69427
The Artist formerly known as Turbo84
Been doing some TIG work using 1/8" and 1/16" sheet aluminum. Things were going well and I was making some decent progress. I ran out of argon the other day, so I had to interrupt progess and go get another tank. Once I hooked up the new tank I apparently turned completely incompetent. I can't get the beads to flow right (the "stack of dimes" bead appearance disappeared, replaced by globs of aluminum, dark at times). Getting the globs to reflow was a waste of time. I changed electrodes, the gas nozzle, the CFH flow setting, and the cleaning/penetration setting, but no improvement. I've wasted half a bottle of argon trying to figure this out. The only thing I'm aware that I changed was the new bottle of argon. I'm the first to admit that there's a higher chance that I'm screwing something up rather than the gas company put a bad batch of argon in the tank.
Any suggestions or ideas of wtf I'm suddenly doing wrong before I completely swallow my pride and haul my piece of work to a local welding shop for an outside opinion and be embarassed in person?
Thanks,
Mike
Any suggestions or ideas of wtf I'm suddenly doing wrong before I completely swallow my pride and haul my piece of work to a local welding shop for an outside opinion and be embarassed in person?
Thanks,
Mike