Rick wrote:


Perhaps I was holding the torch a bit far from the tip...will the method you
mention.

I didn't want to get so close for fear of breathing too many fumes. But I
guess welding
mild steel with argon, the fumes are not so bad? You can't exactly have a
fan on the work
can you?

Fumes? You get more fumes using up one stick electrode outdoors than
you'll get welding an entire project indoors with TIG. I have a fume
hood I built for spray painting, and it has a pretty small fan. For
small projects that don't have any galvanizing on them I don't even turn
on the fan. I did one fairly large project (a 2 x 3' surface plate
table) just in the middle of the basement floor, and had no problem with
fumes at all. (No galvanized material in that one, though.)


I'm certainly no pro welder, but I don't dip the tungsten very often.
Most times it's when I'm fast tacking something together and didn't take
the time to get in a good working position.

One of the tricks is to use the torch as a light shield. You want to be
able to see as much of the weld puddle as you can, but you DON'T want to
see the electrode. If I have to TIG weld where I can't block the light
from the electrode, I might as well shut my eyes and do it by feel!

How do you hold the torch (angle from vertical) and where do you feed in
the
rod to the puddle? In front of the torch? to the side? behind it?
I don't worry about these angles very much. I mostly try to get a
position so I can see a good part of the weld line on at least one
side of the torch, while using the cup to block my view of the
electrode. If the direct line to the electrode is blocked, the
light from the glowing electrode will light up the area REALLY
well, giving you good vision of the weld line and the melt puddle.
This will allow you to get right in there with your head a foot from
the arc, and you can really see what is getting welded. I often
even look under my eyeglasses to use my close-up vision when welding
really small stuff. That is the 9-12" range for me.

There are dodging techniques where you back up the arc every few
seconds to dip the filler into the puddle, then pull the filler away
and bring the electrode back. I'm still learning this stuff, but
getting fairly good at it. Steel is now something I consider pretty
easy with TIG, and it came to me within an hour or so on my first
project. Stainless I find a bit harder, I think the temperature
difference between the fusion range and the everything falling to
the floor in a big glowing glob is narrower for stainless. Aluminum
is still the big challenge, I've only made a couple of small test
samples that came out OK. I did my first copper welding a couple
weeks ago, and it worked like a charm. There, I had to just play
the arc over the part for a couple seconds until it started to glow
dull red, then the metal fusion started like a dream, and I was able
to control the size of the puddle by how fast I was advancing.
REALLY COOL to weld solid copper blocks! The weld looks kind of
like a good stainless weld.


Thanks for the tips both of you! I regularly solder 100 pin SMT parts with
no problem, but I
haven't had to grind my soldering iron point because it welded to the
circuit board in quite some time. :-)
Ah, that copper part was a de-soldering tool for a 128-pin SMT
chip. It is a 0.5 mm lead pitch, and the commercial tools don't
heat the outermost pins of each side. So, I made my own! Yeah!

Jon