TIG welding hoods

DO NOT DO THIS. That lens may suck, but it can't be harmful or they couldn't sell it in the US. It had to pass a ANSI and OSHA spec to be sold. Messing with any of the filters is incredibly dangerous. Your eyes deserve more respect than that.

You can get hoods that will work for TIG down to about $150. A basic Speedglas 9002F is around there. Check eBay for better deals on hoods.

Ernie,

I also have one of the el-cheapo auto hoods like Jon's.

I have one hell of a time with AL, telling if I've got a good melt puddle. (My son has no trouble at all with the same hood - he's a GREAT welder) Will one of these better hoods help much? Or, as my son says, is it just an operator problem?

Karl

Don't forget you're also dealing with UV and IR radiation that can't be seen, so don't monkey around with those filters. One good case of solar keratitis in your eyes and $450 seems cheap. Good Jackson and Speedglas helmets can be had for 2-300.00, especially off Ebay. I have a Miller auto-dark that was $165.00, I'm not overly impressed with it and will change to the Jackson in the near future. Ronnie

SOme of it is just individual eyesight, but a better quality hood will almost always improve the image.

Speedglas and Jackson are my favorites. Selstrom, Optrel, and Uvex are also good.

I have absolutely no intention of just taking the filter OUT, or putting some random piece of material in there. I was wondering if there were filters of this type available in different color shades, etc. The auto-dark component of the filter seems to work fine, and is a pretty neutral color. I just want to get a more neutral color to the safety lens, and it seems that $450 is a bit high just to get this one piece replaced. I know you can get standard welding filters in a variety of shades to fit welding hoods of the non-automatic type. Or, at least, you USED to be able to buy them.

Jon

Do you happen to us bi-focals and are near-sighted? If so adding a magnifier to the hood is a big help in being able to see what you are doing. One wants to ping a lens such that the upper portion of the bi-focal is usable at the close distances that one has when welding.

Karl,

Try a 2x or 2.5x magnifying lens for your hood. Most good welding supply shops have them. These were suggested by my TIG instructor and it sure makes it easy to see what your doing with the puddle.

Bart D. Hull snipped-for-privacy@inficad.com Tempe, Arizona

Check

for my Subaru Engine Conversion Check Tango II I'm building.

Remove -nospam to reply via email.

Karl Townsend wrote:

This is a real good point. I have to keep my head cocked back to look through the bottom of my bi-focals or I can't see sh$%. I think I'll pop for a magnify auto dark glass.

Of course, when it turns out that the kid still welds circles around me, I'm going to catch a lot of grief. Oh well...

Karl

I got single focal length glasses with about an 18" focal length for use under the hood. Side shields, too. Big improvement over the gradient bifocals I normally wear.

Pete Keillor

The problem is that the dichroic filter in your lens is designed to

*complement* the spectral characteristics of your LCD. If you use a different filter, it may not properly complement the LCD, and you could be exposed to harmful levels of UV.

It would *probably* work, but you can't *know* without laboratory style measurements. Your eyes are too important to depend on "probably".

Gary

Ernie,

How come nobody ever mentions Huntsman Auto View lenses.

Is there something wrong with them? I have had one for about 10 years that has been great.

Randy

Right, I agree, I would want to use a filter designed to work with an LCD mask, not one for a fixed shade mask. That seems pretty reasonable.

But, maybe I'm asking the wrong question! Should I be able to see the color of the weld puddle and surrounding metal with ANY mask at all? Or, is the glow from the arc and TIG electrode so brilliant that it washes out all the glow from the workpiece? Maybe I'm after something that can't exist due to the physics of TIG welding. I started thinking about this more, as the red or yellow glow from the weld puddle is not all that much light, while the arc is fantastically bright, and lights up the whole area near it with a huge intensity.

Any comments along this line? Do I have to just learn to judge temperature by how big the weld puddle is, or stop the arc every once in a while to switch the hood to clear?

Thanks,

Jon

Because they are made in the same factory as Jackson, I tend to lump them in with Jackson.

The Huntsman line is often a little lower in features than the Jackson line in lenses, but their hoods have better headgear.

Hence why I have my Jackson Nexgen lens in a Huntsman 951P hood. It can be ordered that way from the factory, but few stores know that.

"Bart D. Hull" wrote in news:411be7a8$0$44245$ snipped-for-privacy@news.getnet.net:

Bart, just got back from Praxair, full bottle, some rod and a 2X magnifying lens...my AL welding should improve right? :-) See you tomorrow!

I've never been able to see anything other than the light from the arc. It's many times brighter than the metal.

Learning to judge how much current to dial in for the weld you are making is part of the trick. You might have your son get things set up and complete part of a weld and let him watch what you're doing. You'd know the heat would be right so then it's just a matter of technique. In my hands I find that less current (or a smaller tip/flame on oxyacetylene) works better, if a bit slower, and there's less risk of melting through the parts.

Sorry, MY son is not the pro welder (at least not yet). I have a finger control on this Lincoln machine, so I can turn it up and down as I go. My problem that started this thread is that I can't see any difference in "color" around the weld pool as the material heats up. I am used to being able to see this with stick welding, and can control the heat to some extent before things melt completely and fall to the floor. I get NO HINT of light from the workpiece to tell me how hot things are getting. Now, maybe this is the difference between stick and TIG, and the brightness of the arc and electrode totally wash out any light emitted by the work. If so, grumbling about the green tint of the auto-dark mask is NOT the problem! The more I think about this, the more I think this may actually be the case! Any comments comparing visibility between TIG and stick? What cues do you use to tell when you are getting close to overheating the work?

Jon (still in the EARLY learning stage with TIG)

Jon Elson wrote in news:85f0$411da66c$4503e66a$ snipped-for-privacy@msgid.meganewsservers.com:

In my case, never having welded aluminum before, I had a local club member come over to check things out and he gave me some pointers. What he told me to watch for was the shiny spot, that shiny spot on the aluminum is the weld pool and what to watch for. The tough thing for me was not developing the "shiny spot" rather, learning to back off the heat and not weld too hot...never going to get that "stacked look of dimes" that way. I did manage to do it a couple times. I know this is gonna take a bunch of practice!

I use a NexGen EQC, I also picked up a 2X magnification lens, should help the aging eyes. TIG demo today at my house, going to have a crowd of club members there!

Marty