Tungsten balling up, what's wrong

[diyjer]

Gee,

That's not the tungsten balling up.

It looks like you've dipped your tungsten in the puddle. That's the molten metal jumping onto the tungsten. When you do that, it's time to regrind all of that off, every time that happens. Get a nice taper with a longitudinal grind on it. Keep a close arc, but without touching the puddle.

If you don't keep the tungsten free from dipping metal, it can/will often spit back particles into the puddle and make more mess.

Additionally, it looks like you're welding on galvanized. And even though it looks like you've ground off the strand to be welded, nearby galvanized/zinc coating has a tendency of contamination jumping up on the tungsten and making a mess. I mean, you can join galvanized stuff, but it can be more messy, and the fumes are toxic too.

What's your Argon flow rate? 15 CFH or 7 Liters for about 100 amps is a place to start.

That cup size looks a little small, or is that just a larger style gas lens?

Try some nice cold-rolled steel or hot-rolled steel with the mill scale ground off of it, so that what you're TIG welding is bright, clean metal alone.

i can tell you with all honesty, i did not dip the tungsten in the puddle. and how about the previous photo i uploaded which really shows the balling up and no spatters. i've done this so many times. i know when i dipped my tungsten into the puddle. i've posted another photo prior to this. it's the same thing. this is just worst. and with my cigweld, even if i dip the tungsten into the puddle, it's not like this as well. nowhere near. look, everytime i do this testing, i will grind 10 lanthanated adn 2 ceriated tungsten to a nice taper. so evereytime it will ball up, i will change it to a new one.

i also ground two galvanized metals where i did grind the whole surface as in clean metal. it's the same result. i hate saying this, but i tig welded galvanized with my cigweld 175i and there was no issue. i also tig welded a combination of cold-rolled steet and galvanized and no issue with cigweld.

and yes, what you can see here is a larger style gas lens.

but i'm open to any possibility, so i will weld clean metal alone tomorrow. which is kind of odd because are we saying 255ext is limited? too picky? but i'm willing to do anything just to pinpoint the real problem.

now i don't know anymore. i thought using pure argon will solve it. i'm not a welder, but i've welded with tig before with a few projects around the house. funny thing is, i was not even using 100% argon with cigweld but it gave me decent welds. as i've said, i just don't like that machine because there's no foot pedal, i have to turn on and turn off the gas on the torch valve itself, it's lift tig, and it's very basic. but it never gave me this kind of problem. as you can see, i welded fine in the photo i posted here which is a combination of galvanized iron which i grind only on the edge where it meets the cold steel. no problem at all and i can say it's a very good weld compared to my weld using the 255ext. i have done a considerable tig weld with similar appearance and strength.

for 255ext, my flow rate is 15 chf. i've tried 12chf as well. i've also tried a little over 15chf with 255ext. i even videod the flow meter using my phone just to make sure the ball is going up as it's supposed to during actual welding. i set the flow rate using the purge button. i believe i'm doing things by the book except using 100% argon which i already did today.

sorry for my english. it's not my native tongue. i'm trying to explain as best as i could what is happening.



how about this? is this not balling up?



again, thanks for inputs.