dfows

[dfows]

GTAW - week 4 and 5

Neglected to update for a few classes.

We started on aluminum. AC welding! Weird. Don't understand it

Settings

Shoddy penetration; I didn't understand how to manage the puddle. Also I can't get rid of this weird dimple at the end.

Second class:

Varying levels of penetration slightly better than first class

Third class:

I tried to practice autogeneous tacking because a fellow student asked me to demonstrate and I was like ... dude I can't show you what I do because what I do sucks...

I have so much cracking. Rich said "make sure the material is clean" ummmm I guess I don't really scrub the edges so there's probably aluminum oxide? but it's not changing color which is the only way I know there's contamination so idfk

I tried out the different frequencies. Can't really tell the difference between them. I still can't really make a consistently nice bead. I did separate my diff settings on diff plates so at least I can see what I did for each setting, but they're all ugly/defective in different ways.

Fourth class:

Played around with the balance today. %Balance is the % of time spent in electrode negative, based on my current setup.

I've noticed that I was struggling with melting the puddle at 60% but didn't chalk it up to the setting because I thought it was just my lack of skill.

85% balance was pretty smooth once I got the hang of it. 75% was good too but I got some cracking that I didn't get with the other settings. I really need to fix the cracking. Since I've started getting VISIBLE cracks last class, I feel like I'm cursed now and I'm never gonna be free of it.

[dfows]

GTAW - week 3 of lab

Monday was President's Day, so we only had class on Wednesday.

Wednesday: I had a massive headache from work and I still have one. I was able to groove out to this awesome song while trying to get good penetration on my welds.

Today's settings were: 50A and 200PPS and 30% background. I varied the % Peak, starting with 70% and then trying 60% and 50% because I was hoping to have less heat.

I have photos of me tryna accomplish shit but it's mostly me not achieving good penetration, which is starting to bother the f out of me. I'm sick of thinking that I had the right puddle size/heat and then flipping the plate over and I have nothing.

Even on a fuckin butt joint! Man. I had one small section that was good, but I did it on my scrap plate. I was remembering the photos in the textbook about the keyhole forming? which I think was referring to aluminum but I figured it might be a good way to gauge penetration for steel buttjoints too.

Anyway I'm tired and my head hurts and I am gonna get home way too late.

[dfows]

GTAW - week 2 of lab

Monday

So we're supposed to have a butt joint, lap joint, and tee joint to hand in by the end of the week. And at the rate I'm going, I am not gonna do good. I am not getting any penetration and I do not know why. Is it my max amperage? Should I increase it past 60?

I kept doing bead on plate to get used to the different pulser settings. Since I know that the optimal PPS is from 100-200, I was messing around with different % peak and % background.

My welding is too inconsistent to reveal anything, except that I suck LOL

Towards the end of class I finally figured out a couple passes that had decent penetration and were quite neat. I was basically keeping the pedal pressed down all the way, which made it too hot at the end of the bead LOL because I was getting cloudiness.

Some decent portions with decent penetration (not shown but trust me LOL)

Also I suck at autogenous tack welding because the penetration literally made holes.

Wednesday

I definitely did not practice with the pulser today. I kept it at 60Amps, 200PPS (changed it at one point to 175PPS) 50% peak and 30% background. I was trying to remember how to do lap joints and tee joints, and I suck at both.

But we got an extension on this homework so I have another class to get it together.

We also talked about how we should be using the pulser to match our welding styles and purpose wrt arc shape and heat vs travel speed.

I'll have to keep that in mind next week.

[dfows]

GTAW - first week of lab

Monday: We helped the beginner students set up: taught them how to examine the torch, turn on the machine, turn on the gas, and set their settings. I did a bead to demonstrate and it wasn't great. I apologized. But then later in the class I did another bead which was much nicer! And I was pleased.

You can see I did mess up at the end there but whatever! Still kinda got it.

Wednesday: Today we did pulser. I was mostly just practicing normal welding; not super concerned about watching the settings, as I'm sure my welding is so inconsistent that it wouldn't reflect the pulser aspect.

The whole theory of the pulser is that by modulating the amount of current coming out of ... the electrode?, the electrons are more focused and coming out faster. There's an optimal pulse rate (around 200 pulses per second (PPS)) wherein the arc changes characteristic and becomes more narrow, which provides better penetration (because it's the same amount of current but in a smaller area) and that increases travel speed which also means the amount of heat applied to the material is decreased. Also the narrower arc has a smaller heat-affected zone (HAZ).

So I went through all the recommended settings and to be honest, I did not have good penetration for any setting. I did however notice that the plate was not hot! I was very surprised, because previously when welding without pulser, my coupons were getting so hot that I had to rotate btwn them and also they would sometimes warp. I had 3 coupons today, in preparation of rotating them, but there was no need.

We are working with mild steel.

Anyway here are some photos with settings labeled. My stupid phone has a glitch such that the markup feature will crash if i try to change the font color. I was able to get around this one time which is why there is one photo in which the text is white (it's not more readable unfortunately) but I could not reproduce.

I do very much enjoy tig because it feels much more like a small art project and not like a giant metal block that I have to carry around. FCAW was fun but it felt kinda overindulgent to waste large pieces of metal on my horrible slaggy joints. That being said, FCAW always kept me nice and warm. The reduced heat from pulser means that I was quite cold today.

Last coupon is me just messing around with settings. As you can see, I started messing up a lot more towards the end and I contaminated a lot of electrodes and had to grind them.

[dfows]

Wednesday

December 11, 2024

Today is the last day of class!!!! :(

Today no welding was really needed. I practiced overhead while I was waiting for my specimens to be prepped. I couldn't get the same magic as last class. Oh also I had to use a different booth so maybe that threw me off a bit. Someone was in my booth when I got there at the beginning of class, and I had to use Booth #9 which didn't have anything to lean my arm upon, so I was very unsteady.

I flapdisked my specimens after Javier ground away the backing plate.

Then Javier put them in the machine to be bent. One he did a root bend and the other he did a face bend.

The root bend broke! :(

And there was a lot of slag inside, including slag in the root! :(

The face bend did not break :)

However there is a crack in it. So probably if we kept bending it, it would have broken :(

The one triumph of tonight was that I had to cut the handle off my angleplate (which I have filled up over the course of the semester, yay), and I actually managed to cut it pretty easily! Maybe I increased the fuel? I also angled my torch under recommendation of a video I saw on weld.com and I think that helped. But I'm not sure. I am still just guessing at how to use the oxyfuel torch.

More practice overhead-- still bad :( Also, my one slag peel of the night and also a crusty spatter artifact I found after unscrewing my nozzle to see what the thing was.

Next semester I will be doing tig (GTAW) again. Goodbye, FCAW! I have greatly enjoyed this welding process.

[dfows]

Monday

December 9, 2024

Task List to prepare specimens for bend test

Cut 1/2" specimens on bandsaw, making sure both sides are parallel

Give specimens to Javier to get rid of backing plate on mill, which I don't know about and am not allowed to use.

Grind out top of weld; *BLEND* don't do too much such that concave regions are formed. Make the finishing grind marks in the same direction as the length of the specimen (not perpendicular).

Practiced overhead today while waiting for the bandsaw to be free so I could cut my specimens. I chose to sample my 3G stringer (ugly, yet...functional? We'll see).

Yellow arrow points out Javier's demonstration. It is very even, compared to my blobby beads.

Javier came by to give demonstration of overhead. After that it took me about 20 passes to start to understand what I was doing. By no means do I have it figured out, but I think I am starting to.

I wish welding had winter and summer classes.

Cut my pieces at the end of class on bandsaw:

So far it looks promising? And slag-free...

We'll see how it performs on bend test next class!

[dfows]

Wednesday

December 4, 2024

Finishing 3G today was the goal!

I had two more passes on my 3G weave, and I had to start and finish the 3G stringer.

Starting the 3G stringer.

It was going pretty good at first. I was waiting for everything to cool adequately before continuing. Practiced some on my angleplate in the meantime.

A weird ridge on the right toe of the bead; seems I've lost whatever magic understanding I had last week.

Javier really be calling me out "is this your 3G weave?" knowing full well it wasn't lol

But then Javier came by and saw me doing manipulations on my 3G stringer and was like hey stop. And then he did a demonstration even though I did not need a demonstration on how to not manipulate.

Here is Javier's "demonstration" of how to do a stringer. He did it twice and basically made my angleplate hot.

Anyway I waited for it to cool down again and then imitated what he did and on the angleplate it was indistinguishable from his beads. SEE. I can do it:

Then I did the cap on my weave which was slightly undercut but mostly okay.

But then I messed up on the middle pass of my second-to-last layer on my stringer because it was a bit too high, so I had to make it the cap. And I did the rightmost pass on that layer and it was actually a decent cap. Kinda lumpy but not excessive reinforcement.

But then I was scared to go back and cap the left side. I even turned it upside down (at Javier's recommendation) because I have a tendency to go slower at the top (end) of the pass, thereby making it much more raised than the start of the pass.

But I did it totally wrong and totally messed up!!!!!! ugh

Whatever I will eventually find time to hand in another one.

Next class I will be practicing overhead!!!!! Super scary LOL I just imagine lighting myself on fire.

Me, next week

Oh also I traded helmets with Iara for a few passes because she broke hers a few classes back and has been using a loaner one that is pitch black. I tried it out on my angleplate and it was gross. (I have turned the plate upside down because the fixture stand was set up that way for my 3G stringer cap (which I still messed up)):

LOL the stark difference of being blind (left) vs being able to see (right)

[dfows]

Monday

December 2, 2024

Worked on the final 3G weave today.

First, I did a few test stringers on my angleplate until it got too hot.

Then I cut the final project materials on the track cutter. I accidentally sped up the track cutter too much and ended up with some marks on my bevels.

Then I had to wait around for the grinder, but I got my stuff prepped and tacked.

(At this point my tape measure lives in the pocket of my other pants in the locker and I can't be bothered to dig it out, so I just eyeball the 1/4" root opening. I know this is not the ultra precision way of fabrication.)

I started on the 3G weave. It freaked me out a bit because the backing plate is a lot thinner than the back of the plates in my practice plates; so it got super hot and melty immediately.

But once I got into the groove (literally, into the groove), it was much better. I am a little nervous.

I also worked on the last groove in PP6 and had some uneven height. I did a half-pass to try and even it out, which didn't really work. But I think the cap was still alright. It might be excessive reinforcement though; I didn't measure.

Anyway I recycled it at the end of class. Next class I shall finish the 3G weave and start and finish the 3G stringer.

[dfows]

Wednesday

November 27, 2024

I am going to class. I am terribly sleepy right now.

Okay today was actually awesome. I forgot that when I don't wanna go to something, it often ends up being the most fun best time.

I listened to L'amour Toujours Tanzen Remix, which is a perfect rhythm for welding (and living life). My vertical up stringers got better and better! Way less lumpy!

Not so nice in the top photos lol. But fixed it in the lower photos!

I drained my phone battery to take lots of photos lol

Angleplate is SO helpful in getting in the right headspace.

And I made a great cap on pp6 except the last part was randomly porous?? I checked my gas and I had forgotten to set it at 40-50 cubic foot(? what is the unit for flow meter i forgot).

But that doesn't explain why this happened suddenly... I was welding for an hour with perfectly fine nonporosity welds and suddenly it blobs into this.

Mystery porosity. Javier said "you were too close" ...ummmm can't confirm.

Anyway then I did another groove after correctly setting my gas flow and it was fucking beautiful and heavenly. Unfortunately I had too much reinforcement at the very end (the previous pass had been a bit high and even though I increased my travel speed it wasn't enough to compensate).

I was REALLY proud of the groove on the right (I also liked the one on the left before the porosity monstrosity), but it was slightly excessive reinforcement at the top.

Man today is the first day in a LONG time where I just feel like it's clicking. Like I actually know what I'm doing. Instead of messing up and having to guess at a solution.

Angleplate is somewhat flat/even.

I'm almost sorry to have left slightly early but I wanted to quit while I was ahead and also I only have one practice groove left on PP6 and I want to save it for testing during the final.

I might have to make PP7 for the final. Ugh it is such a pain to put the practice pieces together. Cutting isn't that bad. Grinding isn't that bad (actually it does take a bit of time). But CUTTING OFF THE HANDLE OF THE PLATE!!! takes an unreasonable amount of time. Ugh. I suck at the oxyfuel torch.

Well anyway we'll see what I get up to next class.

I love Laney College lol. This is the most fun I've ever had in school.

Also we got our 2G stringer back and mine was... ok.

Tiny slag dot

[dfows]

Monday

November 25, 2024

Started with two lines of vertical up on the angleplate. Then found some material to make PP6. Tried to use track cutter to cut the material but the oxygen was low. I was standing there cranking the dial and not comprehending why it wouldn't go past 10PSI. Now i know lol. Javier went behind the scenes and changed out the cylinder.

Yay angleplate

Oops, forgot to grind off that small ridge on the bevel.

I cleaned up my pieces but accidentally tacked two too cloes together, which made the root of two grooves too narrow. Ugh! Whatever, maybe at least they'll fill up faster and I can just practice doing the cap. I got one groove done. And then left for the night because I am crazy hungry.

[dfows]

Wednesday

November 20th, 2024

Man I gotta stop skipping Mondays.

PP5 (left) is way nicer than the final (right)

Finished my 2G today. It ended horribly. Honestly, it was shit to begin with. I am really tired today.

I started testing out some 3G on my angleplate and it actually went okay, so that cheered me up.

But it took me a million years to use the oxyfuel torch to cut the tack off my practice plates (to remove the handles) which was extremely annoying. I truly do not understand the concept of this device.

Anyway I was gonna cut my next PP6 (6? Wow that was fast; I've wasted a lot of material lol) but I ran out of time.

[dfows]

Wednesday

November 13th, 2024

It was kinda going ok. Started out with angle plate:

Note how crooked the handle is ... yea I'm not great at tacking.

Then did some warmup on PP5 before starting the final project (2G):

I've almost figured out the work angle. But I still messed up the cap on PP5:

PP5: almost good, but should've spaced the passes closer together to avoid these seams.

Final project: I was rushing to finish this but I couldn't get it to cool down fast enough in order to do my final passes. Javier gave me a 200F crayon. As you can see, the bottom pass is still kinda lumpy. I did another pass over it which gives a smoothing illusion, but forgot to take a photo.

End of the night slag pile.

Anyway I was late for my 8:45pm train and when I was running across the street, I fell off the curb and sprained my ankle. AND I missed the train. AND I ripped my fleece-lined tights which is super annoying.

AND I didn't even finish my 2G so what was the point of staying so late. Ugh.

[dfows]

Wednesday

November 6th, 2024

Yeah, I know. I skipped Monday two weeks in a row.

Today was okay. First, I brought my practice angle plate from beginning of semester to booth. Tacked together the 3 pieces I had in locker for PP5, but realized I forgot to turn on the gas, so my tack welds had serious porosity! Oh well. Good thing I realized this before I did a few passes on the angle plate.

Then I had to get material. Javier gave me a piece for the final 2G project. I cut it on the track cutter.

Next I had to get more pieces to make PP5. I grabbed 2 scrap pieces and anglegrinded the millscale off them and the project pieces. Got everything tacked together. I had everything set up nicely spaced out and then realized I forgot to grind the backing plate for final project. So had to take a quick second to do that, then tacked everything together and it was slightly crooked womp womp.

Then Javier came to my booth to see how I was doing and saw that I basically hadn't done shit.

So he was like, ok we will do one together; go get a handle for the practice plate. Then he tacked the handle on and retacked my porosity tacks.

And apparently "do one together" meant him doing 4 passes in a row on one of the grooves. In doing so, he made some very flat very smooth very nice beads. But he also put my angle plate on the ground and then accidentally kicked it over while he was welding and the handle of angle plate fell and hit me on my bunion which really hurt. He also made PP5 extremely hot so that one of the tacks broke and when I took it to quench tank, the whole thing sputtered and shook for like a minute. He also destroyed my slag collection on the table which I like to look at at the end of the night, by throwing the chipping hammer/my welpers onto them. He also tangled up the cord of my gun so it was all over the floor.

He made the plate so hot that when I used my temperature crayon on it, the crayon mark immediately sizzled and bubbled up.

ANYWAY after he left, I attempted my own groove. My root pass was not as flat, and I had some weird porosity.

Yea that's what you want in your root pass. Porosity. And weird voidy bits on the toe.

The next pass was kinda good but still not as flat/even as Javier's second pass. Also I still had some low spots that will probably become slaggy voids.

The third pass was okay. It looked like how all my bottom-row passes look. Slopey.

The fourth pass I finally got some flattening action. But alas, I moved too fast because I did not fill it in evenly so there were dips between third and fourth pass.

Third and fourth passes

Then I tried to do a cap pass, but I didn't really make up my mind beforehand, so it was a weird height and yet it touched the edge of the bevel. THEN I tried to do the opposite side pass for the edge of the other bevel, which went ok. But those two "cap" passes left a nice spot in the middle which I thought I could fill with one pass. But unfortunately that pass ended up just drooping to the bottom.

Ready for "middle" pass

Javier saw this and was like "You can do your middle pass now!" and I said yo that WAS my middle pass. But anyway I just tried to build upon it which kinda worked.

Idk, maybe I can go over this again with a real cap pass?

Anyway then it was time to clean up so I could catch the 8:45pm BART.

[dfows]

Wednesday

October 30th, 2024

Today was shitty.

Truly, I could not get into the groove (pun not intended!!!!!!!)

Some of my passes were really nice, and others were utterly horrible.

Blob city :(

I also had a mild incident wherein I created a lot of weirdly shaped porosity (Javier said it was because the nozzle was too close) and the next pass when I went over the areas with porosity, I got a lot of popping and splatter.

And a piece of burning slag actually got onto the sleeve of my welding jacket! I had to stop welding because it was actually hot!

Fortunately it only burned a small hole in my welding jacket and did not burn anything further (ie longsleeved shirt and flesh were unharmed)

In the end...it doesn't even matter

I gave up because I got very blobby welds. Also I think part of this struggle is that I haven't set up my practice plate at the correct height. I need to play around with it.

Anyway I wasted the last 2 grooves on my PP4. Next class I will have to make a PP5. And I'm gonna bring back my big angle plate to practice more. Even just figuring out what height I need is useful.

Oh also Javier gave back my first project pieces (1G stringer and 1G weave). They look ok (except 1 dot of slag), but he marked the mistakes (low spots).

1G Stringer (Note the complete lack of fusion with the backing plate on one side... Javier said "bad fit-up")

1G Weave

Also at the end of class I went to cut the handle off my PP4 and saw the oxygen hose was LEAKING!!!!!!!

I set the pressure to 35 and you can see here it is at 30 (with the valve and torch shut). James came to troubleshoot with soapy water and found the source of the leak near the coupling that attached the hose to the torch. It was fixed and I was able to cut the handle off. Then I recycled PP4.

[dfows]

Wednesday

October 23rd, 2024

First thing I did today was prep the pieces I cut last time. I used the angle grinder with the grinding disk and quickly went over each of the edges.

I didn't get all the mill scale off but I don't care. This is for practice welding, not practice grinding! I was anxious to get started.

Then I tacked five pieces together to form practice plate #4 (PP4)!

Lol, my tack welds. These always crack as I'm filling in the groove. I need a lesson on how to do better tack welds.

Then I did a root pass. I accidentally broke the arc partway through, but I cleaned up the slag and continued. It looks okay on the upper toe; not much undercut! Voids on the bottom toe though, I think.

Then I did a fill pass:

Immediately I knew my work angle was wrong because the profile of this bead was quite flat (relative to the groove).

The next few fill passes kinda helped disguise that because they were able to sit atop the first pass and flatten out the overall profile of this layer.

Here you can see some low spots caused by unsteady hand and inconsistent fill :)

The next layer of fill passes was also mildly flat.

It's kinda flat? Also, I know--that last one is just gross. But it'll get covered up! However, the voids might stay...

Then finally the cap layer. Ugh. It is always so unnerving and didfficult to do that first cap pass. In this case it was quite saggy and squiggly which was greatly disheartening.

The next cap pass was also squiggly because I did not have a steady hand and at the very beginning the wire kinda sputtered and then broke/restarted the arc, and a lump was formed.

The third and last pass of the cap had a ton of undercut (forgot to get a picture!) and/or underfill so I brought it to Javier to look at and he said "Do one more pass where the undercut is"

So I did that and thought it was equally bad and undercutty, but Javier said it was a lot less jagged and actually not really undercut because there were no steep/notched valleys formed.

So in the end the only flaws were that spazzy lump in the second cap pass (excessive reinforcement), and the fact that the toes of the first cap pass could be less pronounced/saggy, and more smooth. Javier said if I increase my travel speed it will be less saggy.

He also said "a weld that looks good is not the same as a good weld" but I said "ok well how am I supposed to judge my welds on anything other that how it looks; I don't have the ultrasonic technology" and he said "we will cut open these and check" and i said "ok well until then i have no idea what I'm doing :)"

So THEN I started on a second groove on PP4. I did a root pass that seemed to look pretty decent.

Idk why this weird porosity is here. I checked the gas but it was working fine.

Then I tried to choose the best angle for the filler pass. I think it turned out better than the one I did on the first groove. The profile was less flat. My strategy was to aim the electrode slightly above the bottom toe edge of the root pass, and hold the gun at an almost perpendicular angle to the plate. I tilted it just the slightest amount up, but visually it still looked perpendicular.

I think this strategy is better than what I was doing before!

Then I cleaned up because I wanted to catch the 8:25pm BART.

[dfows]

Monday

October 21st, 2024

We are doing 2G (horizontal) now. New settings: increased wire feed speed to 290 in/min. I kept voltage at 26 because to be honest I am still not really sure what increasing voltage does. (I know Ohm's Law. V=IR. But intuitively, I don't know what it does. It's not like increasing current, which is obvious.)

I filled up the other groove on PP3. I had to figure out my work angle and I definitely haven't yet.

First mistake: I should've done some manipulation on the root (also why the hell did I make the root opening so wide idk), and possibly slowed down? Because I ended up with voids on voids on voids and my bead didn't even fuse with the other side of the groove. I was aiming my gun at kind of a steep angle in the hopes that there would be sufficient drip to fuse with the other side, but instead it kinda dripped near it and then stopped, hence the voids.

Voids!!!!!

Filler passes were surprisingly flat in profile (yay) and I got a few passes with peeling slag, which was great.

Peelz

Too bad the first (bottom) pass of every layer was blobby and not flat.

I also got blobby at the first cap pass, and undercut on the last cap pass.

blobby blobby undercut. Last photo: me throwing this into the recycle bin.

After I finished this groove, I had to cut new pieces to make PP4. I used the track cutter, which I am now a huge fan of using.

[dfows]

Monday

October 14th, 2024

Man, I really didn't want to go to class today since I had the day off from work (and everything but welding class), but I had to finish my 1G weave.

Tacked together a new practice plate (PP3) from the pieces I cut off a few weeks ago. It's critical for me to have this while I wait for the other thing to cool down. Plus I get to make mistakes on it that I can try to avoid making on the final piece.

I have a lot more photos of the PP3 than the final, because while I was waiting for the final to cool down, I was able to quench the PP3. You can see colorful overheating on both of them :) :) :) because I am impatient and I did not wait until they cooled sufficiently.

Filler passes

Cap on PP3-- the far edge is slightly more raised than the edge closer to me. I made sure to be aware of this in the final piece.

It took forever because the plate takes forever to cool down. I forgot to get a final pic because I was rushing to hand it in, leave, and get home at a reasonable time. (This did not work because I just missed the BART. So I stood on the platform and waited 20 mins for my usual train anyway.)