Introduction to TIG Welding

Transcript

- Hi and welcome to today's webinar which focuses on the process of TIG welding. Before we break down the components and perform a demonstration today, I want to give you a little overview of the process and how it all works. TIG welding stands for tungsten inert gas and is a welding method that utilises a tungsten electrode to transfer the arc from the welder to the material that we are working on which we commonly refer to as the work piece. This arc is then shielded by the inert gas to protect the pool of molten weld and the heat affected zone from the contaminants in the atmosphere. Now unlike a MIG welder, a TIG welder relies on the hand feeding of the filler material into the weld pool, created by the arc.

This gives us the ability to control the feed of the filler rod, the amount of filler rod input into the weld join and the ability to weld a wide range of metals like steel, bronze, titanium, stainless, nickel, brass, copper, magnesium, aluminium and gold. The result is a much small and uniform looking weld that will require less clean up. So instead of grinding and blending your welds like you often would do when using a MIG welder, the TIG welder can produce finished welds that need very little attention once they're completed. It's this reason that TIG welding is widely renowned as the method of choice for many motorsport applications. This preference for TIG in motorsport is due to its precise nature of operation, it's clean and free of any sparks or spatter and during the TIG process we can manipulate many areas of our weld to get a precise and predictable outcome.

Many race teams prefer to use TIG welding to construct items like chassis and suspension components because of its ability to control a number of the vital mechanical properties of the steels and alloys used in motorsport. The TIG welder gives us the ability to control and fine tune parameters such as weld heat input, weld size, penetration, pre and post flow of shielding gas and plenty of other useful variables which we'll get into in a minute. I hope that gives you a good understanding of what TIG welding is and the differences between TIG and MIG. Before we go too much further, I want to show you some examples of my experience with the TIG welder and the reason why it's my favourite method of welding. I've just queued up some images on my laptop which I'll get to.

And this just gives you a little idea of what's possible with a TIG welder. So I'll just show you, full screen this and I'll just show you this chassis. So this was the point in my personal career where I switched to TIG welding. Up to this point, as you'll see, all of these tubes are tacked together. This was completely, I was always MIG welding and this was possibly about close to 10 years ago so I was relatively new to the process.

I'd had a friend come over to my place to inspect some of my work and he said, hey why don't you learn to TIG weld, it will take your projects to the next level and you might learn a thing or two in doing so. So that started everything for me and from that point on, I was TIG welding in the garage and I bought my own machine, taught myself to weld and constructed my Hilux as a result. So previous to building this vehicle I had never TIG welded before, I did do an apprenticeship and unfortunately it didn't touch on any TIG welding by during this project I was able to get stuck into it and understand on the run and the thing I loved about TIG welding was the control you have and the pointers that I've just mentioned to you about being able to do some really small welds. Again I lived in a pretty small complex that I couldn't have a really loud setup so the TIG welder really suited me, I could come home at night and be able to spend a couple of hours on the welder without anybody knowing it. And then as my project progressed I was able to then do all of my sheet metal with the TIG welder and obviously get in and around the whole project.

This was a moment that I guess allowed me to do a lot more than I initially planned on my Hilux project. As you can see, there's a lot of welding on it, I had a lot of practice doing this. I initially started with a 200 amp AD/DC machine that cost me less than $1000 and I was able to get in and get around that project. So then this lead to doing stainless exhausts like you see here and many other components like thin sheet metal boxes with just half a mm wall thickness. And then to the finished chassis.

I then took those skills and applied them to many different projects that I was working on. Such as exhausts, this one is the build up for the NA naturally aspirated S13 SR20 that I've built. So again that control and the precision that you have of TIG welding can really make all of these projects seem a lot more attainable for you at home and again, this isn't a big outlay of welder expense. It was really just about learning that process and we'll run you through all of that today in today's webinar. A sharp tunsgen is always necessary to complete a nice controlled weld and as these headers came together I was astounded that I was able to produce something that looked so good so having that control in TIG welding allowed me to produce something that you probably cannot buy or if you can would cost close to $3000 or $4000 to have someone custom fabricate that.

But I was able to do the whole exhaust and a whole bunch of other projects at home in the comfort of my own garage, teaching myself and that's what we're here to do is for me to obviously show you everything that I've learned over my career and put them into our courses like our Practical TIG welding course and also webinars like this. So I don't think we've got much to go on this but this is just a bit of an overview on some of the bits and pieces that I have done with my TIG welder and the process of when I started to now and again absolutely love the process and it's a great way to be able to join steel together. So just as that comes to a finish we can get back into the webinar. And now that you have a better understanding of your TIG welder and its capabilities, we need to speak about the risks to our safety that welding can pose. It's important that we equip ourselves with the best protection as we learn and develop our TIG welding techniques.

It's common knowledge in the industry that the best weld is always one that you're comfortable doing. Being comfortable requires a clear line of sight and the welding helmet or mask as it's commonly known can make a huge difference to all aspects of our weld. Welding emits light called an arc and it's the reason that we need to always wear a welding mask. Weld arc gives off radiation over a broad range of wavelengths including UV, visible light and infrared and the dangers of not filtering the UV and infrared light can cause an extremely uncomfortable eye condition called arc flash. The best form of protection for our eyes is the auto darkening weld mask.

It uses a battery powered sensor which senses the arc strike and immediately darkens your view to a preset shade. A large benefit of the auto darkening helmet when TIG welding is its adjustable sensitivity and this may need to be turned down when using very low amps or up when working overhead or outside where sunlight may trigger the auto darkening mode prematurely. The delay setting can also be adjusted. This changes the length of the time the auto darkening mode stays on after the weld arc is finished and we would typically turn the delay up on high amperage welds where the weld pool may stay bright for longer or down to save time and increase visibility while tacking. Spending some time shopping around for a helmet that is comfortable for you because TIG welding can be a time consuming process and therefore you'll be spending a lot of the time inside your helmet.

Another thing to consider and especially when we spend more time welding, we also need to think about the respiratory risks associated with TIG welding. A lot of what we weld as motorsport enthusiasts will be coated, plated or painted and we need to be vigilant against these dangers. The best way to eliminate this is to clean and prepare the work piece thoroughly before welding, it can still be beneficial to use an extraction fan in any confined or tight areas. Unfortunately it's impossible to eliminate every harmful gas from the welding process but if we have an extraction fan or a regular fan pushing the air about, it can improve the situation dramatically. When TIG welding, it's common for us to be upside down, wrapped around the roll cage and welding in some pretty tricky situations.

Wearing a set of overalls can protect us from the majority of dangers around the workshop. A good fitting pair of overalls will give your forearms complete protection and these should ideally be made of heat resistant cotton instead of the more common polyester blends. When these are combined with weld gloves, they should cover up and overlap and protect our skin from all types of radiation emitted by the TIG weld arc. If you don't want to wear overalls or you're just doing some light fabrication then my personal favourite is the apron. This can be worn over normal clothes for light duty tasks, just make sure that the apron you choose is not made from polyester again to protect ourselves from fire risks.

Some pockets incorporated into the overalls or apron can be a great help, especially if we are inside a car and performing some TIG welds. It's handy to keep a little pack of pre sharpened tungsten in our top pocket, along with a ruler, pencil and our phone for calculations. Feeling comfortable is a top priority in TIG welding so shop around for the right overalls or apron and make sure that they are 100% cotton construction. I mentioned the dangers of the light the arc gives off. And because our hands are so close to this arc, it's important that we cover up the skin with gloves to protect from both the light and heat that's emitted from the TIG weld.

It's important to note that there is no specific glove that is great for all welding purposes. I have multiple styles of gloves for many different welding jobs. For example, and I'll just get the fly out of my face. For example, there are dedicated TIG welding gloves and they do differ from thicker MIG welding gloves as they need to offer us more control and feel. You may see footage of people TIG welding with bare hands, I too am guilty of this and it is understandable in very low amperage high precision situations.

But we really do need to protect our skin as the damage is cumulative and may present itself later in life. When the amperage levels and the heat from the workpiece decrease, then you can improve the amount of feel that you have on the torch and the tungsten by switching your gloves to softer leathers such as deer, duck or goat hide. This increases the feel and it's commonly known as dexterity. By increasing the dexterity and completely eliminating the radiation from light, we can safely and comfortably weld with good control and precision. For the ultimate feel, I like to use disposable nitrile gloves and find them to be a great addition in low amperage situations.

Just remember that these won't protect you from heat burns so be cautious when using them. I've just got some gloves here which I'll run you through, I mentioned nitrile. So these are really thin gloves that offer the ultimate in feel but almost zero protection from burns. It does eliminate the light burn like I said and I use these when working specifically with low amperage metals or very thin titanium where you don't want to put any finger marks or anything on the materials. But you also want complete feel of the weld torch because you're about to weld some expensive stuff and you need to do it properly so those are the nitrile gloves.

If I'm working on aluminium or anything that requires a high amount of amperage and heat, then I use these gloves. They're pretty tough leather gloves and they have a nice cuff here. So this will join up with your overalls or your jacket and give you complete protection. But most of the time I'll just wear a pair of workshop gloves. These are synthetic but they do offer complete protection and they're thick enough so that it gives you a fair amount of time to know that you're going to get burnt before you do get burnt.

And I like to designate a bench or an area in my workshop specifically for TIG welding. And I have a designated hook for my welding helmet and I remember to leave it on this hook between other processes. This dramatically cuts down the time you spend looking for your PPE and decreases the urge to go without it. With that PPE out of the way, let's take a look at the TIG welder and the parts that make it a motorsport fabricator's best friend. So when we look at the typical TIG welder setup, as you can see there are many different parts that make up a complete welder.

To better understand the parts associated with with this setup, we'll run through them one by one. Each part of the TIG welder assembly is vital to its operation but there's none more important than the welder itself. Beside me today I have my Miller and SWS TIG welders both set up on the bench. Although you can't see the back side, this is where the supply of power enters from our wall socket to the machine. A gas fitting that will allow the connection of shielding gas and a master switch to power everything up.

On the opposite end of the machine you'll fine all your vital controls and adjustments as well as the connections for our welding torch, earth clamp, shielding gas outlet and optional foot pedal. Moving away from the welder itself, we have the inert gas bottle which in this case is argon gas. All TIG welding operations use 100% argon for the shielding process and this is supplied to the machine by a screw on regulator. So most TIG welders will be supplied with a switch torch that incorporates a button on the hand piece to initiate and terminate the arc. Many will also incorporate a rotary adjustment switch that allows you to control the amperage of the torch rather than having to get out of position and head back to the machine to make these changes.

So as you can see here on the Miller's hand piece we have that rotary adjustable switch and the go button. The amperage can also be controlled using an optional foot pedal that allows us to fine tune our weld amperage as we go. It also means we don't need an on/off switch on the torch either which simplifies and lightens the hand piece. These pedals are incredibly useful and I feel like everyone should have one if they can afford it. We'll be taking a closer look at how they work and why they're so helpful soon.

The torch itself also uses a series of parts that are known in the industry as consumables. TIG welding doesn't actually create a lot of wear on parts but we will be replacing and changing the torch assembly regularly. So starting from the front of the torch we have a ceramic nozzle. This nozzle directs argon over the tungsten it surrounds and shields the resulting arc that protrudes from the tungsten. This tungsten runs through the centre of the torch and is surrounded and held in place by the collet body.

The collet body and collet holder supply the tungsten with the electrical energy used to create the arc. This is all sealed and held together by the back cap which houses the excess tungsten length. The final connection on the front side of the machine is the earth clamp. That completes the electrical circuit. And this can be clamped to your work piece or bench if it's made from electrically conductive materials such as steel or aluminium.

If you're in the market for a TIG welder then you may be a little confused at some of the features and what you need specifically for motorsport TIG welding which we will get into in a minute. This is one downside to the adjustability of TIG welders, it can be a little overwhelming reading through the specifics of each machine. One thing we need to consider is what power is available in your garage or workshop. You will need to check out the outlets in your space and match these to the welder you're looking to purchase. Thanks to inverter technology reducing power consumption, we can still weld a large variety of metals by running the welder off our home power outlet.

So just one thing on that and especially in Australia and New Zealand, a lot of welders utilise a 15 amp circuit and this is a dedicated circuit that will be wired into your workshop and you can have an electrician do this for the use of powering up your welder. Both of my machines here operate on 15 amp plugs and it is illegal to make your own extension leads so don't feel like you can do it. There are products on the market and this is a 15 amp to 10 amp power adaptor. The only problem with these is that when you're using a fair amount of energy and if you're welding aluminium with high amperage or you're welding steel, again with a lot of amps, you can trip these out but the good thing about it is it won't damage your workshop or your house, you can simply switch this back on, maybe let the welder cool down a little and then get back into it. So there is an option if you don't want to set your workshop up with a 15 amp dedicated supply but I do recommend doing it if you're looking to have a long term relationship with welding.

So you may hear the term multi process machine while shopping for a welder. Multi process refers to the machine supporting multiple styles of weld, as in combining a MIG welder and TIG welder into one machine. Now just be mindful that switching between processes will require different types of inert gas and may waste precious time going between the two. It's common for the name of the machine to be followed by a number that will designate the peak amperage output of the machine. This is the SWS Alumtig 200 and its output is a peak of 200 amps.

And here's the MIller Dynasty 210 DX which you guessed it, peaks at 210 amps. So 200 amps will cover the vast majority of work we do in motorsport fabrication. A 200 amp machine will have the ability to weld materials as thin as half a mm, right up to 6.5 mm in thickness. All TIG welders will have the letters DC or both AC and DC. This refers to alternating and direct current.

A DC only welder will limit you to welding steel such as mild steel, stainless, chromoly and titanium to name a few. The combination of AC/DC allows us to also weld aluminium which is an important material in motorsport fabrication. Because of this, it's extremely important that we weight up the benefit of upgrading to an AC/DC welder over a straight DC machine. This allows us to work with aluminium and it comes in handy more than you'd think. When I first started out, I didn't think I'd have much use for the AC component of my welder but it was only a couple of weeks before I was using it pretty often.

So I'd recommend stretching the budget to an AC/DC machine if you can. So you might also want to take a closer look at the quality of the attachements that come with the welder. It might work out cheaper in the long run to pay a slightly higher price and get a complete setup that already includes a plug in foot pedal, a quality flex head torch, a gas lens kit and some extra consumables at the same time. Most machines designed for motorsport use will usually have this listed in their description and this will give you a good indication of its suitability and differentiate itself against more industrial machines with further refinement to the programming and settings to handle intricate fabrication work. So that's the physical make up of the welder covered, now we can move onto its operation.

One of the most important aspects of TIG welding is being able to control the arc heat. This temperature control is modulated using the amperage setting and will be one of the most adjusted functions in your machine. In the industry there's a basic rule of thumb that equals one amp per thousandth of an inch or 40 amps per mm of material thickness. Using this guide as a reference you can see that a 200 amp machine has the capability of welding extremely thin materials at just 5000th of an inch or 0.1 mm, all the way up to plate that's 1/4 of an inch or 6.5 mm thick. Understanding when you need to adjust the amperage to suit different material requirements can take a little practice.

It'll always take a moment for the heat to sink into the material and form a weld pool. So if this takes too long, it might be worth increasing the amperage so that you spend less time inputting heat into the joint and more time welding it. So this is where things can get a little confusing. In a lot of cases, running an amperage that's too low for the material thickness can input more heat into the material due to the longer amount of time spent welding it up. And if we raise the amperage and weld the joint faster, then it will input less heat overall and create a more fluid weld pool that will be flatter and stronger due to a higher rate of penetration.

If you're learning to weld or tacking a material you haven't used before then it's a good idea to buy a little extra or clean up an offcut to perform a series of test welds on. This will allow you to set the amperage so that you can weld at a speed that's comfortable for you. With our amperage understood then we can now get our TIG welder all set up for welding. The tungsten is one of the most important items in our TIG welding process. It's available in 3 different diameters and it passes the current from our torch into our work piece in the form of an arc.

As you can see, I've got a packet of multi mix tungsten here. These are 2.4 mm but the diameter of the tungsten dictates the peak amount of amperage that the tungsten can handle. So a 1.6 mm diameter tungsten is stable up to 150 amps and a 2.4 mm will be pushing 220 amps. And the 3.2 mm is designed for heavy industrial use at amperage levels that range in excess of 300 amps. So having 3 sizes variations can be a little confusing when deciding on what tungsten to use.

Like I said, I'm running a 2.4 mm and that's basically the only tungsten that I use and it's great for thicknesses and amperage levels up to 220 amps. There are multiple tungsten types on the market and figuring out which tungsten suits which material can be a real pain. So I'm going to make things easy for you. I use the multi mix tungsten in 2.4 mm diameter, 99% of the time. This is identified by its pink colour and these electrodes are a great performer for both AC and DC welding.

So we should aim to sharpen our tungsten at around 30-45° of angle, taking around half a mm of the point will help with the arc that extends onto the work piece and eliminate the chances of it breaking off if you accidentally dip it in the weld pool. Depending on the required length of your back cap on the TIG, you may also need to cut off your 180 mm long tungsten before you can use it. Be careful as they shatter and you'll need to cut it with a grinder before sharpening. So a little tip here, I like to use my cordless drill on a grinder wheel. So I've dedicated a grinder wheel in my workshop for the tungsten and instead of always wearing a groove in it, always try and move this around but by using a drill, you keep your hands free and clear of the pedestal grinder and then by rotating the drill around, you'll be able to gain a really nice grain structure on the tungsten.

So when you're grinding it you always want the grinding wheel to be running in line with the tungsten and then we're looking for around 30-45° of included angle and then by taking around half a mm off the tip and that's just in case as I said before, as you're welding you accidentally touch the tip in the molten weld pool and it gets stuck. If you wiggle it around, you snap that tungsten off in the job then that will be an inclusion and although it doesn't matter a whole lot in motorsports, especially in the medical field, that would be a real problem because you're including tungsten into your job which in many cases is a big no no. So by taking the tip off then you'll have less of a chance of snapping it off in the work piece. So once the tungsten is secure into the torch, we need to focus on the gas that will protect it. If we didn't use shielding gas, our weld would be a fizzing mess because oxygen, moisture and contaminants all react with the molten weld pool.

If you've ever forgotten to turn on the gas before you start welding then you'll know what I mean. All TIG welders use argon for their shielding gas because it's inert which means it won't undergo a chemical reaction when exposed to heat or pressure. Bottles of argon hold pressures of up to 3000 psi and are available in a series of different sizes to suit your specific application. The most common bottles are known as D size which holds around 2 metres cubed and that's what I have on the bench. I have this plumbed into my SWS machine and on this side I have an E size bottle which holds 4 metres cubed.

Sorry summer in Australia gets a little, get a few flies in here. E size holds 4 metres cubed and that's what I have here on the floor connected to my Miller welder. The larger F size holds close to 10 metres cubed and the larger G size holds 15 metres cubed. So argon is fed into the TIG welding machine by either a regulator or a flow meter. The flow meter consists of a gauge that indicate's the bottle's pressure next to the flow gauge that floats the ball bearing in a clear slide marked with indents.

These indicate the flow rate in either litres per minute or cubic feet per hour. How long each of these bottles will last depends on how much welding you will be doing. To give you an idea of the typical usage, I would say an E size bottle of argon which is 4 metres cubed, used on average for 2 days a week could last close to 3 months depending on your welding setup and your flow rates. Typically we run a TIG welder at around 10 litres per minute of gas flow but this depends on the gas lens and the cup that you're running. So speaking of cups, we have a few here.

Which we will focus on. The gas cup or nozzle as it's commonly known is a consumable in TIG welding. And although it shouldn't wear out, we call it a consumable because it will be the first thing to break if you drop your torch on the ground. Gas cups break because they are made from heat resistant materials such as aluminium oxide which is this pink material, pyrex which is see-through and glass which is also see through. They are inherently brittle and these cups range in size from a number 3 for extremely small micro torches to a massive number 24 which measures 38.4 mm for extreme gas coverage.

So here we've got a few different gas, well this one is the pyrex and then we've got some larger ones. So you'll see this little torch, this is a little clear pyrex gas cup and this can really help when we're welding aluminium and we want to hide that tungsten in the cup to maintain enough flow over the tungsten and then for more reactive metals like titanium and stainless steel, we can use these larger cups. I mentioned before about the stock collet body which runs a series of holes around here and that houses the tungsten and then the nozzle looks a little like this. So these are some of the bits and pieces in welding that you'll need a few of lying around. So how these gas cups function depends on what TIG torch setup we are running.

A regular collet body will attach a regular gas cup and these are available in sizes ranging from a number 4 cup to a number 12 cup. So that was this one that I was speaking about. A gas lens on the other hand will replace the collet body and can attach a wider range of gas lens cups from number 4 all the way up to number 24. Really need to clear this place out. The gas lens, and the reason why a gas lens has so many cup size options available to us lies in the design.

A regular collet body has a reasonably undisturbed flow of gas through a series of holes that exit into the cup. The gas lens instead uses a series of metal screens to distribute the gas into the cup. So by flowing through the holes in the regular collet body, our gas exits into the cup and flows out onto our work piece without a very wide coverage. And like I said before, this is fine for AC welding aluminium but it's not all that great for more reactive metals like stainless steel or titanium which needs a wider spread of gas coverage. By using metal screens to spread the gas coverage, a gas lens allows us the opportunity to spread the gas over our workpiece, shielding the weld area from contaminants and producing a high quality weld finish.

By removing the turbulent effects of the regular collet has on the gas, a gas lens can also save our gas usage by being more efficient and more effective. This is going to save you on running costs on your bottle of gas and large gas cups will incorporate a second and sometimes third row of metal screens to diffuse the gas and make it spread as it exits through the cup. So by having these metal screens diffuse the gas and help spread it over our work piece we can then raise the flow rate of gas at our bottle to increase the effectiveness. Most of these cups, as you buy them will give you a really good guide on how much cubic feet per hour or litres per minute to run through your regulator into that system to allow increased coverage due to the larger size. So even though those cups are large and bulky, the large cup you have fitted, the longer the stick out can be.

Stick out in tungsten TIG welding is the length of the tungsten that protrudes out from the edge of the cup. And this is especially useful when fabricating an exhaust collector for example 'cause a large cup with a lot of stick out can make getting into that merge a lot easier. I highly suggest you run a gas lens for DC welding as this is going to save you money on gas and improve your overall experience of TIG welding by making the whole process a lot more efficient. Due to aluminium's reduced reactive nature, a gas lens for AC welding is not critical. This is because aluminium does not need a wide coverage of gas.

So now that our torch is set up, we can focus on what the other hand will be doing. So once our arc has created enough heat in the work piece to form a controlled molten pool of metal, we can then build up the weld by adding a filler material of our choice into the weld zone to form a weld bead. I've got some filler materials here. So this is a filler rod and these are available in a series of different diameters starting at 1.6 mm and then going to 2.4 mm and then to the larger 3.2 mm. So this size is going to have a direct impact on the shape of your weld and it will give you the option to include more or less filler rod depending on your choice of diameter.

In motorsport we're generally working with a limited amount of material thicknesses that are on the lighter side. So this means that it's unlikely you'll need the largest 3.2 mm filler rod so choosing between the 1.6 mm or the 2.4 mm really comes down to your material and the type of weld seam that you want to create. For all my DC welding with mild steel, chromoly, stainless steel and titanium, I never use a larger filler rod that the 1.6 mm. On the rare occasion, I would even trim a small amount of 0.9 mm wire off the MIG wire spool to TIG weld extremely small components with very controlled inclusion of this small diameter wire. When welding aluminium in AC however, we usually use larger diameter 2.4 mm filler wire or even the largest 3.2 mm wire if we need a bigger bead profile and weld speed.

Speaking of aluminium, you may have heard the term stacking dimes. This has everything to do with the rate of inclusion of the filler rod. Choose a diameter that's too small and you'll be racing to get enough of the filler rod into the weld pool. Go too large and you'll create a weld that's too big and this might mean that you'll have to add too much heat into the weld zone. A good rule of thumb here is to match the thickness of the material with the diameter of the filler rod.

Lastly, as filler rod goes through the manufacturing process, it can pick up oils and begin to oxidise in transport. So it's important to give both your workpiece and the rod a wipe with some acetone to remove these contaminants before introducing them into the weld pool. If you're wondering what filler rod to use for your specific material then we have a detailed guide in our Practical TIG Welding course. So just before we go any further, I want to give you a bit of a demonstration with some aluminium filler rod that I've got here on the bench. Giving it a wipe with acetone and just showing you the contaminants the come from this material and if we didn't do this then we'd be including this into the weld.

So what I like to do is keep a nice clean rag on hand and then I'll hold it up here so you can see and then, before we're welding we grab a range of rods that we might need for our welding process and just give them a wipe through a rag with some acetone on it just to get any of those oils from manufacturing and delivery and any contaminants that might be on there. So as you can see there's a fair bit of dirt on this aluminum filler rod. And we can do this with all of our filler rods, I especially like to do it with titanium because it's so reactive, we don't want to introduce any contaminants in. As you can see there, there's quite a lot of dirt on the mild steel rod and just like normal steel our rods can get rust and start to degrade over years so if you've got some rods that are quite old then this is especially important. And I recommend doing it always for aluminium welding.

So I'll put this out of range where we're not going to blow ourselves up. Because we will get to doing some welding a little bit later. So now that we have both hands full of the torch and the filler rod, we can use one more part of our body to have an influence on our weld. One of the most widely used forms of amperage control in motorsport TIG welding is a plug in foot pedal. This uses a variable amperage switch that allows you to adjust the amperage just like you would the accelerator position in a car.

This gives us the ability to adjust our amperage control on the fly by depressing our foot pedal to 100% of our pre programmed amps and then backing off if we require less amps and heat in our weld. So just to give you an idea I've got a foot pedal here. So this is a typical TIG welding foot pedal and I'm not going to depress it because the welder is on but when it's completely closed over, so that's 100%, this will initiate 100% of the amps that we've got set in our TIG welder. So this is really handy for tacking and for aluminium welding where we want to get the heat into the part really quickly and then especially for aluminium and other materials as they heat up or they might become thinner in areas, we can then back out of the weld and we can bring our pedal right out of it until the point where we shut off our weld. So this is really handy and a great feature in motorsport welding when we're working with materials that we don't really know are a certain thickness or we might be surprised and need something for that.

So like I said, aluminium is a great example of how useful a foot pedal's ability to control the weld can be. Because aluminium is a great conductor of heat, aluminium tends to soak up a lot a lot of the initial weld amperage before heating up rapidly. This means that we've got to initiate the arc with more amps than we need before reducing the amps as we progress along the weld. The foot pedal also allows us to modulate heat on unknown material thicknesses. Imagine that you're welding up a floor pan in a car with some sections being 3 layers thick.

In that same weld you might also come across a thin section that will require you to back out of the pedal and lower your set amperage to just 50%. It's pretty common in motorsports to have to weld in some awkward positions and instead of switching back to the hand operated switch to get the job done, you can easily use the foot pedal in between your knees if you're lying down or unable to use your feet. So with the physical setup of our welder complete, we can concentrate on the settings. When you first take a look at your new welder, the amount of buttons and dials can be a little overwhelming but once you understand what everything does, it'll all fall into place. We'll leave the adjustments of these settings for another day but let's start with simply understanding what they are and what they do.

So first off if you have a DC only TIG welder then you are limited to welding ferrous metals like mild steel, chromoly, stainless and titanium. If you have an AC/DC welder then the AC mode can expand your welding capabilities to aluminium as well. Switching between modes on an AC/DC welder is simple and AC mode will open up a few more settings that relate to the adjustment of the alternating current. AC balance and frequency settings for example, help with aluminium welding processes. High frequency TIG welders give you the option of using HF start.

This is different to scratch and lift start as it requires contact of the tungsten on the job to initiate the arc. High frequency start doesn't which is why it's recommended for all motorsport use and should be always switched on to allow contact free starting of the arc. So it's quite easy in both machines here to make sure HF start is switched on and usually once you set the machine up you will never have to shift that because we always recommend using HF start in motorsport fabrication. Some machines will have a 2T and 4T settings that dictates the start and finish cycle of the TIG welder's process. 2T mode initiates and holds the arc as long as the button or foot pedal is depressed.

So this is like I said before, the button on the torch. 2T mode, I think that cuts out the overhead, I guess that means that we won't be using this welder. So 2T mode initiates and holds the arc as long as the button or foot pedal is depressed. And then terminates the arc when released. 4T mode on the other hand gives you the ability to manually lengthen or shorten the start and finish cycle by allowing you to press, hold and then release the start cycle, sorry to release the start cycle and then press hold then release to terminate the cycle.

So you'll be pressing the button down on the torch to initiate the weld cycle, it'll ramp up at a rate that you program into the machine and then you won't have to keep that button depressed for the whole time that you're welding until you're ready to finish and then you hit the button again and that will then start the wind down cycle into terminating the arc. So now let's step through the different parts of the TIG welding cycle and take a look at what's happening at each point. Let's start with pre flow. Pre flow is the amount of time that the gas solenoid will allow the gas through the torch before the arc begins. This sets up a nice gas shield around the tungsten and floods the work piece before welding.

Different materials require different amounts of pre flow which we'll detail further in the material specific welding skills section in our TIG course. At the beginning of the cycle we also have start amps and upslope which allows you to ease into the welding cycle once the button or foot pedal is depressed. Start amps are a percentage of you set amperage and the upslope is the amount of time that it takes for this percentage to transition into your set amperage. This initiates the arc softly and can allow you get in position and see exactly what you're working with before the weld amps raise and create the molten weld pool. I find this can be really handy when you're in a tight situation if you have upslope set, then you can initiate the arc and it'll give you a moment to get into position without heading straight into your 100% set amperage.

So next the pulse defines the switching of the machine from its peak amperage to its base amperage, or background amperage as it's sometimes known. This can be extremely useful if you're looking to reduce the amount of heat in a part by effectively reducing the amount of time the amperage is penetrating the metal. The pulse function is used in motorsports all the time because it's very effective when dealing with thinner materials. You can control the pulse frequency which is measured in hertz on any TIG machine that offers pulse control. This dictates how many times the machine switches from high to low amperage per second.

For example a pulse frequency of 1 hertz will see the machine go through its pulse settings once every second. That's why this mode is also known as pulse per second. Pulse balance on the other hand refers to the percentage of time that your pulse stays in the background or lower amperage setting. This is most commonly left in the 50% range unless you're looking to really fine tune your weld settings. Downslope and end amps completes the 4T cycle and can assist with weld craters that can happen when shutting off the arc too early.

Running a downslope cycle can help blend and assist with the finishing of the weld, especially on aluminium where it can suffer from a drop in bead profile near the end of the weld. So what I mean by that is like I said in the upslope cycle, you're getting into the weld progressively over a set amount of time. The downslope is the opposite end of that. So like I said it works really well on aluminium where if you shut off the weld straight away you can actually get a contraction of that molten material and it forms a crater which over time can actually start a crack. So to get rid of this we use the downslope and if we extend that amount of time it will progressively bring that molten weld pool back to a solid and if we can do that really controlled then this will result in a better weld and hopefully a stronger weld overall.

So with the weld finished, we need to protect the metal as it cools. Post flow refers to the continuation of gas flow after the ark has ceased. It helps us cool the work piece under the shield of argon gas. Aluminium and mild steel don't require post flow but for much more reactive metals like stainless steel and especially titanium, the higher the heat, the longer the post flow that we're going to need. When we're working with aluminium in AC mode, there are a couple of extra settings that will become available and need tweaking.

AC balance is an important one. It's sometimes referred to as cleaning mode because it removes the oxide that naturally forms on the aluminium, even after thoroughly cleaning it. This can be a bit fo a confusing setting to work with because the lower the percentage we use, the more it cleans but also the less penetration we get. So the right balance needs to be found. AC frequency is another aluminium specific setting required for fine tuning our AC welding.

This frequency is measured in hertz and dictates the amount of times per second the machine is alternating the current. A high frequency can be upwards of 100 hertz and focuses the arc for more refined and pinpoint welding. By lowering this frequency to say 50%, we can widen the arc and cause it to jump around and be less focused which also has its uses. So this is just a quick taste of the adjustability of the TIG welder. As you can see, it's extremely in depth so with our physical setup complete, let's get into the welding process and the techniques you'll need to learn to be proficient at TIG welding.

So first, we get into the preparation of our workpiece. This is our material and this has the biggest influence on how well it's going to TIG weld. All metals need to be clean and free of dirt, oxidisation, rust, oils, mil scale or coatings like paint, zinc, galvanising or chrome to produce consistent and clean TIG welds. One thing I like to use here is scotch brite and if you're a regular in our courses then you will know that it has multiple uses in fabrication and TIG welding is one of them. So scotch brite will aid us in the cleaning of our material and allows us to remove that oxidisation off the surface and will in turn give us a cleaner weld.

So this is just a pad of scotch brite, these are available in boxes and are well worth equipping your workshop with. Another thing all metals have in common is that they need to fit properly to achieve a consistent high quality TIG weld. So what I'm talking about here is the fit up between the 2 pieces of metal that you're about to weld. By spending a little extra time fitting our parts correctly, we're going to save much more time in the welding process and ensure our weld is much more controlled and uniform. Inputting too much heat into the join is also going to create more expansion and contraction which leads to the part moving around if it's not sufficiently jigged or clamped.

So regardless of what material we're welding it's important to first test our technique and welder settings. The best way to do this is to grab some scrap metal and begin setting up for a series of test welds. Before we go any further, let's talk about the grip that we have on the torch. Comfort is important when we want to produce a consistent TIG weld. And by holding the torch like a pencil, we gain some more maneuverability with the torch head.

By wrapping the lead around our arm, we can also take a little weight off our wrists to assist in maneuverability. And to give you a bit of a demonstration of that, because I'm using a foot pedal with this lead, it can still get it in the way and it can still be annoying, especially if you're in the car and upside down so usually when holding a TIG torch, I like to hold it like a pencil. Especially with one of these, obviously we don't have the button, it's foot operated, you can really get around the head of it and if you're welding in really low amperage situations and you want the most control out of your torch, you can even move your fingers right up to the head and be able to control it like this. But usually when we're welding, you want to hold the torch like a pencil and by wrapping the lead around your arm you can sometimes put it over your shoulder, give it a little wrap around the arm, you will keep this free and it won't be dragging or getting snagged on any components on the vehicle that you're welding up and then by having a nice tight grip and obviously having gloves on, you'll be able to complete a weld with the most control that you possibly could have. And again, producing a good looking weld has everything to do with that.

So you might be holding the torch correctly and have the right angle but one of the harder things to learn when TIG welding is the proximity of the tungsten to the work piece. So we typically leave it in the range of 3-5 mm away from the weld pool and it can take a lot of practice to control this arc length. Keeping it as short as you can without allowing the electrode to touch the base metal or the filler rod, it can also be beneficial to slightly open up the arc, lifting the torch when introducing the filler rod into the weld pool. So with our dominant hand directing the TIG torch, our other hand will be adding in the filler rod. The weld pool is recognised as a wetting of the material and it should have a bright lustre as it becomes fluid and this will have a big bearing on how much vision you have with your weld and obviously when you're learning to TIG weld you want a nice clear lens on your helmet and then really focus in on that arc and like I said you can notice a wetting of the material or the metal that we're welding so it'll go from a solid, it'll create a little weld pool, there'll start to be agitation in the middle of that and then we can input our filler rod into that and the motion of dipping the filler wire must be carried out within the protected area of the gas stream.

And again this is really handy to have a larger TIG cup on it, especially when we're using materials like titanium. So actually keeping, and it's kind of hard to be able to concentrate on all of these aspects at once when you're learning and it's really important to understand where your filler wire is and you want to keep it really close to the torch and like I said if you find it's easier you can lift up the torch a little and dab your filler rod in but just always make sure that the end of the filler rod is in the gas stream because again that's getting affected by the contaminants in the atmosphere if it isn't. So as soon as you dab some filler into the molten weld pool and begin to move along our weld in a pushing direction, by using a combination of your thumb, index finger and middle finger we can learn to feed the filler rod into the weld pool to create a nice uniform looking bead. Practice this in your spare time so it feels more natural and then when it comes time to weld, you can concentrate on your settings and technique. And what I mean by that is grabbing some filler rod and you can cut it down a little smaller and just do some practice and what you want to achieve, it's probably easier if I do it above here, so what you want to achieve is being able to keep the end of that filler rod really stead whilst inputting it into the weld pool.

So this does take some practice and again it's difficult, if you're using a foot pedal you're concentrating on inputting the amps and then you're concentrating on keeping your tungsten 3-5 mm above the part so that you don't contaminate it and then you're also concentrating on keeping your filler rod within that gas stream and then dabbing it in in a motion that will create a nice looking weld. So there is a lot to think about and again it's practice makes perfect and if you continue to practice your input of filler rod, and you can do it many different ways, then you will get a pretty good idea of what it takes, especially in aluminium welding, to be able to input that and create that stacked dime look that we all strive for of course. So it's common to get a little complacent and forget about the torch positions when we are learning to weld. So remember to keep the arc length as short as possible and favour both halves of the material you are welding equally. And again this comes down to having a clear line of view so make sure your helmet is working properly and it's nice and clean.

So before we do any complete welds, it's important to tack weld our parts first. A tack weld is a small weld that is just large enough to bridge both parts that we are looking to weld together. A good fit up is essesntial to being able to produce a tack that is small in size but big on strength and having a freshly sharpened tungsten is also important here because it will aid in the precise direction of the arc to minimise heat input and direct it into the gap that we're trying to tack. It's also possible to tack without using filler rod in a process called fusion tacking. This is something that I'll demonstrate in a minute and I do a lot of with very important parts like stainless steel and titanium exhaust systems.

A fusion tack works in the same way as a regular tack but instead of using filler rod to join the two parts, we're essentially melting the two parts together. This creates a nice small tack that won't affect the shape of the finished weld like a lump of filler rod sitting on the surface will. So when using multiple tack welds we want to place welds on opposing sides of the workpiece. This ensures that our part is held in place by the opposing tack to reduce the effect of expansion and contraction that we'll have on the weld. So here I've got some pieces of stainless, so this is 2 tubes that we'll join together and I'll take you through the process of tack welding with a TIG and like I said before I'm going to aim to fusion tack these because the fit up is really good.

But first we need to prepare our material and I like to use this scotch brite that I was speaking about before so what we need to do is return the lustre of the natural steel and remove any of the contaminants that are on the outside of it. So by giving it a good shine up just with a rub of scotch brite, and remember if your scotch brite has been used on mild steel and you're looking to weld titanium, aluminium or stainless like I am here, then it's important that your scotch brite hasn't been used on mild steel and I always like to rip a corner of if I have just so that I know I've used it on those other parts and if I use that on my either stainless, titanium or aluminium parts, I'll be inputting some contaminants that I don't want in the weld area. So by cleaning our parts, I'll grab some acetone now. This will give them a nice, this will remove the oils and anything that's on the surface. We just want to give our weld area a nice little clean down.

It's always good to give the area probably 50 mm back from the area that we're welding a good clean as well because if it's got any oils or fingerprints on there then they can burn into the surface and look a little unsightly once we're finished. So now with our acetone out of sight and not being a danger, we can get these parts ready to weld up. I'll put my gloves on because I'm going to be having my hands quite close to the welds. So fit these up and then I'll put my auto darkening weld helmet on. I've just got a fresh screen on this so it should be nice and clear view.

I've just put new batteries in this as well, it's something to always keep in the workshop, make sure that you've got some spare batteries for your helmet in the drawer so that when it runs out at the worst time which it always does, you can whack a few new ones in and continue on with the job. So I'll switch my welder on. So I've got this set of around 130 amps, obviously I'm using a foot pedal so I'm not going to be using all of that. This is 1.6 mm thick material so it'll only take around 75 amps to weld up and especially being stainless, it's got a very slow rate of thermal expansion so most of the heat will stay in the weld area. I just want to make sure that I've got my bottle on, I've got my gas set at 10 litres per minute and then when we're holding the torch, again I like to wrap it around my arm so that the lead isn't hanging down on the edge of my bench.

And then holding the torch like a pen, obviously I don't have a switch on this so I'm up nice and close to the heat. And then I'll position my parts and get them ready to weld. So when doing a tack weld it's important to make sure that the fitup's nice and close and then get in nice and close with your helmet to be able to view the weld and get a nice tack weld on there. So I've got this all set up and ready to go. Get in nice and close like I said, got my foot on the peadal, I'll try not to cover the top camera so that you can see what's going on.

Flip the helmet down, depress the pedal. I'll see the part join, back off the pedal and there we have a tack weld that is nice and low. And now we'll double that up on the other sides so that our part creates a nice strong join, as you can see it's opened up a little there, there's a slight gap. What I like to do here is just press down on the part on the bench to close that up and then create the tack weld on the opposite side. So again the same motion, helmet down, depress the pedal.

See the part join up, back out of the pedal and that's tacked on both sides. So you may hear the gas running before and after the weld is actually shut off, this pre and post flow of gas, and this is a great thing to have, especially when working with reactive metals like stainless and titanium because it allows them to cool and allows you to initiate the arc under the shield of argon. So I'm going to tack this in another 2 places just to make sure that it won't walk around once I'm welding. And if you can imagine this as being one of the primary tubes in a header, then if this is at the start near the flange bolted to the head and you have a merge collector further on down the line, and this has a small gap in it that you're welding up then that expansion and contraction can move a lot and then cause obviously the header to not go back together the way that it was intended. So again we'll do a tack in the same fashion as before.

Helmet down, foot pedal down, pre flow of gas, back off the pedal, post flow of gas. And a nice little sunken tack on there and that's a fusion tack because I'm not using any filler rod. On this one we'll use a little filler rod. This is one that I cleaned before. So then I'll get down nice and close, so when using filler rod, you want to get that is so it's ready to dab into the weld.

Foot pedal down, starting putting some heat, one dab of filler rod, back out. And there we have 4 tacks around our part which is now ready for welding. So when we're welding tube like this it can rock around a little. I'm just going to grab a little V block which I can sit it on. So it can be important to set up the part so that you can produce the best weld that you possibly can.

And what I like to do is I like to go from my tack weld to tack weld. So I'll be doing this in 4 operations. Again using some filler rod to make sure that I'm inputting enough material into the weld so that we get some nice penetration and a nice build up of material and create a nice looking weld. So again I've got my foot pedal here, I'm not using all of my amps but that's one of the good things about it. I'll wrap the lead around my arm, grab the torch like a pen, move in, I sit my tungsten tip about 2-3 mm above the part where I'm starting to initiate the weld and I'm running about 10-15 mm of stick out here so that I've got a really good visual on this part.

I like to do a quick dry run so that I can move the part and just make sure that I'm comfortable from start to finish and then we can get into the weld. So then keep the filler rod in the gas zone, depress the pedal. I can see the 2 parts coming together. I need to adjust the sensitivity on my helmet. Sometimes when you're welding parts that are shiny like this, the helmets can have a real hard time in sensing what is the weld and what is a reflection.

So sometimes you may have to turn up the sensitivity which can get a little annoying but at least we have the option to do so. So again, getting down in there. My helmet's working now, can input the filler and just move around the weld. Dabbing my filler rod in as I go, I'm going to do this 180° on my opposite tacks just to keep everything pretty uniform. You might notice here I'm not feeding my material in, I'm not using enough of that to have to do that and this is pretty common with smaller parts, you'll just hold the filler and just move it in as you work through it.

It can also be good for learning, you might not have the whole process down so taking one of the variables out of it can help. Alright so now we'll join both of these welds. Depress the pedal, or if I had a button on the torch I'd push that down. Input the filler rod once you see that molten ball of weld. And then with a nice clear line of sight, we can see when our weld bridges to our opposite weld.

So now I've just got a quarter of my tube to go. It's making it much easier on these little V blocks. And then setting up. And repeating the process, this would be exactly the same for mild steel. And titanium.

Aluminium there will be a fair amount of heat, I'd have to have my hand back here. Which I might do for this one. Depressing the foot pedal, pre flow of gas. Backing out of the weld slightly with my foot as I come around to the heated section. And that weld's complete.

So I'm not sure how much focus you have there but that's a nice neat little stainless TIG weld. That would be 1 in maybe 100 that sit on an exhaust system. So one of the things that we want to take note about after we've welded our part, we want to look at the colouring in it. For stainless steel, obviously shiny with a little bit of a blue and gold tinge is really good. You don't want any browning or a haze over it, that means that you may have had some issues with the amount of gas flow over the part and if it's mild steel, again the brown haze will lead to some sort of issues with your weld and that's contamination.

In titanium, if our part has wild colours all running through it, we're sort of looking for a straw goldy coloured in the welding of titanium. Anything other is reaction to atmosphere which is difficult to get rid of. But again using a larger cup and enough gas flow on 100% argon should allow you enough coverage on your part. So I'll take my helmet off now, glad I put new batteries in it, otherwise that would have not gone too well. Can be frustrating again with the reflection of shiny parts when you're TIG welding.

Your helmet sort of flicks in and out and it's a bit of a worry. So remember if you have any questions, then type them into the chat now and I'll get the team to queue them up. Sahus asks, we are planning to build and complete an exhaust system, is there any calculation to the size of the tubes and also for reinforcement build as well such as roll cages, so if you can please mention them. Really good question Sahus and this is about, well it's got a lot to do with the motor that you're using to build an exhaust system for. Usually you'll find that those other people that are building motors will have probably spent a fair bit of time working this out and usually we try and match the exhaust port size to the diameter.

For instance, in my 2 litre SR20 4 cylinder, I used 1.75 inch outside diameter tubing. This works out to be around 44 mm outside with a 1.6 wall thickness. We have about an internal diameter of a little over 40 mm which matches the exhaust port and once you ovalise these, so when they come out of the head, it's a nice flow into that header diameter. So when I was working this out, there are some equations that you can do, we'll get into all of this in our specific exhaust manifold course that's coming up but in terms of dimensions and placement of your tubes and the intersection of these, so your primary tube that runs into a merge collector, usually a longer primary will create a torquier setup and favour higher RPM. So this has a lot to do with the dynamics and what you're looking to do with the vehicle in terms of roll cages.

This is usually a specific question for you motorsport governing body. So here in Australia, we have a really stringent set of rules that says that we have to run a 1.75 inch main hoop. So that's 44.45 mm in diameter and then all other tubes can be 1.5 inch or 38.1 mm in diameter. And we have a stipulation that we have to run 2.6 mm wall thickness. So if you contact your governing body or the racetrack where you're looking to participate at or if you're just looking to do some club days or something, just make sure that your material that you're going to choose is applicable to those and will allow you to compete in those events.

And I always suggest that even if you're not building a car for competition, still look into these 'cause they'll give you a really good idea on what type of strength that we need to have in the roll cage. Otherwise you might build something that even yourself as you get further on and want to enjoy your car more, you might want to start racing in that series or you might sell the car and it'll be a real downpoint to the purchase of the new owner having to redo that cage so if you're going to do something, do it properly. Like I said, here in Australia we have some pretty stringent rules on this stuff and yeah it's up to your to work out where you live, head to your local racetrack, talk to the people that are there and they should give you some guidance on the diameter of tubes to use for your application. Ox asks, is it bad to sharpen the tungsten with a dedicated flap disc? Not at all, I always say that a sharp tungsten is better than a blunt one, doesn't matter how you sharpen it, it will still give you better results than one that is contaminated. So like I said, I usually use the drill method just because it gives me some, I guess it gives a nice grain structure on the actual sharpness of the tungsten.

I have been known to, if I'm in the field or if I'm doing some repairs on my vehicle and I don't have a bench grinder, or if you work in a shop that doesn't have a bench grinder, then you can always use a handheld grinder and then hold that up wearing all your PPE of course, and sharpen the tungsten as you go. So this is fine and for mild steel look even if your flapper disc isn't dedicated to that material, then it won't really matter as long as your tungsten is sharp and is covered with enough argon. It'll do a pretty reasonable job but especially if you're working with stainless, titanium, even aluminium then it's a really good idea to dedicate a wheel on a bench grinder to sharpening your tungsten. And even in situations where dedicated titanium welders will have a dedicated wheel on their grinder for titanium, just to ensure that you're not inputting any contaminants into that material and this can also be a bit of a point with aluminium. Where as soon as we bring a contaminant into that weld, things can get pretty messy pretty quickly so yep I agree, just grab a flap disc and as long as it's fairly clean, that'll be fine for mild steel and the majority of other metals.

But I wouldn't recommend it for those more, the metals that have high levels of contamination. So water cooled vs air cooled, so Matt has a question here. So when we talk about water cooled TIGs, what we're talking about is the lead that runs into them will have water that passes through and actually around the torch head. So what this does is in high amperage situations, which is typical of aluminium welding, we could be doing welding up a fuel tank for instance, where we have a metre of welding and we need to go non stop from one end to the other. The amound of heat that comes into the head can actually start to damage all the components.

And not only that, it makes it hard to hold onto so when we're talking about a water cooled TIG, what it will have is a separate unit that actually has a water cooler in it, which is kind of like an oil cooler. So the water will run through that, it'll have a little fan, a cooling setup and then it'll have an in and an out of water that runs through the head and makes everything cool, well not cool but not hot enough that it won't damage anything. But usually in motorsports if we're doing a lot of mild steel work then it's pretty rare to even be close to 200 amps. But definitely in aluminium fabrication if you're doing a lot of it then a water cooled TIG can really come in handy. But for most of us at home who don't want the added expense of a water cooler then all we have to do is do a section of welding, maybe leave the torch for a couple of minutes while you go do something else and then come back to your job.

It should be cool enough to then continue on but definitely it does help if you're in the field of doing a lot of welding and especially AC welding on aluminium, you can cool the torch and have a better time in doing it once it's all cooled down. I've got the guys typing in something else there. That's all, it's not a question, it's just a statement. But again, guys I've had over the last 10 years a great time TIG welding, as soon as I picked up this skill, it allowed me to do so much more than just welding. So when I started fabrication, I learned the process of MIG welding and then it wasn't until I learned the process of TIG welding that it opened up a whole raft of amazing opportunities in welding aluminium, in doing amazing titanium and stainless work and just being able to really control the weld and not only that, the cleanliness of it really helps in motorsport.

It's not practical for us to be covering everything up all the time. If you just want to weld a tab on in an engine bay on a bit of tube then it can be quite easy to grab the TIG, set up on the car and not have to cover anything up. Of course we have to check for leaks, that's a big part of the process of checking ourselves for PPE and checking our workplace for any safety dramas but it's easy just to grab the TIG and weld some stuff on, you don't have to worry about spatter getting on glass, burning through seats. We can do some really really clean work and again, if you practice on your filler rod technique, so if you constantly practice just keeping the end of it really nice and controlled in the feeding motion, then that's going to help a lot in taking one of the variables out of learning to TIG weld so a lot of the times we have some really close fit ups and we want to concentrate on keeping the tungsten really close to the part, like I said, 3 mm would be ideal. Then we can really concentrate on keeping that filler rod in the zone of the gas.

Again it's not a huge thing on aluminium but especially on titanium and stainless steel and it helps on mild steel. Keeping all of these priorities and also then concentrating on the amount of heat that you're putting in. So again it is interesting in the fact that by using lower amps, you can sometimes input more heat into the material but create a slower and a less good looking weld than running higher amps, creating a nice fast weld and that will in turn input less heat into it. So maybe work on that and some of the dramas that I see coming from a lot of people who are beginning to weld is sometimes they're not running enough amperage. So I always suggest running a little more to begin with and then obviously getting your process down just so that you're not struggling with creating a nice weld pool and the rest of it isn't flowing for you.

So always grab some scraps and then get into that process and make sure that you understand your material before you jump into your actual job. So thanks for joining me today guys and I hope that you picked up a new skill or a tip that will come in useful during your next weld. Again, thanks for choosing ETS Fab and thanks for joining us today for the TIG welding webinar.