Thank you for being a part of the WelderSkills Community! I wanted to start this thread here on the forum to have a direct link to you. If you have any ideas or thoughts on what you would like to see from me, please let me know and I will add it to my list!
Thank you again for being here and let's have a lot of fun with this new adventure!
Crummy aka Roy Crumrine
ROGER THAT...
Always admired your work. Videos showing techniques & tools you use in the assembly process, making things square, straight etc for tacking. It doesn't take long to figure out good fab skills make welding easier. Thanks PT
Hi Roy,
Thanks for your video's so far. Seemingly not much feedback yet. I'll throw a few ideas for what I'd like to see.
To set the scene. I live on the east coast of Australia. Small farm, small town away from everywhere. I've owned my TIG inverter for about six months. I weld several times each week and completely taught by Jody Collier, Bob Moffat, Mr TIG and Justin. It's going OK.
1) Thin material. Steel, stainless and Aluminum. eg. I have some 1mm cold rolled sheet steel in the shed. I have an old land rover with door frames that need attention. I'll be replacing rusted sections etc with that sheet. Old material to new. Thicker vs thinner. Interested in your thoughts. Maybe some examples of thin material and sheet metal.
2) Once again on that Land Rover (Aluminum body panels), I have a split of the material on a rear door. The door skins are commonly replaced but I'd love to weld it. I could send a photograph if that assists. Cleaning up the paint. What about the any corrosion in the crack which I can't get to. Do we risk increasing the gap to clean it out?
3) Gap filling. Things are far from perfect around here. That being said, I'm always trying for the best outcome considering time. Any examples of gap filling techniques would be appreciated.
4) Thicker material, commonly steel. My inverter is 200 Amp. It wasn't my intention weld thicker material but, the results seem pretty good with multiple passes. Jody has covered this in some video's. It's always good to see someone else.
Just a quick note. Sometimes is the small things you may add that register the loudest. Your advice on the choice of silicone carbide strip disks for example. Brown vs blue. Jody was welding up some steel tube in one video here. Don't get the pool too hot. The contaminants will come in from the back side. They are eureka moments for me. I see that pool swirling with contaminates sometimes.
5) Preparation. I'm about to weld some steel stub axles into some galvanized steel pipe. That's all we have in the steel rack. I'll obviously be grinding back the zinc but how far? Do I really need to do the inside? :-) Of course I do... but what does it look like when I don't? Spatters all over the tungsten and my nice new gas lens.
6) Filler rod feeding. Brad did a segment on that which I appreciate. It's always a struggle, particularly when you're not welding every day. While I may practice feeding with a glove, the moment I'm welding, things are different. The moment I concentrate on filler feeding, my arc length mysteriously increases. It's automatic. What are your filler rod feeding tips.
7) Anything difficult. Anything not guaranteed of a good outcome. Sometimes I think my outcomes are not so good.... but are they really bad for the time invested? There's an episode of Mr TIG welding a replacement head light surround. Lots of tacks, then welding between the tacks. Lot's of time spend cooling the material. The outcome was not consistent.... but very effective. Was it ever going to look like a machine weld? What are realistic expectations.
Anyway, there's a few ideas of where I'm coming from. Hope this helps.
Regards,
Michael Kearsey
Hey, Michael. Those are some great questions and though you say you've only been welding for 6 months, a lot of those questions remain relevant over time. I'll second what you said about the small things. The devil is absolutely in the details. It's those little things like finding good solutions to deburring and cleaning inside of tubes/pipes or getting a good cope in a reasonable amount of time are the things that keep me up at night.
- Alex Weeks
Hi Roy,
I have a question.
Today I was welding some light steel brackets for lighting. The material was 0.43mm in thickness. I was welding fillets where one piece terminated and the other continued through. I've not welded material that thin before.
I was able to weld them quite good enough for this job. My best settings were DC pulse 30% at 50Amp with the foot pedal. This is a high frequency start inverter. There are no other settings.
I noticed when striking the first arc, I'd always blow a small hole in the terminating piece. It seemed the initial crack of the starting arc was too strong for this material thickness. From that point however, I was able to weld it reasonably, of course being very careful and backing off quickly at times. Probably never quite reached the 50A.
So it seemed the high frequency start on this inverter was too strong. I decreased the tungsten gap as far as I could. Still the same thing.
Is this where an inverter with lift start would be used? Is this common amongst high frequency start inverters? Your Fronius is obviously a high end inverter. Would it do that?
Regards,
Michael Kearsey
I usually have some copper or alum chill blocks for the thin stuff. I like to light up on the aluminum, then drag the stabilized arc to the work...Making sure to shield the work with the filler so the rod takes the arc first so it gives the work some more mass to buffer that heat.
Reference Jody's razor blade vid ;)
Thanks Brian,
Thanks for the tip there. I'll certainly do that next time with the filler rod as well. That was well explained I did subsequently see something similar on one of Jody's videos too.
Crummy:
Enjoying your videos. Do you know a source for filler metals selection charts for stainless And aluminum?
Hobart has some good charts that you can look up online.
- Hobart owns MaxAl, I've
seen good charts from them
- Lincoln Electric has the Lincoln Electric Consumables Catalog, you can download it straight from their website. There are filler metal selection charts and about 700 pages of good info in it. You can find a chart for aluminum on page 46, stainless and nickel based alloy charts are a few pages before that
- Alcotec has a great resources and charts for aluminum. They've been bought out by ESAB, so you can access their resources from the ESAB site.
- Exaton was also acquired by ESAB, but they're involved with specialty stainless and nickel alloys. They have good resources in that domain including a really useful mobile app for iphones and androids.
I really like your 5 Minute Friday's. Its like having a mentor drop by to give me another pearl of wisdom. Thanks!
Great to hear Andy! I had thought it would a good way to answer questions. So far they have been a lot of fun to make and also a good use of some dead time on my way home from work, here and there. Do you have any questions you'd like to hear for a FMF?
In the arc shots in lots of videos, the surrounding area is clearly visible. I'm doing some mig welding on 14ga tubing. I have the shade down to about 8.5. That seems low, but it does allow me to see what I'm doing. What do you do to see the area better?
I certainly sympathize with this struggle. This visibility is a huge deal and for me, I've made a lot of incremental improvements over time and through trial and error. The biggest factor is going to be the welding helmet, and this is limited mostly by what you can and are willing to invest. I dont know what helmet you use, but I started out with a Miller Classic, then got a pipeliner and gold lenses, which was actually a huge upgrade, then another huge upgrade to the Viking 3350, and finally, the 3M Speedglas G5-02 pretty much opened a whole new dimension. Aside from that, you can gain a lot just by being more mindful of how you position yourself and making a point to find the best line of sight. Another thing you may be able to do is use any auxiliary light sources that you can to get better lighting on the weld area. This can make a big difference, sometimes we just dont even realize how dark it is.
Alex,
Thanks. I have a miller pro something, sorry, not home right now. I also have an Optrel 2.5. I like it better than the miller, but lately it has been a bit flakey. not darkening in time. I looked at the Speedglas, wow, I think I'd have to get a vault to store it in :) I badly need to add more lighting, that certainly could help.
I have a basic observation of Jody and Roy shop set up. Specifically do they have a fume exhaust system? I dont recall either of them referring to one but I could have easily missed it. Personally, I have a fan to draw fumes away and we will improve on that in a few months. All stick welding is outside the shop. Just wondering. May apply to Brad as well.
Fumes are a big concern for me as my shop is in my basement. One solution I came up with was boring my old dryer vent out to 6" and piping one of those Harbor Freight inline fans with some flexible ducting for a semi portable exhaust system. The second is a rough faximile of Justin The Fabricator's (The Fabrication Series on youtube) box fan downdraft table. It works best for collecting grinding dust as opposed to fumes. Both together and I've run 7018 in the basement with no stinkies upstairs. Always best to mask up though. ;)
Thanks for the post. Your dryer vent makes perfect sense and I will have to visit the you tube vid to get a better mental picture. Removing grinding and sanding dust sure would help. Running 7018 in the house, you must have a good system. My son is a HVAC guy and we been toying using a furnace blower motor ducted to the bench. We are pretty sure it would work, but those things draw a hefty bunch of amps. I see big box stores have in line duct motors that might work. I was just wondering about Roy and Jody set up since they appear to be in pretty close quarters. Leaning over a TIG coupon getting close and up front to all that argon gets my attention. Thanks again
As long as "air in"="air out" and the suction is close enough...Its relatively smoke free. A hood/collector booth for the vent system is on the long list of upgrade projects. TIG doesn't make a ton of nasties with the exception of brass, galvanized, stainless. A fan and a half mask is what i use for stainless regarding the chromium VI (and the stinkier aluminums).
Brian, I just seen his video downdraft. Thats quite a project. Believe I will continue on the in line extractor system for the fumes for now, unless someone pipes in with a better option.
I was wondering if you could do a tungsten sharpening review. Like for a home shop what would be the best way to sharpen your tungsten. I'm debating buying a dedicated grinder but also dont know if they are worth the price over my belt sander. thanks.
Roy is still on his first tungsten...LOL
80-120 grit works fine for me on most stuff. Very low DC amperage needs a super fine point(Less than 50A-75A). I have a "garage sale" bench grinder I break out for "tungsten time". It has a regular rock wheel on one side and a 320 grit diamond wheel from McMaster-Carr on the other. I take my jar of q-tips and chuck them up in a cordless drill on slow gear. Clean the boogers with the rock and hone it nice on the diamond. Just make sure to use very light pressure and let the grinder do the work...If you get the tungsten red hot you have to start over.
Diamond masonry blades for a 4 1/2" grinder in a vise works great too.
I use a very similar setup. I got the Jet IBG-8, a 180G diamond wheel I found on Woodturners Wonders, and 100G white Al203 wheel for rough grinding. That setup is very effective. I'm curious to see if a silicon carbide wheel (100G-180G) might work better than the Al203 wheel but it's near the bottom of my priority list. I tried the Eastwood tungsten grinder first and do not recommend it whatsoever lol. Here's the thing though: I didn't have a belt grinder and I still don't. If I did, I would have probably waited for a really good deal before buying a bench grinder or tungsten grinder. I've used the Piranha II from DGP but I thought the bench grinder and diamond wheel was a better investment for me. If you do come across a bench grinder, then you can probably still find the same diamond wheel I bought for around $150.