Bad Argon Maxstar 150 troubles?

[ny_racer_xxx]

I was having troubles tig welding just plain steel with my maxstar. I was getting very porous welds, tungsten spitting, unstable arc, you name it. This is a machine I have had for 3+ years, very light duty personal machine.
I swapped torches, thinking maybe air was getting in, same. I did notice the flow meter reading 0 on the high side, but 20 cfm on the low side, so I swapped out the dial meter for my better, ball type flow meter, same.
I swapped out the bottle, for another Argon, and it seemed to weld better.
I have never seen or heard of a "bad" bottle of argon, has anybody else?

CR

[paulrbrown]

ny, got a bad bottle of argon about 8 months ago, thought it was me??? I had just started at a new shop, new equipment, ect, was getting porosity and brown smut around steel welds, finally switched out bottle and Voila....no more problems, sometimes a newbie or ole lazy dog at filling station will not vacumn down the cylinder, that was what the Gas guy said, no problem in switching out for us either, hope this helps, Paul

[FusionKing]

ny, got a bad bottle of argon about 8 months ago, thought it was me??? I had just started at a new shop, new equipment, ect, was getting porosity and brown smut around steel welds, finally switched out bottle and Voila....no more problems, sometimes a newbie or ole lazy dog at filling station will not vacumn down the cylinder, that was what the Gas guy said, no problem in switching out for us either, hope this helps, Paul

I got one the day before yesterday myself...first one in a couple years...threw me for a loop. I could work it out of the newer billet aluminum by tuning around, but the old castings gave me fits.
It was on my Dynasty. If it had been the freekbox on the Bobber I would have caught it in a second.

[fabricator]

yup,been there too.

[ny_racer_xxx]

The crazy stuff that happens!!! I don't do allot of Tig anymore, and you gotta think, "what am I doing wrong"? I did SS process welding with a schlep company, and there was always issues, welders were f'd up, torches were always broken, cuts in the hoses, and I think we had bad Ar also, hard to single out the one issue. I just wanted to make sure my welder was OK.

Thanks guys....

CR

[Don52]

I had a bad bottle of Argon earlier in the summer. I checked connections and then I went back to my gas company for a second bottle. Same problem with the second bottle. I had my friend bring over his small bottle that I had previously used on his welder earlier in the summer. I tried it on my welder and it worked fine. It turned out the entire batch of gas at my supplier was bad. They got some moisture in their big argon storage tank as it got near the bottom. To test it I did the following:

*Put a clean tungsten in my torch
*Hit the pedal briefly to turn on the pre purge gas
*Held the torch about 3/32 from the metal and established an arc
*Held the arc for about 20 seconds then let up on the pedal
*Held the torch in place until the purge gas stopped.

When I examined the tungsten it had a dark purple band on it near the collet. If the argon was clean the tungsten should have been silver.