Searching for a really good book on TIG welding

[Steamchick]

I do not have TIG, but have soldered with Zinc=based alloys for many years, but now there are 95% aluminium with 5% silver that solder aluminium sheet very easily. Using just a small butane gas blowlamp I have joined 1mm and 3mm aluminium with no distortion. Easier than the Zinc alloy rods, and Cheap stuff too.
K2

 

[Brian Rupnow]

It's winter here now, and my main garage is not heated. I probably won't be doing any more welding out there until spring. I fully agree, that the secret to making good looking welds is practice, and practice and practice some more. I thought that a good book would be something I could read over the winter and give me some insight into machine settings, why some things work, and why other things don't work. I know that there are lots of videos available, and I have watched many of them.----Brian

 

[Sparky_SC]

It's winter here now, and my main garage is not heated. I probably won't be doing any more welding out there until spring. I fully agree, that the secret to making good looking welds is practice, and practice and practice some more. I thought that a good book would be something I could read over the winter and give me some insight into machine settings, why some things work, and why other things don't work. I know that there are lots of videos available, and I have watched many of them.----Brian

Keep watching, its warm inside ! Taking a few notes is a good idea too, just like in the old school days. Having those notes to refer to when you do go in the garage to practice will help progress.

 

[ajoeiam]

It's winter here now, and my main garage is not heated. I probably won't be doing any more welding out there until spring. I fully agree, that the secret to making good looking welds is practice, and practice and practice some more. I thought that a good book would be something I could read over the winter and give me some insight into machine settings, why some things work, and why other things don't work. I know that there are lots of videos available, and I have watched many of them.----Brian

Hmmmmm - - - machine settings - - - if you have something like a Lincoln 225 (stick TIG m/c) you have almost no settings. If you have a (top of the line) Miller Dynasty - - - - well there are more settings than a carcass has maggots after a couple weeks in the sun!!! (And I mean a LOT more!)
Some of the settings are useful for enhancing your skills, some are more for reducing gas wastage . . . . this is an area where one really counts on a welding engineer advisor - - - they have (AFAIU) found the best settings for a particular process/material/position/outcome.

IMO this is where the newish pulsed MIG shines - - - it enables the use of mig rather than tig for the thin sectioned materials. Don't think its as useful for exotic materials. Dunno if its considered 'usable' for very high quality welding (you know pressure rated reactor components!) but I do know that the, again newish, Pipefab line of welding equipment from Lincoln is being used for pipe welding - - - dunno if that's out in the field but I do know its being used in the fab yards.

As I have no idea as to what you're actually looking to tig weld - - - well - - - I have no suggestions on how to get to doing good work.

(One of the members here - - - - name presently escapes me) is a (or is it was) a welding engineer - - - - haven't seen him in this thread though I think.)

 

[Lloyd-ss]

Before I retired we started up a project at work (actually, brought it in-house) of making the hydraulic steering gear for the Navy's DDG destroyers. We started by hiring a guy from Newport News Shipbuilding to do the welding of all the stainless steel hydraulic lines. Then we sent our 2 welders (very good welders, BTW) to NNS to get their GTAW certifications. They were at school for 2 weeks and could not come home till they passed all their qual tests.

But when they came back and started welding that piping, I swear, the fillet welds at the fittings were so pretty they would bring tears to your eyes.

Welding is as much an art, as it is a science.

 

[Bentwings]

I’ve TIG and mig welded for a long time . As I suggested earlier look for examples . Many are going to be production and machine made welds but it doesent matter look at the weld . Sr how it is positioned is it filet weld or edge weld look closest the how the heat heat was direcare ted . Look at he beads beads are they flat or heavily rounded. A welder with few adjustments I think is best. You can up grade later. I got to set up a couple new bells and horns machines. It learned to use the pedal for any pulse I needed . You can spend all day screwing around with this setting . By the time you get it right the job is done. Just learn what the variable pulse is and does you can create it with the foot pedal look at it this way what if you are on top of a 15 foot ladder welding an aluminum trailer top rail . Now you want to change the pulse you already have the pedal and are using it with the back of your leg . Now you have to go back down the ladder , make the change then all the way back up again get positioned and try it out ….dang you guesses wrong now the piles is too fast . If you are lucky there may be a fellow welder down there that you can waste some of his time to come over and twist a knob or push a button . So now you have lost a bunch of time for nothing . In the end you probably didn’t need the feature anyway Starting slope and finish slope of amperage are more adjustments that can waste a bunch of time . It will really hurt if it’s your business this is where hours of practice up front works . Bottom line a minimum adjustment machine operated by skilled operator saves time …. and money you cn waste even more time on AC doing all this pulse slope thing then add in AC balance that is automatic in minimum feature machines . Test if you are very skilled and under stand these optional features you can fine tune the machine but you have to know what you are doing to start with. I’m sure you can search the internet and find descriptions of various features but minimum feature machines are pretty well designed so you can make up most differences in the pedal and welding technique AC balance is kinda neat and you can make some really clean looking aluminum welds but you have to know how to make a good weld to start with before you can fine tune it . I did a lot of production welding over the years and when piece count per hour made your paycheck you learned pretty fast that screwing around with machine setting cost you money . I used to maybe make a tweak adjustment right after lunch break then weld the rest of the day you could go through 3-4 tubes of rod per shift. That’s a lot of rod . You quickly learned not to just toss the ends on the floor but in the metal waste buckets bits and pieces of rod roll around making a fall easy in a metal shop the last thing you needed is a fall. You take care of your hoses yell at idiots that walk on them I had a fork lift guy run over my hoses that really were out of the way . To prevent this. I won’t go into bloody details but there after he would stop and move hoses if they were in the way at all

 

[Bentwings]

I got side tracked writing this . I think if you make coupons of 1/8 and 3/16” cold rolled steel and post pictures there are lots of long time welders her that can give honest critiques for you. I’ve done a lot of thin wall tube in race cars so I might be able to give pointers there many done have a lot of really thin wall stuff I’ve sold my TIG welder and I just plain don’t see well enough to actually do welding at the skill level I was used to some where in my massive picture file I have some production welding of small aluminum parts I was Uber the gun to go as fast as possible so some are not exactly as I wanted I even purchased a micro small torch which intricate weldment . Fortunately the pay was very good

I’ll try and find a few pictures I really didn’t have time to take good pictures

 

[Brian Rupnow]

Today, while cruising thru the internet, I found an add for my welder. Nothing about how to use it, just a blurb saying it's for sale.

 

[ajoeiam]

Today, while cruising thru the internet, I found an add for my welder. Nothing about how to use it, just a blurb saying it's for sale.

(LOL) In french no less - - - - LOL!

So what have you welded with it so far?

 

[Bentwings]

As I noted earlier I took grid paper and drew lines to “ weld . Unfortunately this did help in my case but I can see this developing bad habit of letting heat build up The Jody site is probably the best TIG site he has gone over some ofvthe bells snd whistles things he does explain what they control and why you might want to adjust them . Frankly I had opportunity to test many of them myself . It still boils down to being able to use the TIG welder with the pedal alone. I did discover that many have a built in feature that gives a momentary higher start current than the minimum the pedal allows this can make getting started on really thin stuff harder I use a copper start block set up right near start point this causes the welder to drop the boost start current quickly bells an whistle machines on the high price end you can tune this down but it takes knowledge of how this works and just where it needs to be