today's newer TIG welding inverters have all kinds of bells and whistles all kind
of features but two of the main things that I look at on a 200 amp TIG welder
especially or how low will it start on DC so I don't blow a hole in thin steel
and how thick can i weld on aluminum first the aluminum I set up a quarter
inch thick outside corner joint I set the machine on 190 I'm gonna go full
pedal pretty early on I could see that full pedal is actually just about right
I got ten more amps I could use but I don't need it here and I am using a
hundred percent argon I could even get more out of this machine by using an
argon helium mix I don't really need it here I was set on around 65 to 70 Hertz
on the AC frequency and that worked out okay so far so good I have used other
200 amp TIG inverters that kind of struggled on this thickness in this
joint this one didn't to test out the low amp start some box cutter blades I'm
not gonna weld two together just yet anyway I'm gonna run a bead on the edge
when you're welding on an edge or even near an edge high-frequency pulse
settings can help a lot I'm setting the pulses per second at about 35 or 37 the
background current at 30 and will just try to run a little tiny bead on the
very edge of this thing not on the sharp edge just on the regular edges these are
usually about 23,000 s thick and normally I would definitely change over
to a smaller electrode but I kept the 332 electrode in there just sharpened up
to a point did a pretty good job I've been getting some questions on this
welder lately and so I thought the best thing I could do is just put together a
video and I went to a win on my youtube channel and discovered I have like over
15 videos over the past couple years since I've been using this welder I'm
going to go over a whole lot of things today everything from basic carbon steel
to chromoly tubing to thick chromoly with a preheat stainless steel stainless
pulse settings TIG brazing with silicon bronze and also testing different
frequency settings for aluminum first up is 41
chromoly tubing is around oh six three wall thickness that's 1.6 millimeter
wall thickness there's a rule of thumb that used one ampere one thousandths of
thickness so I'm at 65 amps here that's pretty close it really helps to clean
the mill scale on 4130 chromoly tubing also helps to have a good cup a good
argon shield in this video right here I'm using a Furyk ceramic 12 and that
provides a nice big envelope of argon a nice big shielding area prevents
discoloration but also gives you a little bit of leeway on how far you can
dip your hot tip of your rod away from the puddle and still keep it shielded
I'm using a oh four five filler metal er 70s to that is usually a really good
choice for this wall thickness chromoly one of the best tips for stainless is
getting moving quickly don't hang around and build up heat really slowly too and
don't take several seconds to get a poem going and then get going really slowly
at low heat get that puddle going get moving outrun that heat here we go I
light up it takes me like about a second to get a first dip of rod in there
that's because I went almost a full amperage almost right away because I
didn't want to hang around and build up heat always good practice on stainless
jobs like this travel speed is one of the main factors in heat input so if you
can get going quickly and get moving quickly you can usually weld it a little
bit hotter amperage and put less overall heat into the stainless part another
thing that can help are pulse settings and that's up next all right some
general principles on pulse when you use pulse just know that you're going to
need more amperage set on the on the machine than you will without it so I'm
going to turn the pulse or switch on and then set my pulse frequency to one pulse
a second and the background amperage to about 20 percent that's going to give me
quite a difference in the peak pulse and the background amps it's going to limit
the heat input quite a bit and I'm going to turn my amperage up a little bit here
even though I probably not gonna need all of it but I'm going to go up to
about 150 and then just control everything with a foot pedal so I'm just
walking over the wire here with the arc not dipping the rod in and out of a
puddle or anything that's called lay wire and just pulsing right over it
putting some nice ripples from the bead that's a really easy way to do a job
like this it's nice to have pulse settings available not 100% necessary
it's just one of those really super nice to have things and when you have it you
definitely figure out uses for it and this is a good one really limiting the
heat input alright let's talk about AC frequency settings and applications now
AC frequency basically means how often the Machine switches from electrode
negative to electrode positive within that alternating current cycle older
machines you didn't have a choice but the newer and Verta machines like this
one you can set it and so where do you set
what's a good setting 100 to 120 s a good all-around setting but for me when
I'm using a 200 amp inverter I've only got 200 amps at my disposal and if I'm
really pushing the limit up toward the 200 amps I tend to be able to get more
heat out of this machine if I set the frequency lower so for me lower
frequencies on thicker aluminum higher frequencies higher frequencies on
thinner aluminum or when I really want a pin point to arc like welding on an edge
if you leave the amperage the same there's a definite difference in the
amount of penetration that you'll get at a low frequency versus a high frequency
in my experience the low frequency is going to get more penetration at a set
amperage here I'm at 50 Hertz I'm on a fixed rotator this wall thickness is
about 90 thousands thick if I remember right and at 50 Hertz this is
penetrating all the way through no problem I put a camera on the backside
so that you could see that molten aluminum just going along real time as I
weld along the top of this piece penetrating nice and smoothly evenly
like you would want it to if this was a butt joint but now if I set that
frequency all the way from 50 I'm going all the way up to 250 just to swing the
pendulum really far one way you can see the difference it's going to narrow the
bead quite a bit notice that the tip on that electrode is staying really sharp
like almost like I was welding steel but it's welding a very narrow bead which is
a very desirable thing sometimes but if you want if you just want penetration
and you want heat input the most heat input you can get at a certain amperage
which on a 200 amp TIG welder sometimes you need all that all you can get out of
that max amperage so if I were to want to run a bead on this 1/4 inch thick
wall thickness and I want a nice wide bead and I want it to wrap all the way
around the corners I might set this thing at 50 50 Hertz that might be a
good application for a low frequency when you have the ability to set your
frequency and setting a low frequency I might also prepare the tip of the
electrode to a rounded tip instead of a taper tip for an application like this
because I want that art cone to kind of fan out and wrap around though
Edge's it's really nice to have the ability to adjust the AC frequency if I
were to want to weld two or three more beads on top of this I might it
gradually increase the frequency and maybe even change my tip to a slightly
tapered tip it's nice to have options so this was a good example of where you
might want to use a lower frequency let's talk now about increasing the
frequency a little bit the blue area on the AC frequency adjustment there is
sort of a recommended sweet spot area a hundred and ten to a hundred and forty
Hertz and so that's what I'm gonna set it at for this next application I found
it's a really good setting for all-around stuff especially for
something like sheet metal like this this is Oh 63 aluminum not terribly thin
but thin enough to where you need a little bit of bead control so I'm using
a tapered tip and these settings and I do like to use a tapered tip on on this
thickness aluminum and thinner I get a nice crisp low amperage arc start with a
tapered tip and at a hundred and ten Hertz anywhere from 110 to 140 is a
really good setting for this gives you a lot of arc control very little arc
wander on the start with that tapered tip and you can kind of helps to kind of
narrow the bead a little bit if that's what you're after a setting of a hundred
and twenty Hertz on the AC frequency is a really good all-around setting if you
just want to set it and forget it until you get to something really thick this
is an eight-inch thick piece of angle welded to a quarter-inch thick piece
doing a pretty good job at 120 Hertz here it's a little business card holder
you can watch the video I did on that a while back if you're interested so the
hundred and twenty Hertz setting is working out rather well here for this
little lap joint but the next joint is kind of a really wide open outside
corner joint because the piece is not at 90 degrees so it's gonna be a pretty
wide beat so I lower the frequency down to 50 or 60 and that's going to fan out
the art cone a little bit and help me to achieve a wider bead which is exactly
what I want right here I want a nice fat bead that takes it all the way up to
those corners that doesn't make a bit of difference in the strength of this joint
or anything like that but I'm trying make a nice-looking business card holder
here that I could leave with a machine shop or something with my business card
on there and would kind of remind them that you know I'm not going to screw up
their parts and having done a bunch of work for small machine shops over the
years that is a real concern of theirs when they saw about work another good
example of having a little bit more arc control at 120 Hertz is welding on an
edge because sometimes you need to build up an edge sometimes something was miss
cut slightly below dimension you need to run a bead or two on an edge and it's
just good to be able to have that adjustable AC frequency in order to be
able to control the arc do what you want to with it common repair and aluminum is
filling a hole so I did this video a while back on an aluminum cube I ran a
bead around there just like I did that edge weld a minute ago 120 Hertz and
then filled the hole in and that's just pretty easy but it's it's it's not easy
if you've never done it or if you're very new to aluminum so having it
frequency control here along with AC balance control just helps things go a
lot better and basically I'm just gradually running bead on top of bead
working in board and then when I get to the end when I get it all filled up I'm
going to give it a little bit more amperage to kind of blend everything
together wash everything together add a little bit more rod and then keep that
arc swirling so that I don't leave a crater crack because something like this
usually would need a hole air or water not have a crack not leak at all that's
a good technique for a hole fill and then while I was at it I just decided I
would go ahead and run a bead on that outside corner joint because why not and
it's just another example of 120 Hertz is a very useful setting a good
all-around setting for outside corner joints as well as thinner sheet metal
joints
kick brazing is just what it says it's brazing it's not actually welding so
you're not melting the base metal just the filler metal in order to do that you
need a good clean surface free from oxides free from any crud any oils or
any crud like that you want a good argon coverage so using a Furyk cup like a
jazzy 10 or 12 really helps a lot Cavan that big Argonne blanket prevents
oxides from drawing into the puddle and pulse for me pulse kind of helps limit
the heat therefore limiting the oxidation and keeps the puddle a little
cleaner in this video I was trying to dial in some dead simple pulse settings
that worked on silicon bronze one pulse a second with 30% background seem to
work really well silicon bronze has a lot of uses you can
be used as an overlay layer material it can be used to join dissimilar metals
like copper to carbon steel and things like that super useful to have in the
tool box also it's useful to have a good settings
that work on pretty much everything and that's what I was working on here it's
used a lot for artistic stuff and ornamental stuff and here I was making a
hammer filling in these Phillips here with silicon bronze pulsing so it
wouldn't run everywhere and this was on steel and I was making a Thor deadblow
hammer so I was pulsing here to put the fitting on so I could fill it up with
bb's and afterwards after everything was done I sanded and polished and
everything to where I'd get a contrast from the silicon bronze to the steel
it's a fun little project and it made for a pretty cool looking actually very
useful hammer that I'm still using today well let's take a look at some really
really common welds on plain carbon steel no pulse or anything like that
just straight amperage in a foot pedal got a nice smooth arc but honestly most
every inverter that I've ever used had a nice smooth arc on dc/ac is where they
tend to differ a lot that was the outside corner let's take a look at a
lap joint the key to making a good-looking weld on carbon steel is
start out with clean metal get of all the mill scale or any kind of
coating that might be on there and I'm not just talking about polishing over
the mill scale like you might with a wire wheel I'm talking about removing it
with a flap disc or a grinder or something that just gets it all off of
there holds a nice tight arc don't use too much torch angle and try to keep the
hot tip of that rod shield it in the argon those are the things that'll make
a big difference
up next we're going to go back down to some box cutter blades and I'm gonna
weld them with a 3/32 electrode just sharpened up to sort of a needle point
this would be better if I drop down an electrode size to 1/16 or even o4t but
it definitely can be done with a 3/32 I've seen people do it with a 1/8 even
long as you have that electrode sharpened really sharp and not any rough
scratches on it especially no sideways scratches
it'll help here to use the pulser here so I'm gonna flip the pulser on I've got
it set at 20 amps that's about twice of what I would normally have it set on I'm
gonna set the pulse frequency up around 50 and the background amps just a little
over 30 I noticed something when I was welding his first set of blades up here
and that was my argon coverage just wasn't that great and I looked over in
my tank was all the way down to where it wasn't even reading on the flow meter
and so it came out a little grey welded okay started out okay without blowing
the corner away but it just didn't come out nice and shiny so I switched over to
a brand new full tank of argon and everything went so much better
didn't change anything didn't change the flow rate my flow was good on the flow
meter so it was actually putting out the same number of cfh but the quality of
the gas just wasn't there toward the end of the tank I used to do quite a bit of
work for small machine shops and this is one of the jobs that I did a while back
a big thick chunk of 4130 chromoly have no idea what this was gonna be but I
knew it needed a preheat so I preheated to around 500 degrees set the machine on
165 amps decided to use what's called a lay wire technique here which means I
just well plenty hot but I walked right over the
rod without dipping in and out of the puddle and that's just one technique
that works it's not always a great technique to use because sometimes you
want to be able to see that leading edge of the puddle but in this case because I
was preheating the part so hot and because I was going to come back over
this with multiple other passes I figured it would be just fine and it
came out looking pretty nice anyway the cup did its job
speaking of cups there's all kinds of different cups for all kinds of
different applications especially for aluminum sometimes you want a small cup
on aluminum sometimes you want a gas lens sometimes you want a tapered point
sometimes you want a bald electrode in this case I rounded the electrode using
a number six gas lens so that that bead would fan out nice and wide and cover
both edges here on this little turntable weld back to 120 Hertz remember me
saying that's a good all-around setting for a whole lot of stuff well coming up
we're gonna weld some more aluminum at 120 Hertz
using a small number 5 standard call it body cup a number 5 standard cup works
great for an eighth inch thick and under aluminum and can save you a lot of gas
that is especially helpful if you're using an argon helium mixture or some
other type of expensive gas all right we're going back to straight DC now
lowering the amperage welding on some cold rolled steel on an outside corner
joint using chill blocks chill blocks can help a lot on discoloration on
distortion on limiting heat input they're especially helpful on stainless
steel pulling that heat out of stainless steel like I said it really helps on
distortion on a long outside corner joint clamping those chill bars up like
almost right next to the weld bars of aluminum work great for chill bears but
I also made a unique little sort of like a copper thing specifically for outside
corner joints that works pretty darn good I think it's definitely got some
room for improvement as far as making it where it may be swivels a little bit if
something is not a true 90 it works really great for sort of
providing an argon trough that traps argon it gives you better a better
appearance on your bead and again it pulls some heat out of the part
it's just handy for what it costs to build you could get some copper busbars
or something at a junkyard probably for a few bucks wouldn't break the bank you
could also make one of these out of aluminum probably a little bit easier to
find the material well I hope you enjoy to see in these video clips all done
using this CKD mt 200 welder if you'd like to learn more visit my store at
weld monger dot com and check it out
you