TIG welding tips for a beginner

TIG technique is really hard to describe in wirds.

It is like learning how to ride a bike from a book.

You need to find a weldor somewhere nearby who is willing to tutor you, or at least show you some basics.

i'm a newbie with lots of trial & error.

i sometimes use the edge of the cup as a guide while holding torch at around

15 to 20 degrees with tungsten tip sticking out past cup very little. are you doing fillet weld of a pipe on egde laying flat up against the plate ??

you need to be careful about sticking filler up into the cup, if the filler touches tungsten you need to stop and regrind.

aluminum for me has been very hard. i use esab 161 machine using a current and HF adjusting foot pedal. i have good current control, but fillet welding AL is tricky and requires alot of bad work before you get the hang of it, especially when welding pieces of different thickness. i recently welded a small length of 1"x1/8" AL to a large AL heat sink. i had to preheat the heat sink, use 140A, and i had to start filling on the heat sink and work the filler up to the edge of the smaller AL in order to avoid having smaller AL simply melt down.

I am also a beginner and have no possibility of getting a course, so I quite understand what your problems may be. I see that Ernie has already answered your question and obviously he is right that it is a lot better if you can see the stuff being done, but if you can't get a course, don't let that turn you down. Just do a google search and try to read all what Ernie has posted in the past years, there's a real mine down there, far better than any book I could find. Here, I said it. Thank you Ernie.

This being said, I think I can actually answer your two questions (I just hope the "old hands" will correct me if I said something silly):

1: forget about "walking the cup". It is not supposed to be that usefull. 2: my personal trick to avoid touching the tungsten to often is to keep it shorter. First run your torch over your work with the welder turned off and make sure that the stick-out is so short that the cup touches the workpiece just before the tungsten does.

(I know that nr. 2 is not possible on all types of joints, but it never hurts to try. And as a beginner, I find that a "dry run" helps a lot with issues like cables, hand position, torch angle and such.)

Jerry, there is a Power point presentation on my website which will give you a better idea about TIG welding.

Feel free to down load that or anything else find.

Harry

Jerry, there is a Power point presentation on my website which will give you a better idea about TIG welding.

Feel free to down load that or anything else find useful.

Harry