone in on is what you should be doing or what to expect so the first thing that we really need to talk about is your work surface you need something that is obviously metal that will you know conduct electricity right you need something that'll that'll hold your work that you're working on it right should be at a comfortable height now comfortable is a tricky term because there's nobody in this entire world that can tell you what's comfortable and if you've never watched anybody else's videos they're like get comfortable sit like this that's that may not be comfortable for you now i understand that it's relatively tricky to figure out what comfortable is when you've never done it because theoretically everything new is kind of uncomfortable like holding a torch or sitting in a chair whatever the case is but let me just try to help you out this way there is nothing in the rule books of welding that says you have to be squared up to your metal right you don't have to be sitting here like this with absolutely perfect posture you don't have to do any of that you don't have to you know make sure you're looking over the top of it you don't you don't have to be posed in a certain way this is not like sipping tea or anything like that there's no etiquette to welding right the idea here is that no matter what it is that you find is comfortable if you're hunched over slots like this and the only way you can see it is if it's in front of your face and that's comfortable do it if you have to have this gnarly gangsta lean and you can weld from way back here and that's comfortable do it if you have to be like shrunken in your chair and on the edge of your bench if that's comfortable do it now we've taught 600 plus people one-on-one in our classes how to weld and i've seen everything from you know people slouching across the table like this to one time i even had a uh an oral surgeon that used to work on the corner of the desk or on the on the table literally like he was in somebody's jaw and that was what was comfortable for him so we didn't fight that we said hey that's exactly what you need to do because that's what's comfortable to him so the first and foremost the most important thing take some time before you even flip the machine on to get find a comfortable position right sit there and be like yeah that's pretty cool the only couple things you really need to pay attention to is one when you're welding can you see the tip of the tungsten and you have line of sight you need to have line of sight on the very tip of that tungsten so that way you can gauge the height of it and you need motion the second thing is you need to not be stiff you need to be relaxed you need to be you know if you have to slouch go for it you know sometimes i'll even put a leg up on the table just to be like hey this is this is comfortable for me it's a very relaxing thing so whatever it is make sure that one you can see your part and you're the tip of your tungsten and pretty much the whole line of sight along the part that you're going to be running so if you're only going to run a four inch coupon make sure you have four inches worth of line of sight to where you can see the tip of the tungsten the entire way through second thing is find that comfortable spot be slouched if you're tense you're not comfortable right if you can't naturally move or flow in any direction you're not comfortable so take some time and find that spot figure out what's comfortable for you so let's let's talk about this torch for a minute right because i mean this is actually really tricky to do and especially if you've never actually done this before i mean obviously it's not going to be comfortable like how do i hold a torch right i don't that doesn't feel right well we'll try to make it feel right here okay first and foremost get your gear on get your gloves on right we don't have the machine on or anything else like that right make sure that your lead which is the whole line for the torch make sure that it's not you know all bunched up like this it's not you know in knots or anything else like that you know it's got to be kind of straight flowing right you take that throw it on the floor grab some slack right and just throw it in your lap ideally you want the the lead the slack of the lead to not pull off your lap so get it in a spot there and you need to have enough left over to where it's not going to pull the torch out of your hand so we're trying to balance out gravity here you'll you'll find where that spot is right so just take that that slack a little bit i mean what is it like this much here just toss that in your lap and the rest of it can come up to your hand so that's kind of what we're looking for just just have it there it's not going to electrocute you or anything else like that you're not going to be in this field of magnetic radiation none of that crap right don't worry about that so ideally what we're looking to do is find that comfortable position that balanced point this section between your thumb and your index finger right there is called a perla queue and this back side of your thumb here that's kind of what we're aiming for what we want to do is have your hand out kind of like you're going to shake somebody's hand just put your hand straight out like this and set the torch on top of it what we're ultimately aiming to do is find that center of mass of that torch okay to where it will balance if you just take it and set it here notice it's all free floating no matter where i'm at no matter how i move the torch is balanced right it's comfortable or it's i would say that this is comfortable but maybe for some it's not but either way this is a natural position where you can balance it this is not a trick this is not like a i'm a welder and that's cool or whatever right this is literally a balanced point so find that point where it's balanced and it's just sitting freely it's it's on its center of mass it's not falling forward it's not falling backwards it's not at risk of slipping off your hand none of that just set it right there okay now take your middle finger and your index finger and just put it around the neck i want to say it's kind of like you know holding a cigar or whatever the case is right but it's just around the neck there right this should not have any kind of serious tension in your fingers it should just be kind of relaxed right we're just going to set it there the torch can go somewhere over here right now ideally you don't want your fingers to be too close to that cup because you'll end up getting burned like there's no other way around it you're talking like 3 000 some odd degree metal and your you know fingers or inches from it we don't want that so make sure you have enough clearance if you will to where you can not get burned right it's really that simple so with this relaxed kind of grip right the torch we're not death gripping it we're not like you know because if you're if you're death gripping it if you're blotchy i mean you can't move that's that's a sign of tension if you have a shaky hand like you're sitting here like this i know a lot of people have natural tremors and i'm not making fun of them but you gotta find a way to get rid of that i mean not really maybe you can't but if you're not normally shaky or whatever the case is then you gotta find that position to where you're not because that shakiness is usually a sign of tension somewhere in your body so you've got to take the time to figure out where that's at this hand should just be flowing freely i mean people have made fun of me because i gesture when i talk a lot but think about it that way if i have this in my hand and it's just there like an accessory that means that it's balanced i can do whatever i want with it while it's here right that's to me that's indicating that it's a comfortable position and a well-balanced torch that's kind of where we want now years ago i did make a video about different ways to hold the torch and everything else like that but we're not going to worry about it the only thing you really need to concentrate on is is that torch balanced in a relatively comfortable position you can have your palm down you can have your palm to by its side you can you know you can go like this or whatever the case is and some people they succeed with that and i encourage you to try it all out but ideally we're looking for that nice balanced point where i can just grab it and all of the motion or all of the movement of my part or when i make my weld is nothing but my fingertips maybe a little bit in my wrist but not in my arms not my body not my core not being all tensed and jacked up you know one of those things it's super relaxing and soothing right so fluid comfortable tiny amounts of motion right and no if you're burning yourself stop you're doing something wrong i'll just tell you that when i watch people burn their freaking fingers off they're like wow that's getting hot and they just keep on welding it's like no don't do that just freaking you know fix it hopefully that helps you out let's talk about the foot pedal all right now the foot pedal this is your on switch this is your off switch this is your complete control of that machine every single bit that you step on this every single bit that you change this every single bit that you go to that first point where you can just hear it let's see if i can get it on the microphone hear that click that's the on switch that's telling the machine let's fire up and go so that's your on switch and then of course once it's lit you increase to increase your amperage amperage meaning the amount of energy that's going to the part not to be confused with heat because i've said before that heat is time so it doesn't matter how many amps you have the longer you sit in one spot the hotter it's gonna get and you'll see that as we as we go into this lesson here and everything else like that but just remember that just like a car you know you can almost think of it this way so you step on it you're gonna go faster you let off of it you're to go slower or you're going to decelerate it's kind of like that in welding provided that you have the correct discipline to do that and to keep up with it so we're of course we're going to explain that right but just remember that every single bit of that machine is controlled right here at your foot it doesn't matter where or what foot it's attached to working on it doesn't matter where the pedal is positioned right you can have it directly below you you can have it on your knee at some points in time when i'm doing chassis work i tape the thing to my foot and stick my foot like up in the friggin a-pillar or a b-pillar or something just to give me a surface right so it doesn't matter where the pedal is actually positioned as long as you can access it and you have full range of motion on it that's effectively all we need left foot right foot doesn't matter as long as it feels right to you and remember that every single thing of this machine is controlled by this foot pedal so if your torch gets stuck you take your foot off the pedal right you don't lift the torch out or whatever the cases you just take your foot off the pedal if you want to weld you put your foot on the pedal and you get moving but it's best practice that when you're not welding to completely remove your foot from the foot pedal okay so i feel i owe you guys a bit more of an explanation this is our earth lead our ground clamp we're going to take this and we're going to throw that very very far away okay it is not connected to this table right now and that's for very very important reasons now the ghost in the machine that buzzing sound that that strange light that you can see when you look into some machines you'll actually see this blue light flashing across that what is that that is called the high frequency start let's just see how this works here watch carefully we're going to slowly step on the pedal till we hit that switch oh there it is what is that buzzing sound all right look here let's let's show off a little bit right okay that is high frequency start what that basically is is the machine is trying to complete a circuit to actually start welding okay in other words this little bolts of lightning that you see coming off of here and that buzzing sound what that's effectively that's a high voltage low amperage as in that's a lot of electricity but not enough to kill you right there's not enough current in there to kill you or to zap you to make you really sting really really bad okay so what that's basically trying to do is complete the circuit so that's going to start the arc and the arc is a high amperage low voltage circuit that will kill you or if you're lucky enough to wake up from the zap of it you're going to sting it's going to it's really gonna sting so uh here's what the thing is if you hear that sound and you're not ready to weld take your foot off the pedal just completely remove it and that's why i said that just a few minutes ago remove your foot from the pedal completely when you're not welding and when you're ready to weld and the torch is in place and you're ready to fire then you can put your foot on the pedal so again take your foot off the pedal because that's that's the dangerous side there especially if it connects if it creates that circuit you're gonna get zapped you're gonna get electrocuted it may end up killing you it rarely ever happens but you know it just just take your foot off the pedal right hopefully i've made that very very clear that's the sound that's the that's the ghost in the machine whatever the case is right so just take your foot off the pedal until you're ready to weld and when you're done welding remove your foot completely simple as that i think i have beaten this horse into the ground let's let's do some welding this is a welding coupon this is from weldmetalsonline.com this is an eighth inch aluminum coupon we're gonna start with aluminum because everybody loves welding aluminum and of course our class coming up our first weld with me live is gonna be all about aluminum now here's the thing let's get ourselves into position my foot is not on that pedal my torch is slacked right it's balanced on my hand let's see if i can get this to my my perfect grip there we go oh almost had it so we're balanced we're good we're comfy we're nice i've got my grip i'm comfortable at the table here i'm kind of slouched whatever the case is both my arms are resting on this all of my movements in my hands right now but we're not even going to move all we're going to do is light this sucker up and see exactly what happens now the counter-intuitive part if you have ever welded before if you've oxi-welded if you've mig welded either one of those two this is the part that's going to suck or it's going to be hard to understand but you got to stick this in your head as fast as possible the closer you are on tig welding closer you are to your metal the cooler it stays that means if you pick the torch up it's going to get hotter and when i say that's counterintuitive because oxy acetylene for example the closer you are the hotter it gets and you pick it up to relieve some of that heat to cool it off right if you do that in tig welding it's literally only going to get hotter you're also going to lose definition of your weld pool because the arc is splayed out so far that it's it's literally trying to heat up an area like this big instead of this little tiny section right in front of you so remember the closer you are the cooler it gets the same rule applies in mig welding but it appears differently that's just some science right but never ever ever ever never ever pick up the torch never pick up the torch keep it as close as possible without touching and how close is close or too close too close is touching if you're a 16th of an inch or like 1.6 millimeters you're technically considered too high unless you can really control that anything above that forget it right so you want to keep it as close as possible without touching obviously you got to be kind of relaxed to whatever the case is so let's uh let's drop this hood here and let's see what happens when we start initiating this arc right i'm going to fire off i'm relatively close right but let's drop this and see what's going on so i initiate when you hear all that sparkling that nasty unfocused arc that's not enough amps to keep this lit so we're going to increase slightly by stepping on the foot pedal and immediately i see a bunch of ashy stuff that ashy stuff is the oxide layer being broken up if i increase my amps i'm going to start seeing little dots little speckles that's the oxide layer breaking up and the aluminum below it trying to get molten if i increase more by stepping on the pedal i'm going to see the formation of a shiny spot in the middle of it that's not the weld pool yet so let's increase more and you see it start to form and centralize and then it's reflective as soon as it's shiny and reflective that's a weld pool okay now take my foot completely off the pedal and then i can move my torch right that's the hard part that's what everybody never really realizes that that shiny reflective spot not the shiny spot but the reflective spot that is the molten aluminum that's what we want right now anything before that you know that's you can't weld with that right ideally what we want to do is form a weld pool that's the purpose of this exercise right here so a quarter inch in diameter or about six millimeters that's what you want right so what we want to do is build that weld pool until that reflective spot is about a quarter inch or six millimeters six millimeters in diameter that's that's the purpose of this exercise so i'm gonna move right next to it and we're gonna fire again this time a little bit quicker so there's the dots there's the shiny spot there's my reflective whirlpool quarter inch get out of it when i say get out of it i mean bring your foot off the pedal you don't have to you don't have to be like you know if the pedal's thumping around and like bouncing off the floor then you're a little bit too aggressive on it you can ramp off of it right and you'll see the difference as you as you go through this you'll see that okay it's solidifying now you'll find the speed you'll find the speed after this exercise because we're going to fill this whole thing up here so let's try to go in a little bit quicker quarter inch right there that was pretty quick right that's about how fast i work actually i usually have more amps on the machine but that's irrelevant so let's just make a bunch of little dots that's pretty good there once i have that under control i can move on but i should say here's one thing i see a lot this hand is going to eventually hold filler so make sure that it's at the ready right as in in this general area we're not using it to brace our hand or our torch hand this is not mig welding it shouldn't be uh you know underneath you like this right because it's gonna have to be on the table anyway might as well have it there or get used to it being in this general area right don't want it tensed up either right we're we're super loose when we're doing this just remember relax and everything that we see in front of us is a direct result of what our foot is doing so that's the connection here right when you see that weld pool form that's because you made it do that right so let's show you what a couple of runaways look like so this one here in the center is our control so again a quarter inch or six millimeters in diameter decent sized etching zone right not too bad then we went over to getting way too big here right our torch height was sky high which means this whole area right here is the molten weld pool or was you see there's oxides forming all kinds of other nasty stuff that's not good we definitely don't want that so keep the torch as close as possible without touching now this is touching right so we only went in there for a brief moment of time i went z there's actually molten tungsten where there's a piece of tungsten stuck in that whirlpool right there so again if you ever touch or it cuts out or whatever the case is just take your foot off the pedal that's all i got to do then we went over to here it's a contaminated tungsten now this weld oil pulls the same size as this weld pool but the arc was splaying outward because we lost the definition or the the grind angle on our tungsten it basically screwed it up so it splayed outward and we get this a little bit of a ring around the outside here but the etching zone is a lot wider because the ark was splaying out it also kind of stirred the puddle a little bit it was you know to an untrained eye that's kind of hard to see but it kind of stirred up the puddle a little bit leaving us with little to no definition you see it's not as nice and as round that's because the tungsten was deformed so if we if we you know follow the discipline and actually take the sucker out change it out with a sharp one or clean it up or whatever the case is then we wouldn't have these little issues right then we go over to having too much angle on it now again to the untrained eye i mean this kind of looks like an egg and that's not really what we want we'll get into angles in just a second and finally sitting there way too friggin long so aluminum is great at dissipating heat but it will hit its point of maximum saturation and that basically means this sucker melted down so we can't sit there forever we actually have to see our quarter inch or six millimeter reflective weld pool and that's the point where we can actually get moving when we start to actually weld it right so if we sit there forever it's just going to be this big blob of hot snot now these are the two biggest problems actually one two three are the biggest problems that we have right too high of a torch height it's very hard to define the weld pool at that point so make sure your torch is close not too close and don't sit there forever once you get it don't just sit there and watch it remember you are the one who's in control so once you have filled up enough of these and you're comfortable with continuously repeating that quarter inch or six millimeter diameter weld pool that is reflective and you have a result that looks something like this then you can start moving on and that's what we're going to do right now right now that we've got that done let's move on to another exercise this one is all about control of the weld pool as we traverse our part now you need to get yourself obviously in your comfortable position wherever that might be and then we're going to start just inward or inboard of the edge of the coupon right don't start on the edge because then it's probably going to crack on you so we want to focus just a little bit inboard keep the torch as close as possible give yourself a bit of a practice swing right you can slide your hand if you want but that's actually kind of relatively intermediate i mean the thing is a lot of people they tense up when they do that so if you're literally if you're all blotchy and you're you're like this or whatever you're probably too tense and you need it you need to kind of you know think about well maybe i should just move a little bit with my fingers right because realistically this coupon's four inches wide right 100 millimeters or so right we're going to start inboard and we're going to terminate inboard meaning that we're not going to go all the way to the edge of one side or the other you only have to go what three and a half inches or so what is that like 90 millimeters or no that's like 80 millimeters 80 85 whatever screw it we just need to be able to to traverse this part keep the torch at the same relative height all the way throughout we don't want to we don't want to lift it up we want to make sure that we have a clean line of sight on the part the whole way through right so if i start here and i terminate here i can see the tip of the tungsten in relation to the coupon all i'm gonna do is stare at that width of that weld pool and i'm gonna control it right now there's two ways that we can control this one of them is gonna be my speed the other one is going to be my amperage but no matter what all i'm looking is at the width of that weld pool and i'm trying to make sure that i sustain it i maintain it i keep it that way and remember you are the one who's in control of this thing so if you see it start to get really wide fix it the way you fix it is either speed up or take your foot off the pedal slowly until you see a change in that weld pool now let's just see what one looks like normal a correct controlled exercise here right so we'll initiate the arc i'm not going to take too long but there's my quarter inch whirlpool and all i'm going to do is maintain it i'm going to keep the torch at the same relative height and i'm just going to move along here and ideally i want to keep that weld pool a quarter inch or six millimeters in width stop a little bit before i hit the end bingo if you have a crater don't worry about it and i'm going to tell you don't worry about it because we're not adding filler right now so that's fine now the result of this it's shiny it's nice we have a clean and uniform etching zone around the edge of the coupon when i say it's clean and uniform that means that it looks the exact same all the way throughout if it's like white and ashy and blotchy and speckly and stuff like that then that would indicate that you're not enough amps you didn't commit to it or you had way too high of a torch height or you had a contaminated tungsten you notice that there are several things right it's not just one it's several right so we did the first one let's do another one right over the top of that this time the coupon is already a little bit hotter so it's not going to take as much amperage to get moving on it so i'm choosing to substitute with speed as i'm going through this just a little bit quicker now even though i went quicker i got the exact same result right so again that's one way of it you can control it with speed or you can control it with your amperage right now i've welded this twice it's already hot it's really hot so i'm gonna weld it again or i'm going to make another run here another puddle run if you will right but this time i'm going to do i'm going to substitute with amperage i'm going to have just a little bit less amps and i'm going to go a little bit slower but ideally here we're going to make this the exact same width i want to get the exact same result and again all i'm paying attention to right now is the width of that weld pool it's a quarter inch in diameter my weld pool is reflective and i'm going to maintain it now this is not my normal way of maintaining a weld pool so forgive me if it looks a little bit awkward [Music] but there we go all three of these look relatively the same like there's almost no difference in them right we still have that clean quarter inch width of a weld pool all the way across our etching zone looks the exact same all the way across all three of these results are shiny all the way across we're not worried about ripples and none of that stuff we're not gonna pedal pulse we're not doing any of that crap you notice i just all i did was maintain the width of that weld pool again two ways to do that one your speed to your amps as in your foot pedal position right those are the only two ways to control this and you've got to figure out which one's going to work for you now i should throw in a little bit of a caveat there if you smash the pedal to the floor and you fly through it that quick think are you going to be able to add filler wire accurately that quick and the answer is probably no so you have to find a realistic speed to which to work with this right so we'll take a few of these coupons we'll fill them up and we'll just keep on going and going and going until we have consistent results all the way across that no matter what temperature this is at you can still control it and still get the exact same result that's what we're trying to do here get the same result out of every single one of these so let's take a look here at some improper results right first and foremost we're just running way too hot now hot again is a couple of different things this was the first weld on a daisy fresh cold coupon right but hot would mean that we're not moving fast enough or we've got way too many amps for the speed that we're running at in other words this weld pool is not a quarter inch in diameter or six millimeters by contrast right or comparison here this is way too big right what we need to do is control it we need to be able to either speed up or let off of our foot pedal if it's burning this wide it's because we said i want you to burn this wide right so that's too hot and again two ways you can control that it's either too too little of a speed for the amps you have or not enough amps for the speed you have which looks like this right notice that this just is a pretty much an all etchy it's just all you see is etching zone there's no definition of a weld pool itself again by comparison these are nice and shiny right this is not this is what we called a puddle-shaped shiny spot which is just enough of oxide layer that's broken but not actually creating a pool so if you have no definition or something like this then that's a no-no that's a no-go we can't use that right then we move on to not controlling our amps so we started out with a good quarter inch or six millimeter diameter whirlpool and we maintained it except we were going too slow and not controlling it in other words it just started melting melting melting and getting bigger bigger bigger bigger bigger until it was finally point of no return the solution here if you see it's starting to get wider as we go you need to either speed up or let off your amps again this is a control exercise you want you want to be able to actually keep the diameter of that weld pool so that's to say is if you started here and you saw it get bigger you were not maintaining it so again either speed up or reduce your amps if you see this happen you told it to do that you are the one who's in the control of the machine it's not in your settings it's not in anything else like that it's control it's because you fail to control it a pulser will not fix this pedal pulsing with the foot that's not going to fix this you fix this by either speeding up or let off your amps right now we get into ramping so we started out really good but as the torch height came up it started splaying outward it started to project the the arc and the cone all over the place until we finally pretty much lost definition right here and by this time it was so huge that it basically just melted it away so if you see it starting out pretty good and then you see it start to oxidize and get kind of crappy and look like it's got like a peel layer over it like melted plastic if you will then you definitely have an issue with your torch height now let's talk about the torch side being a little too close here we have a quarter inch in diameter but you notice it was cutting out every single time we you know it was the machine is literally just stopping it's like that's morse code for lift up the torch a little bit too a little bit more you're way too close so anytime you see the arc cutting out or you hear it or you see it or it shuts off that's because you touched it right so you have to pick it up and maintain it right but when you pick it up you can't go too high otherwise you're gonna get something like this right finally welding with a contaminated tungsten that was after we took it for a swim like what is that like 28 times but either way the etching zone around here is very blotchy right it's not it's not as clean and crisp as this right see this etching zone right here is nice and clean it's the same it's uniform all the way around this in the beginning here is not and there's not a lot of definition of that weld pool because the arc is spraying everywhere it's trying to find anything it can the etching zone is huge the definition is crappy we can't really say that this is a weld pool or it's not so i was forced to either hit the ants or let off or whatever the case is but i could get no definition out of the weld pool so if you can't quite see what it is you're doing you might also have a contaminated tungsten now this is just six examples and literally there are hundreds of other examples that we can show you here in a billion different results everything from gas flow issues to you know contaminated tungstens dirty metal i mean all kinds of stuff right there's there's so much that goes on here but at the end of the day once again this is a control exercise if you can't maintain the consistency of that whirlpool or the width of that weld pool you shouldn't be moving on so everything about this is just controlling your speed or the amps that you have coming out of it your pedal position right so once you have this with no other aid or crutch or anything else like that no pulser no pedal pulsing no friggin blotchiness once you get it nice and clean and even then you can actually move on this is just a handful of ways that it doesn't work so once you have that exercise pretty much all set and you're done you figured it out you're good to go now it's time to add some filler wire now i can't stress this enough that this is literally the exact same exercise that we've been doing this entire time regarding control we're still going to maintain a quarter inch or six millimeter diameter of a weld pool all the way across the filler is going to get added to the leading edge of the weld pole now to really define what the leading edge is that's going forward okay forward is the direction of the filler the leading edge is the front tip in the direction of forward right so if you're right-handed you're gonna weld from right to left in the direction of the filler if you're left-handed you're gonna weld from left to right in the direction of the filler and the filler gets introduced to just the little tip of the weld pool okay we're not gonna we're not gonna pick up the torch to insert filler we're not gonna put the filler next to the weld pool or anything like that we're not gonna stab it down on the top we're not gonna stuff a bunch of filler in there all we're gonna do is take the very tip of that filler and touch it to the leading edge and whatever wicks off provided that we have the correct uh control over our whirlpool whatever wicks off is just gonna stack there in the back and fill all in automatically maybe that's something you didn't know we're not trying to stuff anything in here we're just gonna drop it in there now to traverse this part four to six inches or 100 to 150 millimeters that's all you need do not worry about feeding filler wire if you never have before there is a natural evolution to feeding filler and it's it's it's it's actually a lot more complicated than people realize everybody wants to be able to do this out of the gate and of course you know i've seen all the videos and of course i've mentioned you know muscle memory is good you could you know you could try to work this but when you're actually here in the beginning don't worry about it just give yourself four to six inches or 100 to 150 millimeters this coupon is only you know four inches wide less than 100 millimeters or what 80 85 millimeters or so is all we're going to traverse right we're gonna start inboard and we're going to terminate inboard we're not going to go all the way to the edges because it'll crack right so just starting there finishing there i've got good line of sight all the way through just like i did before the filler wire is going into the leading edge i'm just going to tap it in there and as soon as we go in we got to come back out right it's not going to stay there we're not going to lazy wire this thing over the top of it because if you do that you're just going to halt yourself right so leading edge tap it in bring it back out all of the movement is in my fingertips very very simple i'm not going to be tensed up i'm going to be loose just like i had before you know comfort's a relatively loose term but if you notice very carefully the filler is held the exact same as i hold the torch it's literally just mirrored of that so between my two fingers my middle finger and my index finger and then the rest of it just like the torch rests on my pearl eq and it sits just the way that my torch hand does filler goes here torch hand goes there not tensed up we're not gonna be like you know trying to get through there we're just gonna literally create our weld pool and as soon as we have a quarter inch or six millimeter in diameter tap that leading edge and all i'm doing is maintaining the width of the whirlpool just like i did before the filler is more peripheral it's just there just like the torches peripheral we're not staring at that we're just concentrating on the leading edge of that weld pool right all you got to do so let's go one round here start this sucker up [Music] all right quarter inch six millimeters let's start moving now again all i'm doing is concentrating on the leading edge of that weld pool i don't care about the filler where it's at or anything up like that and i'm just touching it just a little patch in that leading edge torch pipe staying consistent and steady same height i'm coming up to the end so i'm going to back out of my amps and i'm going to reverse the torch i'm going to move the torch backwards a little bit okay the reason why i do that and you know let me just tell you flat out don't worry if you got a crater in the end of it all right i know everybody's like the internet will tear you apart you've got a crater but look you're just practicing on flat metal coupons just doing some flat beads forget it if you have a crater but if you want to try to avoid the crater a little extra dab and back up as i move the torch backwards as you're tapering off or slowly removing your foot from the pedal and as soon as you're done of course take a foot completely off again right now you notice i wasn't pushing i wasn't stabbing i was gliding across this coupon just tapping it in there and of course the same amount of filler or my hand is in the exact same spot that the filler was before so that's how you make one beat we're just concentrating on the width of the weld pool and just tapping into the leading edge right so let's go again four to six inches or 100 to 150 millimeters watch my hands this time they're not going to move this hand is going to move my torch hand well but my filler hand is not but same rules apply every single time i'm gonna go a little bit faster this time and we'll taper off there we go i did miss a couple of dabs no big deal all right do the same thing again this time i'm going to go a little bit slower i went fast last time because i was compensating for speed that's why i missed a couple dabs my accuracy kind of went out the window so again four to six inches 100 to 150 millimeters i'm going to go a little bit slower this time around but still i got to maintain the width of that weld pool which is a quarter inch or six millimeters this is a lot slower than i'm used to going but since i'm going slower i back off my amp whatever it takes to keep that weld pool at uh at a quarter inch and six millimeters that's what i'm gonna do toward the end here i got just a little bit wide i was talking more than paying attention but you know what that happens nevertheless these three beads were done using the exact same principle the exact same exercise that we started with as you know throughout this whole video we're just maintaining so let's recap again here quarter inch to or six millimeters of a diameter of a weld pool the speed is up to how fast i can accurately add the filler wire the torch and the filler wire are peripheral there i can see them peripherally right there there's ones over you know here on the other side and this one's over here they're still in that that field of vision that view right there but they're you know they're going to go to the same place we're just going to tap the leading edge of the weld pool not push not stuff not stab not tense up not you know let's make some stuff happen all we're doing this entire time no matter what we're doing if we're adding filler if we're traversing if we're sitting still we're just controlling the width of that weld pool that's it so give me one second here and let me turn off the machine because i decided i'm going to do a couple of welds that well you should be looking out for let's just put it that way right we'll even throw our tungsten out here that way you can see exactly what we're doing right these are several welds actually there's four of them that are very very common here of what not to do and if you take a look at them you can actually distinctly tell the difference now this big long weld down the middle let's take a look at that first the uniformity on it's pretty good i mean as far as like you know the stack dimes or whatever the case is right again we're never going to worry about stacking dimes we don't really care about that we just happen to make welds that look good so if a uniformity is not perfect on your bead profile don't worry about it you've got so much time to practice all this and it's going to take years for you to get this down right anyway so nevertheless we're shiny we've got a good crown on here the toes are the section where the metal or the bead meets the base metal and in this case you can kind of run the filler over it and it's it's smooth right it's not it's not a big wall if you will indicating that we didn't have a huge you know high build bead profile and again i must emphasize here that all of this was just tapping the weld uh the wire into the leading edge of the weld pool it was wicking off of it i was not pushing wire in there to make it stack i was just dropping it in place if you will right so this is our control bead and it's still you know quarter inch width relatively the etching zone around it is nice and uniform we don't have any blotchiness or anything else like that so this is our control this is what we're after and there was nothing special to make this happen just the same exercise that we've been running for the blast who knows how many minutes now this is way too frigging cold and i mean extremely freaking cold as in there was no weld pool you could see as i'm running along here i'm just melting filler and it's sticking to the top of it that's effectively what we it's about the same consistency as solder so if you see this you know the toes are kind of blotchy little speckles everywhere the uh etching zone or whatever is not uniform it's it's like kind of jagged looking and of course it's extremely clumpy right and it's kind of hazy you know ashy if you will right that's that's just way too cold but contrast that to still being too cold right this kind of looks shiny and relatively uniform i mean the etching zone around it also looks kind of relatively uniform but if i push on it with the filler you see i got some resistance it's a very high build profile that would be a lack of penetration to get that right so if it looks a little ashy and it's really high build after just doing these exercises then you know you're too cold right contrast that with being way too friggin hot so what happened here is i took forever to get started the weld pool started when i started traversing and adding filler the weld pool is already past that diameter of a quarter inch or six millimeters which means if i don't correct it it's going to stay that way and if i really don't correct it it's only going to get worse which is what happened here so ideally if you run into that situation you got to correct it right don't just watch the thing fall apart fix it you are the one who's in control of this machine right so if you're getting that you're way too hot that has nothing to do with your amperages and the number you dialed on the machine that has to do with how long you were sitting there in relation to your foot pedal or your travel speed in this case too much foot pedal too low of a speed finally we got the good old-fashioned q-tip now take a look at the tip of my tungsten here that is filler wire what happened is we were starting to move pretty nice and everything was good until oops i smashed the friggin filler right into the tungsten and it started going just absolutely crazy and it actually did shock me twice that one that one stung a little bit but nevertheless if you ever look at a weld and you see all of this black messed up burnt up area there's only one way to get that and that is with hitting the q-tip on there that's by sending the filler straight into the actual tungsten instead of into the weld pool so if you ever see a weld that looks like this don't keep welding it you got to clean all of this crap off of the tip of the tungsten every single bit of this has to go away afterwards right so make sure that you clean all of that back off resharpen or switch your tungsten out whatever the case is sometimes you have to cut this end off because it contaminates so far up the tungsten depending on how bad you q-tipped it i mean we have some records at the shop from people in the classes this is this is kind of modest to be honest with you but sometimes you got to cut it off but either way you have to have clean metal if you ever see this result there is only one way to get it and that is with the q-tip so realize that not one single bit of any of this that we worked on right here not one single bit had anything to do with settings we didn't use the pulser we didn't try to make a pretty bead what we did was follow three very simple exercises and drills which is control your weld pool and at the end of the day no matter what it is that you're working on all you're doing is concentrating on that weld pool and controlling it that's the whole point of this there's no setting in the world that's going to make this happen there's no setting in the world that's going to not make this happen there's no setting that's going to avoid any of this stuff it's all you so get your butt out there grab yourself some metal from weldmetalsonline.com practice these drills and i hope to see you guys on weld with me live you

Channel: The Fabrication Series

Views: 228,055

Rating: 4.9626493 out of 5

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Id: TgekhRZ_d2o

Length: 43min 35sec (2615 seconds)

Published: Mon May 31 2021