Just bought this today

Also make sure your not welding in a breeze outdoors. This does bad things to your argon shielding and your welds.

I got really tired of using a plain old grinding wheel to sharpen tungsten this past summer. My daughter was learning to TIG weld and ruining 10 ten rods in an evening. Tungsten is quite brutal on normal grinding wheels and creates a lot of dust that's not great to breathe in. I decided to go down the diamond grinding wheel path. Some folks have used HF's diamond disks for chain saw sharpen on a cheap HF grinder to accomplish this. I ended up buying a 220 grit diamond wheel off of Ebay for around $70 and a $36 HF grinder. My grinding goes real fast now and with only a little tungsten dust laying around. My technique is to put the rod in a cordless drill and grind point up. I can get through a pretty screwed up 3/32" rod in less than 10 seconds. It take longer to get the rods in and out of the drill
 
Well for now I've got ll my $$$ in the welder and other "accessories". I will take my electrodes to work and see if I an use the diamond wheel there.

Got my new helmet today. I just fell in love with an inanimate object. Wow is all I can say. After about 2 mins of playing with it my test passed improved dramatically. I can actually not feel to embarrassed showing the welds on here now. On my old weld test part, I'm going to wrap it up in 3 layers and throw it away so no one can ever see it. Even the lady next door could see it's cr*p.


I ran these test passes with no rod and at 90 amps. 100 amps seemed too hot. I'm having a problem keeping my beads straight, but believe me this is a huge improvement over what I was doing before I got the new helmet. And with the new helmet I didn't dip the rod (well that I know of)

So...........talk to me. Any advise will be greatly appreciated.

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With TIG you should "prop" or rest your torch arm to help keep it steady. It makes it much easier to keep a straight smooth bead without dipping the tungsten. The pros all prop when TIG welding.
 
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Thanks. My table I'm using has a big lip on the edge and it's hard to rest my hand and slide down the table. And it's the only steel table I have right now. I will try and find a way to get a flat surface to rest my arm on.

Also with the new hood realized I really couldn't see with my glasses on. Took my glasses off and that also helped a lot.

I was thinking of getting the HF welding table soon. Need to make some more $$$ to get more toys :)

So other than the weld not being straight, how does it look?
 
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One other accessory I found useful for keeping your torch steady is the "TIG finger". They're pretty cheap and great for burn protection. Checkout the "Welding Tips and Tricks" website for demonstration of the product in use and for pointers on TIG welding. The guy that runs the website puts out a new welding video almost every week.
 
That looks like a great thing to have. I just ordered one. Great videos he has also.
 
I'm taking a look at your picture and the welds don't look too bad; you seem to have a consistent travel speed which is great. What sort of motion are you doing with the torch, small circles are usually recommended. The red discoloration is a little concerning, what material is that? If its mild steel I would be thining a contaminated tungsten or maybe bad gas coverage. Dipping the tungsten happens all the time when you are learning and then now and then when you know what you are doing. Don't sweat it while you are getting the hang of it, but don't weld anything that has to hold weight with a dipped tungsten.

How are you holding the torch? It should be close to perpendicular so that the gas covers the whole weld and isn't blowing in one direction only. It can be tough to position the torch at the correct angle and be able to see the puddle at the same time.

Getting straight lines is something that will get better with practice, running stringers is tough because there isn't a joint to use as a frame of reference. Also, try to get the arc struck right where you are going to start, it looks like the middle bead the arc was struck a bit to the right? All in all I would say great job getting up to speed! TIG is challenging but very versatile.
 
With the welds in the the first pic I was using a kind of "N" motion. Here is my latest effort.

The material is 4130 tubing. I'm holding the torch with a slight angle. I got one of those Harbor Freight welding tables and it's easier to slide my hand now.

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Looks like you are getting a straight bead now. I think you are still moving along bit fast, there should be more overlap in your puddles, about 60 to 70% overlap. But looking better.
 
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Alloy Sorry I found this post so late. But one thing all my teachers said was clean clean clean is key to tig. Get a good stainless wire brush and only use it for your carbon steel. ( you can get others for SS, and AL.) Try welders Handbook by Richard Finch. Your welds are looking good. I am certified on tig for ss. andmy welds are not always pretty but they are strong with good pen ,tie in, and no porousity. so don't worry so much if they are not supper strieght. It is hard to runa streight bead with no joit to follow. Did I mention Clean Clean clean? When you changed tungsen, did you change the stick out? or how the part was grounded?Keep us posted
 
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