Pulse for beginner TIG welding...so why not?

[Ali]

Hi Folks,

I was messing about last night with some 1mm sheet steel, only a short run say 3". Never TIGd anything this thin before and took it down to about 15A and still managed to blow the edges apart. I was feeling adventurous and decided to play with the controls on the RTech (160). I'm still on the torch button here as I'm not quite comfortable with the pedal yet. So I set up a pulse program (do you call it that?), and after not much fiddling was welding beautifully. It helps me time my travel, which I struggle with, and I know when to add filler. After much frustration when setting this machine up a while ago I now remember that this is how I laid my first good looking weld on some 3mm. Then I read up and the most common school of thought seems to be 'turn it off when you're learning', so I did. (And have had a lot of success since...and a lot of failures.) So my question is why? Will I miss out on the fundamentals and have to make sure I always have a welder with a pulse function in future?!

I also came across some videos of manual pulsing with the pedal today - looks like fun, and makes me want to plug the pedal back in.

What say you, learned tutors?

 

[Brad93]

Pulse is very useful but if you're blowing through 1mm sheet straight up constant amps off the trigger you are moving too slowly or holding too long an arc. Ive personally welded down to 0.6mm stainless on my pedal, 0.9mm mild steel regularly off a switch no pulse. No problems.

Pulsing with the pedal can also be useful, one example i like to use it is this right awkward hanger lap joint on the mild steel exhausts i weld. 0.9mm to 0.9mm lap joint with poor fitup. Bump the pedal, add rod quick, back off the pedal move forward.

 

[Ali]

Here's the piece. The short section between the purple arrows is where I turned on the pulse. The bump is where I tried to fill the hole, again using the pulse.

 

[Brad93]

Okay that part is really small so will become heat soaked very quickly. To weld that yes pulse is the way forward. Ideally youd want to stick that on some aluminium blocks to suck the heat out.

 

[Ali]

Ah, Ive mislead you - I cut that part out. It started life as a 2" wide strip about 6" long which at some point I'd rolled into a cylinder. It was lying around, so I decided to join the ends up. I clamped it to the bench at the bottom so there was nothing backing the piece to take heat away though. The end of the weld suffered due to the heat.

 

[Ali]

Here ya go - the main reason I cut it apart was so I could do it again. Tomorrow night's installment, same job with no pulse. Unless I'm too ashamed to post it.