SportAir TIG Workshop

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Completed the first day of the EAA SportAir Workshop for TIG welding. A fella learns a lot about himself when stuck behind a darkened mask for eight hours. This course had previously been taught at Lincoln Electric in Griffin, GA, but has been moved to Oshkosh.

Taught by Mr TIG himself, Wyatt Swaim, a wealth of information was distributed by the man who is probably the leading expert on the technology. Best thing is that he’s approachable, loves to tell stories about his own welding experiences, and a joy to be around. If you’ve watched the EAA TIG Welding video, or watched TIG Time on YouTube, that’s the guy.

We did the usual stuff, like creating tacks, doing weld runs, etc. Then lap welds, butt welds, T joints, and the other routines that humble you in a hurry. Then had some fun with tubing.

They plan to create an advanced class that centers more around fabrication, as this course is meant to cover the basics. That should be fun when it comes about. But I just took matters into my own hands toward the end of the day as I simulated a strap hinge and did some other fun things that I’d learned from Earl Luce during gas welding workshops.

Saturday was mild steel and chromoly tubing. Sunday will be aluminum and stainless.

I can see why alaskabearhawk is a fan of building his Bearhawk with this technique. The amount of control is pretty spectacular. Now I just have to figure out the right combination of shade darkness and reading glass magnification to see well.

[Peter Bishton]

There are some nice welds there Chris
keep it up!
Peter

[Ed Welfred]

What did they suggest regarding post heating TIG welds on 4130?

[John Bickham]

Wow, I attended that same workshop many years ago. You are super lucky to have Mr Wyatt as instructor. Being a "mature" tig welder and having just welded the last tab on my fuselage, i found i needed a couple of different cheater glasses. Sometimes your body and head position are dictated by the structure around you. So the distance varied at times.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

What did they suggest regarding post heating TIG welds on 4130?

Leave it alone. No post heating. As a matter of fact, the only time you’ll have to preheat 4130 is if it’s 0.125” plate or thicker.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Wow, I attended that same workshop many years ago. You are super lucky to have Mr Wyatt as instructor. Being a "mature" tig welder and having just welded the last tab on my fuselage, i found i needed a couple of different cheater glasses. Sometimes your body and head position are dictated by the structure around you. So the distance varied at times.

I’ve certainly had to switch between the 1.50x, 1.75x, and 2.00x reading glasses I brought with me depending on what I was working on.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Fun with aluminum.



Quick note: stainless and aluminum look a lot alike. No matter how hard you try, they won’t weld together worth a hoot

[Zzz]

Being able to see the work is the single most important element of welding. I've struggled too with this aspect. I don't need magnification, but it took me a while to realize that the shade recommendation of 12+ for TIG was for AC welding. In order to see the 40A or so I use on .035 mild steels, I had to dial the shade down to 9.5. If I'm going to weld aluminum (AC @ 85A+), I dial it back up to 12.5 or so.

Nice welding, Chris. There's no substitute for getting direct instruction. I have toiled alone at home for a couple years and still struggle.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Stainless is painless. Sorta.



Covered all of the metal types. Gonna go back and play with 4130 some more.

[Zzz]

Leave it alone. No post heating. As a matter of fact, the only time you’ll have to preheat 4130 is if it’s 0.125” plate or thicker.

However, this assumes that you didn't overheat the weld. If the metal around your weld is shiny and has that rainbow look to the heat-affected zone, all good. If it's dull and greyish, it's probably overheated, resulting in potential embrittlement at the joint, thus nullifying the desirable ductile properties of 4130. Or so I have read.

I'm not sure if post-heat can fix the embrittlement issue, or if it's just a done deal after that.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

I’m sure I have a few samples like that, especially with my tubing welds chasing holes and burn-backs around the mulberry bush.

[Chewie]

That's impressive for one weekend, heck even for one day. My first gas welds after 8 hours did NOT look like that.

[fairchild]

Chris--- DANGER--- YOU MAY BE BECOMING ADDICTED ! :-)
A couple things you can do to improve rapidly---
when you are heating the work ahead of the last dip-- you can "walk" the arc forward about 1/8 inch and then back to the last dip. This will help uniform the heat and the profile
of the bead as well as encourage the puddle to flow forward. especially on aluminum and stainless even more.
On stainless -- get the arc length down to 1 mm if you can- and use the absolute smallest about of current- and move very slowly. Dont rush. If you get good you can do it without any
discoloration at all. (not me though)
On your pic that says "120Hz"---- in the middle of the bead you can see the area where the lateral edge of the puddle meets the work. Right there you can see there is a broken
edge look to it..... if you compare that same area but on the right end- there is no saw-blade look there. They call that the "toe" of the weld - if you see it looking like a saw
blade you need a bit more heat. That pattern is a sign that the edge didnt intermingle with the base completely. Aluminum is such a heat sucker its easy to get too cool.
I think people who try TIG either love it and are immediately hooked or they know right away they dont get it or dont want to.
Your next step in the addiction process is to admit you need your own welder. You can call your fellow welders if you feel yourself weakening-- and well remind you that
the monster must be fed. Soon we will see you on the news under the expressway overpass with a cup and a cardboard sign that says "will work for argon" ...... Then
its all downhill from there :-)
T

PS---- I have watches swain online--- but I think a better source of instruction is Jody at weldingtipsandtricks.com
I think he is a better welder and also better teacher. IMHO----- I find Jodys vids more complete. Swains are a little too
simplistic to satisfy me usually. Plus Jody does lots of equipment reviews. Good honest opinions.

[Chris In Milwaukee]

Chris--- DANGER--- YOU MAY BE BECOMING ADDICTED ! :-)
A couple things you can do to improve rapidly---
when you are heating the work ahead of the last dip-- you can "walk" the arc forward about 1/8 inch and then back to the last dip. This will help uniform the heat and the profile
of the bead as well as encourage the puddle to flow forward. especially on aluminum and stainless even more.
On stainless -- get the arc length down to 1 mm if you can- and use the absolute smallest about of current- and move very slowly. Dont rush. If you get good you can do it without any
discoloration at all. (not me though)
On your pic that says "120Hz"---- in the middle of the bead you can see the area where the lateral edge of the puddle meets the work. Right there you can see there is a broken
edge look to it..... if you compare that same area but on the right end- there is no saw-blade look there. They call that the "toe" of the weld - if you see it looking like a saw
blade you need a bit more heat. That pattern is a sign that the edge didnt intermingle with the base completely. Aluminum is such a heat sucker its easy to get too cool.
I think people who try TIG either love it and are immediately hooked or they know right away they dont get it or dont want to.
Your next step in the addiction process is to admit you need your own welder. You can call your fellow welders if you feel yourself weakening-- and well remind you that
the monster must be fed. Soon we will see you on the news under the expressway overpass with a cup and a cardboard sign that says "will work for argon" ...... Then
its all downhill from there :-)
T

PS---- I have watches swain online--- but I think a better source of instruction is Jody at weldingtipsandtricks.com
I think he is a better welder and also better teacher. IMHO----- I find Jodys vids more complete. Swains are a little too
simplistic to satisfy me usually. Plus Jody does lots of equipment reviews. Good honest opinions.

Thanks so much for the feedback! I'm pretty sure I am, indeed, addicted. I first touched a TIG at AirVenture a couple of years ago. Shortly afterward, I went over to the Lincoln tent and bought the Square Wave 200 (same unit we used at the workshop and in class this weekend). I really wanted to go to Georgia to take the 2-day TIG workshop held at Lincoln. I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out they moved it to Oshkosh. I had signed up for September, but it was overbooked, and they had another one this past weekend. They're having a third in a few weeks. So it must have been a success.

Appreciate the observation about the aluminum welding. The 120Hz that I scratched into the surface was so I could take a look at the difference between a 60Hz weld and a 120Hz weld. For the uninitiated, the Lincoln 200 is an inverter machine, which means a computer manages the output (gross oversimplification). It also means that when welding aluminum with AC, you can adjust the frequency of the energy used for welding, in addition to the balance of the waveform (more or less positive versus negative portion of the AC energy). Anyway, I found I like 120Hz early on because the cleaning action seemed to be more aggressive (higher frequency, cleaned more often), allowing me to move at a more comfortable speed. But I need more practice to find the sweet spot for me.

When I finished that aluminum weld, I cleaned it off with a stainless brush, and I saw that edge formation you noted. I wondered about it and asked Wyatt about it. He said it was a normal part of the cleaning action. I realize that this was an intro class and we probably weren't going to get far into the chemistry and what-not of welds and some of the finesse options. I'm sure the goal of this weekend was just to make sure we could get two pieces of metal to stick together. I appreciate your description of the nuances of these kinds of welds. It will certainly help me become a better welder as time goes on. We also received a book from Lincoln specifically about welding aluminum. I'll have to give it a look and see if it points out some of the same.

The stainless was as you described. Tiny puddle, very slow, but clean. The tiny pieces we were welding heated up pretty quickly, so you could get booking in a hurry, and would have to back off on the foot pedal to reduce the amperage and slow things down a bit. But I do like the way it welds.

Welding plate was fairly straightforward. It wasn't too difficult all said, although it did take some practice to figure out how to aim the heat in various joint configurations. Tubing joints were another thing altogether. I chased a lot of holes over the weekend. And as Zzz described, I'm quite sure I completely destroyed the metallurgy attempting to "fix" things. But damn it all if I was going to let a hole stare me in the face! When I have some more time, I'm going to have to work the heck out of some tubing joints, and practice with different current selections. The problem with this particular class is we didn't have anything much in the way of tooling or blocks and the link for jigging up these kinds of structures. So I was rigging up all kinds of material that I had previously welded in an attempt to hold something steady so I could get a tack on it, run a weld around it, or whatever.

The advanced version of this course, which will hopefully be soon (if not this year yet) will focus on structures and fabrication. Things like fuselage construction, stainless exhaust systems, and other things more pertinent to homebuilding (or motorsports, or anything else of the sort). They make the first course a prerequisite, or some amount of TIG experience beforehand. Otherwise I suspect it's going to throw some folks for a loop. Throw somebody a couple pieces of stainless tubing and tell them to join them without having touched a torch might be a bit much.

Long winded reply, I know. But glad to share this experience with others who may be considering the same. There are several experienced welders in this group, so always happy to discuss the topic!

~Chris

[Chris In Milwaukee]

One side note, I think that the SportAir Gas Welding Workshop really, really, REALLY helped prepare me for this. I already had a picture in my mind of what welds are supposed to look like. So I had a decent frame of reference in my mind of where to apply heat and such. Being taught by Earl Luce really helped, too.