FINALLY got to use a TIG today! A few Q's

[DusterRT]

Well, it finally happened! Something worthy of me coming out of lurk mode for, lol. I've been looking forward to trying TIG out for a long, long time. I had a guy run me through the setup of the machine the other day but I pretty well just sat down on my own for a few hours today. This is at the mini-formula shop at my school (SIUC), a couple of the guys are fairly experienced but no resident experts are on hand..anyway.

At first, it was really weird. Not point and shoot like the MIG! It was frustrating at first but I'm starting to get the hang of it (and am glad the grinder is near by for the frequent trips to clean off the electrode). I think I've found a couple things that would give me problems though..

1. I'm welding on .080" wall 4130 tube. I'm told this isn't the easiest stuff to weld..or is it just not the easiest stuff to weld correctly?

2. The filler rod I used for 98% of what I was doing was 3/32" 4130. IIRC, isn't stainless ideal for 4130? And it's way thick..I wasn't too sure about this until I dug around and found an 8" piece of 1/32" rod with "ER70S-2" (stainless?) and proceeded to lay down some extremely impressive beads as compared to what I had been doing. There was some thicker mild steel laying around that I put together with the thick rod and it came out really well. Is this more the change of material, or the thickness? I also tried some .025" MIG wire but it was too thin for what I was doing (it was melting before I could get it to the puddle).

3. The guy who showed me how to set up the welder suggested the gas be set to 35 CFM. This seems pretty high to me, I think I saw TIG-God Matt say he used 15 CFM somewhere?

4. Anyone want to reccomend some welding gloves? The ones we have are bulky, and expecially with the filler rod, make things harder to control. On the other hand, it doesn't take long for that torch to get HOT! I think I now know why people are so big on water cooled units..maybe I'll just get a leftie..

Well that's all I've got for now. I'll get some pics soon if anyone would be interested in critiquing my work..and thanks for any input!

Travis