Newbie with 200DX

[kpsxtyone]

i turned the ac balance all the way left to -30 and no difference in etching. I was hoping it to be almost as small as the bead.

Is there something wrong here?

[performance]

A possibility is an issue with the speed you are welding. You really shouldn't try to learn with pulse. You should be learning to master regular steel first, then aluminum and the start to figure in pulse. If you are welding too slow, a wide cleaning area can be observed. When you adjust the AC balance, what clock position do you start getting good balling? What tungsten are you using? What gas flow rate according to the gauge on the EVERLAST Argon meter?

[dgarnier]

I didnt want to hijack the thread, but I also have/had the same problem....and from what little I have learned so far it looks you might have too long of an arc - the welding tricks ant tips guy said the thickness of the tungsten is a good rule of thumb for your arc length. Plus some of my first aluminum welds looks just like yours, wide and lots of ecthing. I had to turn the AC freq all the way up to get a narrower bead. After talking with Mark he suggested that I tighten up the arc length, ans sure enugth I was able to set the AC freq back to noon and get a narrower bead and well and slim down the ecthing.

I am running a 3/32 thoriated tungsten, and 10cfh of argon with a number 6 cup.
Here is the tungsten at the start


All 4 test were run AC freq set and noon, 90amps but using the foot pedal floored to start and then backing it down to 3/4 once the puddle gets going
Bead A has the AC Bal set all the way to the left
Bead B had it set to 9oclock
Had a bad start for bead C and got the tungsten too close, then put in another tungsten and ran bead C with the AC Bal at noon. After the down slope I noticed some somke from the tungsten, so I bumped up the post flow from 8oclock to 11oclock
Bead D I set the AC Bal to 1oclock and in my test run it balled up, so bead D started with the balled up tungsten. Not sure how people welded like that in the past because the arc really wanted to wander, unless I floored the petal.


And the tungsten after the bead from D

[performance]

dgarnier,
You will get even better results if you sharpen the tungsten back a little more.

[dgarnier]

To more of a point? or give it a longer taper?

[Timberwolf]

I think he's saying a longer taper. I sharpen mine with less of an angle like yours for better penetration and sharper/less angle for more precise work. it's balling because you're cleaning is up way too high (look at the etching in your pics) and the tungsten can't handle the heat so it balls up.

[dgarnier]

Am I setting the amps too low? If you look at bead A you can see that in order to get the puddle going it took some time and the etching keeps growing, then as the puddle got going I was able to move along and the etching thins out to just about nothing, and keep in mind that I had the AC balance set all the way to the left for that bead.

I did grind a tungsten with a taper about 3 times the length and I can see how it help to keep the arc focused, but the odd thing was it didn’t seem to penetrate as much as the bead seemed to stack up more than sink in to the base metal.


Also good luck with the video - getting the focus, white balance to all work out so you can seen the arch is no easy task...or it just be my POS camera..either way I tried for an hour to get some footage and it all sucked