I was having some serious problems with my torch or something today. About 5 hrs into the day all of a sudden I couldnt get a weld started at all. The puddle would spit, hiss and pop like leaving the weld POROUS AS ****. I even had splatter. I had been welding all day with no problems whatsoever. I had gas to the torch, fresh tungsten, clean base metel and clean filler. same problems. so i decided to take the torch apart and i found what looked like oil. anyone ever seen this? i never have and it was pissing me off to no end. I cleaned the goo/oil/whatever out of the torch and i'm good as gold now. Could it be something in my tank or argon? i'm really confused.

 

I had a similar experiance. I think the tungsten starts to sweat after a while. I was welding a cage in a CRX and I had the same thing happen to me. I did the same thing you did though. It was fine after that. I take my torches apart everyday almost. Keep layin' nickels. :-)

 

Give it a 12 hour break. Anything that is hot will cool off. You can blame it on something that's time-based like duty cycle in that case. I get that kind of trouble when there is a lot of contamination, like when there is paint anywhere near the surface. Are you welding your piece on a wood surface? If so, your piece might be heating up and causing fire or smoke. That's happened to me before.

 

The piece was free of contamination. I even tried welding another piece and had the same results. I guess i'll just chalk it up to wierdness and clean my torch out more often. thanks for the replys guys.

oh yeah im welding hot rolled angle so it's kind of shitty steel but yeah. i've been working on this project for 2 wks and this just happened. could contamination actually build up in the torch until something like this happens?

 

Welllll....does your cup have any nasty caked on residue? Any evidence of anything in the torch itself messing up?

 

no caked on junk at all on the cup. nothing was in the torch except that brown goo. oh yeah my tungsten kept instantly turning black when this was going on.

 

are you sure your gas is even flowing?

 

yes gas is/was flowing.

 

Is your torch water cooled? this could have happened because your torch got too hot and started to release chemicals that came to the surface. 5 huors of welding will definetly heat things up. if you have a water cooled torch you should be good to go all day but it makes the torch heavyer and a little awkward.