Making a puddle and dipping the filler into said puddle.

Yesterday I think I found another issue with my welder. The current in my welder is controlled by a saturable reactor and the DC coil in that reactor is fed by an 80v transformer varied through a TRIAC then converted to DC through a small bridge. Yesterday I discovered that bridge is letting a significant amount of AC voltage through it. I removed it from the welder and tested it on the bench. I got on allied electronics and ordered a new bridge along with the correct POT for in my foot pedal and hopefully this will cure the little issues I'm having with my welder. Unstable arc in HIGH range on AC(DC arc is quite smooth but on DC there is a large inductor that smooths out the current variations), not a lot of cleaning action when in AC, and the fact that I can hold a sharpened point on a PURE tungsten at 150A on AC on a transformer machine! In fact it barely melts the point off when I have the machine set at 200A(I'm not reaching full power because of the foot-pedal POT) but from what I understand a transformer machine shouldn't hold a point on a pure tungsten on AC very well. Tungsten size has been 3/32".