New toy for the garage

[striker]

Hey all,

been a while I guess but with an excuse this time.

been practicing on my AC tig skills for a good week! yes I bought one finally, probably not a known make to non euro people.
It´s a Gys 207 Tig welder. 10 to 200A, 20 to 200hz ac, pulse, fully digital. I got a very good price because this was a demo model, but never used, since I bought it before they could open the box.....:beerchug:

After running lots of pratice beads on 1 and 2 mm sheet alloy I took the plunge and went out shopping for 9 meters of 15mm square tube aluminium, and some 3mm x 35mm strip.

remember the Mig Rig on the wooden 6 wheel dolly, well that doesn´t exist anymore exept for the dolly now carrying the transaxle gearbox.

I made an all new trolley to carry both the Mig and the Tig machines. Not every weld came out looking nice, (strange thing that is, one weld is looking very nice the next looks rubbish... how come) tig welding is very hard to do well.
anyway it still hasn´t collapsed under the weight of both welders and the larger bottle of argon.....

piccies

the old mig rig


New ally wheels


and fully equiped


now lets build some intercoolers,

grtz Thomas

 

[cribbj]

Welcome back Thomas; looks like you're getting serious about that welding. Wanna build me an intake plenum?

 

[striker]

what manifold are you after
been thinking about doing an 8 itb one also, I probably have the parts to build one allready just need to look them up.

I would like to have the option of doing both on the car, probably better for registering to not have the compressors on the engine....

grtz Thomas

 

[Lextreme II]

Nice.. now you can make some turbo manifolds.... I got a TIG welder at and need to practice welding too.

 

[striker]

nah no turbo manifolds,

been thinking of doing some nice merge collectors though, 7degrees bends cutting them up under the angle and try and weld them together.
they are expensive as hell to buy off the shelf, so that's something to do myself,
tried to do normal steel aswell and that's a gods joy with tig, you can take your time welding stuff up, sometimes the migrig is going far to fast do do neat small stuff, wouldn;t wat to be welding a complete chassis with it though, would take years I think.

next thing to make out of alloy will be a T piece so both machines can run of one bottle without having to take the argon hose of.
thinking of turning up 3 snouts on the lathe, and drill a channel in them, and after that weld them together in a star shape..... that has to be difficult to do good.

PS having a true nightmare getting some 3mm t6 alloy sheet over here in holland, shops say people aren't hobbieing enough to carry that in stock..... :sigh1:

grtz Thomas

 

[MrFluffy]

Think you had some surface coating on that aluminium tube, hence the marks around the heat affected zone where its burnt off. No biggie here, but if its a critical one, ally likes to be super clean to weld nicely. Galv comes out like that if you don't clean it off well, and you get galvanic flu from the fumes to boot if your not careful. See the gys's here in the supermarkets, theyre made in france so thats not suprising I guess, they all have the consumeables to suit too... Great resource for tig/mig etc is http://www.mig-welding.co.uk despite its name, it covers tig/arc/gas/mig/brazing etc, and has members from all round the world. Theres some really professional knowledgeable people in there but it doesn't seem to have the looking down their nose attitude that other places with pro welders seem to end up with... I might buy a inteverter set one day, save me having to start the backhoe to move my current transformer tig set Pic, yes that is a full size jerry can

 

[striker]

does anyone have any info, on how to perform a good inside angle weld?

2 pieces of alloy angled at 90degrees, and all I do is mess things up.

ps the white deposit near the weld pool, is the reisdue from the 30% cleaning action I had set on the machine. alloy was bare stuff.

Grtz Thomas

 

[edz]

Alumium Welds that go from good to bad in a blink of the eye

>I made an all new trolley to carry both the Mig and the Tig machines. Not >every weld came out looking nice, (strange thing that is, one weld is looking >very nice the next looks rubbish... how come) tig welding is very hard to do >well.

I had the same problem, aluminium is easy if you remember one thing - cleanliness!!!! That means keep clean tig gloves (I have non oiled pigskins in a plastic bag - it's amazing how you'll forget and grab a greasy clamp or hammer), clean the weld surface with a dedicated stainless steel brush, if the surface is dull clean it with a dedicated scotch-brite wheel and don't touch the filler wire with bare hands. The last is the one I got caught by, you weld a beautiful weld and all of a sudden it turns to sh?t and goes black as the filler wire contaminates the weld - the aluminium melts at 800 deg C while the dirt/grease creates a black slag that melts at around 2000 deg C. I saw this when my surge tank fittings melted while the black slag on top was still hard. Also watch for breezes. a small 5kmh breeze is enough to blow the gas shield away and corrupt your weld.

The last tip I found was a gas diffuser - cost $20 and use half the gas flow and allow twice the stickout when you need it!

 

[edz]

... I might buy a inteverter set one day, save me having to start the backhoe to move my current transformer tig set Pic, yes that is a full size jerry can

I bought one of ebay inverter tigs, 1st one blew up, but made sure it had a good warranty before I bought it, returned it and the seller credited me back the money because the whole batch was bad. Bought one like this - pic below, with a foot switch and haven't looked back. Small, light and very handy!

Edz

 

[striker]

hey Edz,

cleanliness is indeed key, I have also got dedicated everything now and it sure helps,

one thing I keep having trouble with is in doing an inside angle weld is the arc jumping from one piece to the other, and when it does it takes quite some time for a decent weldpool to form, do I need more current? and also can it be that making an inside angle weld takes much more fillerrod then f.i. a 180degrees flat weld?

I'm just trying to get the best results and need all the help I can get.

Grtz Thomas

 

[cjsupra90]

Thomas, are you still using balled pure tungsten?

From the reading your first post in this thread, I see that you have freq. control, is it a square wave or sine wave machine?? Im guessing that you have balance control also correct?

If you are still using balled pure tungsten, stop.... Change over to Lanthanated tungsten and point it (not balled) and try it with the freq. set to somewhere in the 80 to 120hz range... This will (should) give you a nice Focused arc and eliminate the arc wandering problem that your having.. It will also give you a lot smaller and nicer bead, not the big flat rounded bead...

Here a pic of the two different setups (balled put tungsten and pointed lanthanated).. I was trying to teach a guy that I worked with how to weld aluminum using both setups.. its not a inside corner joint but still shows the difference in beads between the two setup... (I have to say, not bad welds for his first go at welding aluminum)....

The bead to the left is with a balled pure tungsten and the two to the right are with pointed lanthanated.. Yeah, at the end of the center one he stuck the filler and tungsten into the puddle on accident hence the nasty black sh*t....

 

[XR8tt]

Top info..
Does a foot controler make welding easier ??

 

[cjsupra90]

Having amperage control on the fly whether it be a foot peddle or a thumb / finger wheel makes a big differance when using GTAW (Tig) process... This is especially true when joining materials with drastically different thicknesses....

 

[striker]

top info indeed,
I need to go shopping for the lanthaneted tungsten tips,m I do't have those mine supposed to be thoriated if the label's correct.

I cannot keep the tip sharp it balls up after a few mm or seconds

I don;t have foot controll on the machine helas, but it is a squarewave and has balance controll aswell.

maybe I can reverse engineer a footcontroll on it but the thing is the amp controll is a rotary not an old skool potentiometer..... might ptove to be a problem.

I don't weld different thickness materials together much and thusfar I;ve managed some decent work, and have seen pro's do very nice stuff without foot controll so I believe much better results can be had from my machine without it aswell.
to easy to blame the machine when a novice like me is working it!

grtz Thomas

 

[cjsupra90]

Thomas, Thoriated is really only for DC welding, it doenst work well at all with AC..

The Balling that your getting is normal, it is because of the EP (electrode positive) cycle of the AC current. During the EP cycle, electons are flowing from the work piece to the tungsten. This puts a tremendous amount of heat into the tungsten causing it to burn away / ball up. This cycle is what gives the cleaning action needed for aluminum. Because the electrons are flowing from the work piece up to the tungsten, they bust off the oxide layer that is formed on the aluminum..

Lathanated tungstens will maintain a better point. They do work with both AC and DC currents and thus can be used for pretty much all your welding jobs...

Another thing is what are you setting your balance to on the machine?? Balance will vary with various welds but most of the time you will want it with a higher percentage set to the EN (electrode negitive) cycle thus giving you more time of the cycle putting heat into the work piece and less time putting heat into the tungsten...

Another tip when welding aluminum, is get yourself a couple different sized stainless steel brissle brushes (stainless be important here) that will not be used on anything other then aluminum and right before you start you weld, brush the area to be welded off. One thing to note here is only brush (stroke) in one direction (i.e. dont brush back and forth, only either push it or pull it, not both).. When you go back and forth, you dump the oxide particals right back onto the part that you just cleaned... The cleaner (less oxide) you have at your weld joint, the more EN cycle you can run on the balance thus giving you better penatration and better arc stability and an overall better weld...

 

[striker]

there's one vital tip again! the brushing direction, I never thought of it like that but it makes a LOT of sense.

I understand whats happening in the welding process and the way the current chooses it's path, also on the balance part. I've played around to see the results and they're just as written.

on old alloy I used 30 to 40 percent cleaning action (wider arc) and on new or freshly turned/milled I use inbetween 10 and 20 percent, that I found give the nicest looking bead.

I know the black S**t from dumping the rod onto the tungsten, messy and need to start all over prepping the tungsten.

I will go and buy some lanthanated tips and a dozen of stainless brushes.
and a square meter of 4mm alloy plate (preff 3mm), I hope to have the lower manifold done by the end of next week. but work is quite busy at the moment cause of national championships atheletics that are taking place this month so..... just needs some time!

thanx again! and if you have more usefull stuff like this keep it comming!

fi what abut gascups sizes and tungsten sizes, I have a set of 2mm tungstens, but need to buy others, is that diameter OK for upto 140A?

Grtz Thomas

 

[cjsupra90]

Yeah, 2mm tungstens should be fine.

As for cups size, depends on the job and position. If your willing to spend the money, I would suggest changing over to a gaslens nozzle setup. They offer better less turbulent gas flow from the torch thus offering better gas coverage. I've noticed that i can lower the flow rate thus saving gas when I converted over and seems as though the welds came out a bit better.. I mainly use 6's and 8's for cup sizes and occationally a 4. Just depends on the job.

 

[striker]

I have 6 and 8mm lenzes, those where with the welder when i bought it.

I have finally found a local company willing do do buisness with me (normaly they only deliver to other company's) they have a sort of open shop thingy on friday afternoon, so tommorow I will go and look if they have sheets of 3 and 4mm thick alluminium. and some 60 and 65mm alloy tubing for the inlets to the IC.

in the mean time I cooked up a really neat (just on paper at the mo) shifting system for the Lola and G50box, as I want it to be central shift instead of in the sidepod, everybody ssaid it can't be done because there no room inbetween the seats, but I think I have it nailed. also did the drawings on the adapterplate...

so it's not that I don't have anything else to do besides welding haha!

grtz Thomas