After 2 years of Tig welding pipe I am finally happy with my work

From now on expect all pipe manifolds to have welds like this

-James


Modified by JG-Fab at 2:07 PM 1/11/2006

 

yummy, penetration looks good. couple of big puddles on the inside, maybe carrying a little too much heat?

 

Yah I am still looking for the perfect amperage, if I use 50 it is very very smooth on the inside but the starts of the welds dont get the 100% penetration, just the rest of it so it has breaks in the penetration. Tomarrow I am going to try 55 amps and also play with my dig settings on the machine and see if they make a difference.
-James

 

Are you adding wire while welding or just melting them toghether?? Just cause it looks kind of concave. but it does look good and has nice color.

 

I take that back .....looked at the pics better it looks raised instead of concave

 

mad tight skills right there....wish I could do that. Diff has nice color and good pentitration without any burn thru's, but I noticed on one of those pics you'll see a pin hole or two in your welds. Other than making sure it doesn't leak, looks good.

 

looking good.

 

Looks good James , just remember to when you stop and restart , to start back in the weld and let up on the peddle easy the craters will not be as bad , work on them thats it looks great and keep up the good work

 

Looks good, clean.

 

Thanks for the compliments,

There are a few surface fish eyes but they dont go all the way through.
I had done about 6 other test pieces like this before I had done this one all playing with settings, note this piece wasnt beveled at all, and was not gapped. With lower amps (40 what most people run) I couldnt get consistant 100% penetration, it would have some breaks in the penetration where I started the welds.

I am still not happy with the color of the weld as I am trying to get a single nice consistant gold out of it, instead of every color of the rainbow, funny thing is though, most people like the rainbow colors better than the gold, I think the only reason I want the gold so much is I have been working 1 and 1/2 years to get it and still cant get the perfect gold.

So my questions are, should I gap/bevel the material and use the lower (40 amps) to get the better penetration and keep the gold color I am after (I do get the gold when I run lower amps, just not consistant penetration) or keep running hot and fast and live with purples and blues.

The only thing I am worried about in gapping is this thin material already has a big problem with moving/warping from welding and if you gap it I imagine it will be even worse

-James

 

Ohhh yah,
for all the newbs to purge welding.
I was also experimenting with what to use for plugging the ends of the pipe, and I noticed that fiberglass insulation does wonders!
Notice how there is zero color to the weld on the inside, that is what happens if no o2 is in there while the weld is going on.

The fiberglass doesnt burn/fume or anything and easily fills up the entire pipe to get a great seal, lastly it is cheap

-James

 

So you're using the pink insulation like cotton *****?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by JG-Fab &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Ohhh yah,
for all the newbs to purge welding.
I was also experimenting with what to use for plugging the ends of the pipe, and I noticed that fiberglass insulation does wonders!
Notice how there is zero color to the weld on the inside, that is what happens if no o2 is in there while the weld is going on.

The fiberglass doesnt burn/fume or anything and easily fills up the entire pipe to get a great seal, lastly it is cheap

-James</TD></TR></TABLE>

good call james im still deciding on how I want to setup my purge

 

this was done with about 40- 45 amps , no filler 1/16" tungsten ,tube is 1.5" 304 ss 16 gauge , I find if you just move slow you will get your color and the penna at the start you can go past your start and stop to fix that problem,

 

Yah it is a bit easier to get the penetration without filler rod but my tubular manifolds are holding up a lot more than a downpipe and dumptube so I must use filler for the extra insurance of problems arising.

 

Yep just the normal pink fiberglass insulation that is used for walls and what not.
I had it about 1 inch away from the welds and it didnt react to them at all.

-James

 

Were you using a pulse feature on the welder, pumping the pedal, or neither when doing these?

 

My welder doesnt have the pulse feature and on these I wasnt pumping.
If you look at the HOZ you can see that I only welded about 1/2" at a time, this is because if I would contiune the welds would go to slighly grey color on the outside because of the high heat (60 amps) I can easily get gold welds on this if I run low amps (38 amps) but penetration is inconsistant, note I am not beveling and I am not gapping the tube so if I try those these results with low amps might be a bit better.

-James

 

pretty nice

your beads wander side to side a bit though and not all uniform width. was the joint not cut perfectly straight?

 

no it wasnt cut on the band saw as it was being ocupied by collectors
This was cut by hand with a 4.5" angle grinder with cut off wheel.
-James

 

lookin good right thurr.! Only thing i would change is where you stop you get that crater in the end. Feather off the pedal, and let the after flow fill in that crater. That would be the weakest part of the weld. Other than that the color looks great. good penetration, ect....

 

why would you want to be playing with insulation? fiberglass? that **** sucks. itchy scratchy sticky on your skin... use aluminum foil please!

 

thank you mister jackson! I'll go try that today

 

Yah that was the only negative to me about the fiberglass.
Actually I am having some high temp silicone "corks" spun for me right now that will be 1 with 1/8" pipe tap (for line in) one with 1/16" outlet hole and 2 others for plugs. If all goes well I will actually start selling these bad boys, the material is the same as torch body which is rated to 700 degrees F so it should be pretty good for purge plugs.

-James

 

bump for new weld pics at top
-James