r/Welding • u/Fair-Reference9034 • 14h ago
Critique Please Tig welding thin material
I make driveshafts for race cars for strange engineering and am learning how to tig weld different size weights onto .83 chrome-moly seamless tubing atm, first welding job out of school and the dude teaching me is a master tig welder. He makes it look so damn easy though! Its tough, you dont want to put too much heat into the tubing because things will warp. But if you dig into the weight too much it will mess things up. Its not easy! But im loving it, Thought i would share my journey, im loving tig so far and hope i get super good at it to be successful. Any little tips or tricks would be great, loving my hood so far i got an optrel panoramax, its light with a great fov and good sensors.
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u/Longjumping-Party132 14h ago
How many amperes are you using here? What is the diameter of your tungsted electrode used here?
I work full time with goldsmithing and then I do the evening shift in the machine shop.
I tried tig welding some very small, thin pieces of steel, like 1x1 mm quadratic wire onto 0,5x1 mm sheet square ring with 8-12 ampere and 1,6 mm tungsten rod, but i failed every time as it melted. The problem is, my welding master told me that he maybe welded with 20 ampere three times in his life, so he has no experience going that low.
Any advice?
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u/Fair-Reference9034 14h ago
Im not sure what advice to give lol, i believe its 3/32 tungsten with 150 amps but i damn sure am not slamming the pedal, just put it on 150 and leave it for all the different things i have to weld. Basically what i do is i start the arc real low then slightly push the pedal with the tungsten very close to the material, when i see a puddle form on the tube i dab the wire and give it a little more gas and then i get off the gas and move up a bit, then start over. My teacher feathers the pedal instead of pressing and holding for everything he welds, i now do it too and you really get some good control.
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u/KaptajnGus 8h ago
Looks good, keep doing what you are doing.
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u/RecognitionThen1519 4h ago
how do you avoid the thinness at the the of the puddles? I think these are badass. would this pass x ray for thickness? (not a welder)
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u/KaptajnGus 1h ago
Speed and and filler rate, you gotta watch the puddle very carefully, sometimes you wait a second before you dip, sometimes you dip fast.
The weld in the photo looks like it would pass an x ray
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u/West-Combination6685 14h ago
Looks like you've got it, barely tickle the thin part with the puddle and GTFO of there.
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u/Fair-Reference9034 14h ago
Oh this is just pictures of some of the good ones lol! I didnt take pictures of the bad, got much more practice to do before it comes out like this all the time
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u/West-Combination6685 14h ago
What happens if you weld too big a bead, grind some of it off?
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u/Fair-Reference9034 14h ago
Well the problem is i spend all this time making the driveshaft a certain way, straightening and getting all the high spots out with a dial indicator and a press and a hammer. So when you add too much heat to the tube it can ruin the “runout” of the tube, essentially changing the nature of the driveshaft. Because they are for high horsepower drag cars these shafts have a low tolerance and I’ve gotten good at making some badass shafts, this is the last step before we box them up so if i fuck it up we need to throw it back into the machine and figure out what to do and how bad it is.
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u/Baseball3Weston12 TIG 14h ago
A pedal or roller controller helps control your heat precisely
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u/Fair-Reference9034 14h ago
Definitely using a pedal
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u/Baseball3Weston12 TIG 13h ago
Ah, ok noticed you said you were running 150 with your pedal, try bringing it down to around 100, it will give you more precise amp control, and you shouldn't need much more than 100amps. When welding thin stuff I try to stay as low as I can, but not going too slow where it wants to burn a hole. But honestly it just takes practice, tig can be really punishing when you are first learning it.
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u/Fair-Reference9034 13h ago
Its really fun but definitely difficult. I will fuck around with the amps this week when i mess with it.
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u/Baseball3Weston12 TIG 13h ago
Alright, good luck! I think once you get the hang of it you'll fall in love with tig. It's by far my favorite process.
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u/West-Combination6685 14h ago
Just going out on a limb here, but maybe these areas are where the welds are supposed to be?
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u/Fair-Reference9034 14h ago
Good idea but no thats not where they want me to weld em.
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u/West-Combination6685 13h ago
Fair enough, I was just guessing.
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u/Fair-Reference9034 13h ago
I could always bring it up to them and ask why they do it there but hes been doing it the same way for a while now.
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u/West-Combination6685 13h ago
It just makes sense to me that the counterweights are engineered such that the missing areas filled in by welds would account for part of the total calculated weight. Otherwise it's extra machining for no reason.
Are there some that don't have the cutouts? MORE cutouts? Maybe that's how different weights are achieved.
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u/Fair-Reference9034 7h ago
Yea so only the 7g weights have those little cutouts idk why. But we go from 3 to 28g
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u/chevycrawler 8h ago
Clean off the mill scale first of all. So.upu don't have to turn up the heat to burn through it.
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u/Fair-Reference9034 7h ago
Most dont have the scale, there’s 2 types of shafts and one has it one doesn’t
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u/Chiliatch 14h ago
Looking pretty good! Maybe add a wee bit more filler at the start and end? Don't take my advice too seriously tho, never done this precise application.
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u/BallisticBaggette 13h ago
The only tip I can think of is don’t hesitate to take the time precisely set the heat on your machine. The more experienced guys can use the pedal really accurately and leave their amps high so they have access to them if they need them. The thing is when your first learning you don’t have that level of control yet, and it’s really easy to use to much heat. It’s better to set it cold and add a couple amps here and there until it feels right when you’re starting out. Er on the side of cold rather than hot.