Hello, all,
I got an autodarkening welding hood on eBay when I got my TIG welder (Lincoln Square Wave TIG 300) and am still learning my way around the process.
This is a cheapie Chinese autodark hood with a very green filter. I went down to Cee-Kay for more Argon and looked at the hoods they recommend for TIG. Gasp, $450 is a BIT high for my budget.
But, I noticed the filters were much closer to neutral density, and I could see the red on a US flag with them. With my hood (I took it with me) the red in the flag was TOTALLY black.
I took the autodark filter module apart and there is a dichroic filter that looks very reddish-purple in reflection, and very green in transmission. (It has a piece of clear glass next to it that I'm assuming is an IR or UV blocking filter.) SO, the question is, can I swap out this green filter for something closer to neutral density in color? The LCD unit seems to be a pretty good ND (colorless) filter by itself.
My problem is I can't see any of the red or yellow color of the workpiece as it heats up. All I can see is the liquid-look of the weld pool, but I have no idea how close I'm getting to melting the whole piece.
I'm assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that despite the staggering light output of the arc, you can see some red or yellow to tell you the general heat level of the area around the weld pool when you are doing TIG with a high-quality autodark hood.
The booklet with the hood indicates it is a # 4 filter when "clear", so I'm guessing this is essentially the rating of the green filter I want to replace.
Anybody ever done this, run into this trouble, comments?
Thanks in advance,
Jon