I Tested 5 Tungsten Types at 200 amps AC
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- Опубліковано 10 кві 2024
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There are so many different types of tungsten electrodes now that it can be confusing for anyone new to TIG welding.
So in this video, I tried to boil things down so you can make a good choice when you are shopping for tungsten electrodes.
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Thanks for sharing with us Jody. Stay safe. Fred.
I had the exact experience with the red tungsten on ally, switching to E2 for the win. Dedicated 4" grinder with an eBay dimond wheel has refined my prep too 👌
Some of the knife sharpeners with a diamond wheel work well for sharpening tungsten.
Quality content and insights as usual, thanks for sharing your impressive knowledge
Great tips for tungsten. Thank you, I will keep watching.
Thanks Jody. Reliable info as always.
What a great video this is I'm going to watch it a few more times. I recently decided to get a tig torch for my miller multimatic 215 welding machine. I'm going to use it for mostly pipe
This video really came at the perfect time for me! My local welding supply stores only seem to consistently stock red tungsten
Amazon, dude
@@InchFab I was out
Yeah, you don't want that red stuff . Being Jody has a new supply, get some from him (he usually sells out fairly quick of the 3/32) . Best little supply store on the net . Get the TIG fingers too, they're great . :) I better see if he's still got some . lol :)
@@user-kh2yl6nn3l see I’ve never had issue with the red tungsten. Everything I’ve welded DC or AC at 200 amps plus for extended periods of time it deforms just like the rest of them. Just my own experience though
Make sure if you go with the red not to breathe in the dust
Good info as always
At my old job, we used 1/8" red exclusively because all we ever did was steel pipe. Then, the boss man got an AC tig welder so we could do aluminum, but didn't want to get any other types our sizes of tungsten. He said our processes were only certified with 1/8" red, and he didn't want to do any recert with any others. Doing aluminum with those 1/8" reds was always a huge pain. At my new job, we do all our aluminum with 3/32" or 1/16" purple. Night and day.
Back in 2017 when I got my first TIG welder I grabbed a bench grinder from the local classifieds for $20, kept the "fine-grit" wheel on one side and ordered a couple of the finest Uxcell Chinesium Ø6" diamond flat wheels from Scamazon, 240 and 500 grit, and made them work on the other side with a McMaster-Carr shaft clamp to take-up the extra shaft spacing. I'm only a hobby welder but the diamond wheels are still going strong and the 500 grit gives a nice smooth tip every time. I need to design & build a little angle jig, but freehand works too. Work smarter not harder, you don't need a fancy-pants anodized gizmo tungsten sharpening device.
Thanks Jody.
Have yet to purchase anything but blue. Love those Weldmonger TIG gloves.
great info and lesson, thanks
I need a tungsten sharpener where you load up 20 or 40 rods and it sharpens them all automatically. That way a batch can be sharpening while I'm busy dipping the last batch.
LOL!
Very helpful and informative, thank you 😊
Sounds like you are using an inverter machine, I would like to see this with a transformer machine as well.
Look forward to getting a few👍
I used my Weldmonger gloves today at work doing some rotary work.
I use a 3" fine grit diamond disc on a mandrel in the drill press. works great.
Comme d'habitude,super vidéo.
Merci
Thank you.
I’ve been using almost exclusively purple from your store. I have some lanth , lazr, and grey but for what I do I like the rare earth mix the best.
Super vidor thank you very much
Another gem video!
I believe the additives are to help conducting electricity. I had some old plain tungsten electrodes and they only work right on AC.
On DC the arc starter doesn’t do anything , you have to bump them.
I liked layzr but it would crack so much when I was sharpening it. So I switched to the blue 2%
You’re the man ….. so we don’t have to. Thank you
Love these comparisons. Great video.
AC I personally love 0.8% Zirconiated if I can, which usually is white. As long as it’s not pure tungsten I’m happy lol
"One is not like the other " funny stuff Jody
Love the vid dude been watching for quite some time. Got a test coming up and can’t find any thing on it and surprised you haven’t done it. It’s a d1.2 2g structural aluminum 3/8 thick 60 bevel. Much appreciated either way. 6061 using 4043
I don’t have much experience with d1.2 But if procedure allows preheat that will help
With pure argon, the "red" electrodes produce acceptable welds on DC only on my inverter machine. And that's only if I've run out of lanthanated tungsten. Way back in the day, with transformer powered Miller "Dialarc" machines, and a helium/argon mix, pure tungsten for AC, and 2% thoriated for DC was the norm. LOL.
Finally someone being honest the E3 purple and the CK layzr same composition mixtures both great for low mid amps like you said best high amps ol 2% blue 👍🏻holds up the best 👍🏻
Hi Jody, It's a good little test. Lanthanated for me ,I keep away from Thoriated red due to containing mild radiation....I don’t want to glow in the dark.😅
Hey Jody,
but a smaller ball did not mean more stable arc in my testing at 60 Amps AC.
After 5-10 restarts i'd say Alustar electrodes had the most stable arc.
3/32 tungsten - ~50-60Amps 340 Hertz 70%
best to worst:
Alustar
green pure (!)
2%La
no way:
gold
Yttrium
Witstar
Hey Jody, I noticed in your "spot welds" that the aluminum looked like it had porosity in it. I had a job doing .065" aluminum welds that needed to be water tight and had to do use a dye penetrant test. All my aluminum had that random porosity in it, tried every trick in the book that I knew but still random porosity in random locations that would fail my leak test. Any ideas about mitigating it or words of wisdom? Thanks for everything you've helped me with as I started my welding career, keep up the great videos!
Moisture hides in the oxide layer. Especially when it’s humid. I didn’t clean the metal for this. I think freshly brushed aluminum with a slight preheat would prevent porosity
Great Vid. I was wondering if you can do a video of tig welding Alum with different thicknesses. i scoured YT and nothing really helpful. At my work sometimes the CAD guys are new and have no real world experience and don't realized the difference between welding steel or alum. They recently designed a custom oil level gauge made from a 1/2inch 3*3 square alum as the main body. we have to weld 2 alum olets to it with a weld around fillet size of .12" My tig welding skils i would say is about 6.5-7/10 enough to know that to the olet might receive some major gauging from trying to preheat the 1/2" tube. Also the print ask to weld a 1/8 4*4 square plt to the bottom with a 1/4" fillet weld around. the top cap is 1/8 3*3plt pretty straight forward that one. I'm wodering how you would attack this project.
2% lanthanated does it all for me. E3 didn't seem to have any apparent benefit over it to me. I bought an HF chainsaw blade sharpener, turned it upside down on the stand, tossed out the jig pieces, and I sharpen on it's diamond wheel with the tungsten chucked up in a drill. It's pretty fast, and I'll do 5+ at a time so I can quickly swap when I foul them. I would absolutely do the same with a diamond wheel on a small grinder. I also have a cheap diamond wheel and tungsgen jig on an M12 rotary tool that's relatively decent, but it isn't necessary.
Hey Jody I would like to pick your brain about welding cast iron.
Have you done a lot of cast ? I’m doing a job right now. it’s a big chunk taken out of a tractor the size of my fist.
I generally use Royal 11-10 tig wire but I have to drill and tap where it broke through one of the bolt holes. and it Hass to be strong because it holds the front bucket bracket on a new Holland tractor 20 horse.
I guess I’m just trying to get somebody else to back me up because I’m a little nervous
Thanks, Kurt’s Welding
Cast iron is most always a crap shoot. Anywhere that will be tapped should be all filler metal or might be too hard. That could mean removing threads along with some more metal and buttering with non hardenable filler before welding the structure.
What lens do you use to get those videos? If I could see like this when welding my welds would improve 10x
A whole stack of camera lenses
your knowledge about purple tungsten?
Hey Jody,
Do you sell welder’s caps in your online store?
Sent your fb page a message but didn’t get a reply yet.
Keep up the great content!!!
Not yet. But we are working on getting some
I do quite a bit of automotive transmission case repairs , my "go to" is still green (3/32). What type would ball , but not melt off so easily ?
Depends on your machine. If it's a transformer, green or red is good. If it's an inverter, literally anything other than the green pure tungsten will work better.
If you’re using a transformer then zirconiated will ball like pure and carry more amps than pure.
How’s that tig 225x primeweld going? I’d imagine Still good considering u moved up a size
It’s doing fine. I still use it a lot.
@@weldingtipsandtricks wow awesome to hear! I really am considering one but, I wanna put a gas lens in it. Just got me some O.A tanks with a victor performer gonna play with tht for a while teach my kids how to torch weld.
🎉
I'm welding aluminium with a 3/32" lanthanated electrode, 30% cleaning around 100hz #5 standard cup at 11cfh.
It balls the electrode into a big blob at 100amps, if I go past that it'll drop the tip. I've tried a bunch of different electrodes with the same results.
Everything I've read says 3/32" should handle at least 150A, any advice?
Should be fine at 150A, personally though I use 1/8" electrodes past 125A continuous on AL.
Are you absolutely sure your machine displays %EP, not %EN? Polarity of leads correct? Those got me when I switched to a new machine.
I think @smirmeister is pointing you in the right direction. I'd bet that you have the leads swapped at the machine, resulting in reversed polarity. It's also possible that you've got the balance % backward. Not all machines display balance (or cleaning) % the same way, so be careful if you're using someone else's settings as a starting point.
If it's a new machine to you, I'd strongly recommend going back to the manual and starting over from step 1 in the initial setup.
I've also been bitten by making assumptions about a new welder...
talking about welding:)
Thoriated Tungsten is easily one of the worst, on DC it welds just like Lanthanated and it's useless on AC, plus it is radioactive so by far the most dangerous
I sharpened them at my job on an unventilated sanding wheel for quite a few years before I knew they were radioactive.
Then they started getting me Lanthanated.
Radiation ain't $h*t...
I don't think the radiation is really a danger. But point taken, it really is just an obsolete tungsten.
I find 2% thoriated best for stainless welding. My go to electrode, for AC i use pure tungsten green
@@dinoj8126, I used to run with the same tungsten choices until I sold my transformer machine (miller 350 lx) beautiful machine. I bought a miller dynasty 400 (inverter machine). No longer can I run pure tungsten on AC. Figuring out the other blend. 2% lanthanated seems most stable, still figuring out all the other bells and whistles on the new machine though!