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Good evening,
I am hoping to find someone in the SE Melbourne that tigs aluminium. I need to just watch and hopefully get some pointers regarding setup etc.
Unfortunately my eyes are not that crash hot and I keep misjudging the distance too to the electrode. So if anyone can help out, during work hours prefrred
as I work from home and am flexable to go an observe.
Thanks in advance
Alan
Might I suggest that you have a play with steel first. When tigging steel, you can rest the gas shroud on the workpiece, thus setting your arc length and giving your eyes and brain a good guide to then process for future reference. To drag the shroud, you will need to adjust your electrode stickout so that the correct arc length is maintained.
Sound will give you a lot of information too. The sound of the arc changes as it lengthens, (both on AC and DC).
Just a couple of thoughts to tide you over until you find someone to observe.
So what, you're dipping? When I started I was trying to minimise the distance and dipping far too often. I read on one of the US forums, a guy who advised someone else with the advice he'd been given - paraphrasing - "don't be afraid to lengthen the arc a bit".Quote:
Originally Posted by DocBug
When I started with stick, I tried to keep the gap the same as the electrode diameter. There's plenty of advice out there to do that all over the internet. OK, with stick it's a bit easier because there are no dipping issues. But even with stick varying the gap helped me learn a lot about arc characteristics, heat input, current settings and how they all relate.
With tig I'm sure I've read the same advice - arc length should be equal to tungsten diameter. With all due respect, if you're using a 1.6mm electrode for example, I would suggest it's virtually impossible to consistently maintain a 1.6mm gap without dipping occasionally, especially as the puddle ebbs and flows.
Now I haven't played with ally yet and I'm still a beginner with steel tig, but I found I started getting much better results when I stopped worrying about minimising the arc length, increased it a bit and looked more at what was happening to the puddle. Funnily enough, my arc length stays more consistent (on average), my dipping is minimised except when my hand catches or whatever due to position.
I use 2.4mm for everything and I'm sure my arc length isn't like 5mm or so. But I don't stare at the gap like I did at the beginning and it might be ranging from 2.0 - 3.5mm, I don't know. Sound and puddle and what the work is doing tell me what I need to know.
You could try what Jody has mentioned, the forward a bit, back and up a bit when dipping, forward a bit again technique. I'm not ready for playing with things like that, just focussed on plain old forward, pause/dab, forward, pause/dab mostly.
One big thing that I've done recently that helped a lot is bend up some 20mm pipe into various shapes and use some Irwin pipe clamps on the tail end. Then I clamp this to the work, position it however I need and I've got a piece of pipe to run my torch (and filler) hand along rather than freehanding. This idea came from a guy on one of the US forums, Kevin Morin, who drew up some sketches of using three pipe clamps for universal hand rest jigs.
As I say, I'm a beginner so don't believe everything (anything) I say. I'm probably talking out of my given I haven't even tried ally yet.
Legion is right, a bit of extra arc length will not hurt on AC at all. Fine DC tig work you need to minimise the arc length, but AC likes a bit of arc length.
Try to brace your hand/arm a bit too, that will help a lot.
Here are some of Kevin's sketchups:Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl Robbers
Attachment 319878
Attachment 319879
Attachment 319880
Attachment 319881
I thought, rather than use three pipe clamps why not use one? I have a pipe bender so that makes it easier, but I bent up some U shapes, some Ls, some kids' bike handlebar shapes and just some straight pipe. I use these Irwin pipe clamps that don't require threaded pipe:
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
So I can use one clamp and take it on and off different jigs. I position the jigs so I can just run up and down parallel to the weld. Over time I'm sure I'll expand my jig collection but at the moment about 3 or 4 is what I use. New jigs don't take me long at all - a bit of planning, some bending, cutting to length.