Tiging Stainless Steel

[GaryM]

I did some practicing today with some 1/8 stainless dont know the alloy. Well I have a project where i am going to make a mixing tank for some cemicals.

The pics here are
First; no filler outside corner
Second; inside the same piece in the first pic walking the cup (its reather smooth the only places that are not different was when the filler rod would ball up and not flow in.)

I used 100%argon why or why not should a argon/helium/Co2 be used??

Tell me what you think about the welds.


Gary

[dyn88]

looks nice although the outside corner appears to be all undercut. Never use co2 with tig it makes a **** of a mess, helium,argon,nitrogen, are all the gases i ever use and im not aware of any other.

[arcdawg]

looks good ...........i like 2% thor and 100% argon and i tend to fuse most of my stainless work.... if the fit up is good !

dawg !!!!

[sparx]

hydrogen

Hey guys.... I have done a bit of tig on stainless myself, and found that for the 300 series stainless (and only on 300 series), a mix of argon/2% Hydrogen or 5% hydrogen does wonders. The biggest problem with welding on stainless, is it flows like molases. the addition of hydrogen in the mix increases fluidity of the puddle, and increases travel speed. I have done some timed testing of outside corner welds with no filler on 3/16 x 10" coupons. results were pretty cool.... timed at 10 seconds, using pure argon got about 4-1/2" of weld. Using 2% hydrogen mix, same settings, got about 6-1/2" of weld. Using 5% hydrogen mix, ran out of plate at about 8 seconds. Heat affected zone is drastically reduced because of travel speed, and welds have great color match with that beautiful gold tint to the weld.
will see if I can get some pics, and post them here.
my 2 cents worth on this.

regards
Paul

[GaryM]

Cool i hope to see some pics from that!


Gary

[bluecollar]

i'd put some filler in that corner weld. i used to do alot of fusion welding on SS until it bit me in the ***. they will crack over time.
the fillet weld looks pretty good.