Sherman Tig (Jasic in disguise?)

[AdamS]

Anybody got any links to an affordable gas thru dinze connector to connect a CK 3/8 BSP to this machine ?

I went for these:
DINSE 35/50 to 3/8 adaptor this is to 3/8" on the machine for the gas so cut that off and put:
M10x1 nut + hose tail
Mini Jubilee clip
The hose tail is 4 - 5mm but someone said earlier in the thread it's fine if you well and truly tighten the jubilee clip. My adaptor hasn't come yet by Royal Snail but I'll confirm if it's fine once I have it...

In the meantime waiting for the adaptor for my CK torch, I did my first welds! Can't wait to use the CK though, it's so much more comfortable to hold.

Started with just moving the torch (green numbers). I think gas was still coming through the tubes or something for the first? pre gas was only 0.1 s too, so I upped that to 0.5 s, then I started trying to add filler (blue numbers), but the position was a bit awkward so I started a new column of welds and it went much better!

 

[PSweeney]

I went for these:
DINSE 35/50 to 3/8 adaptor this is to 3/8" on the machine for the gas so cut that off and put:
M10x1 nut + hose tail
Mini Jubilee clip
The hose tail is 4 - 5mm but someone said earlier in the thread it's fine if you well and truly tighten the jubilee clip. My adaptor hasn't come yet by Royal Snail but I'll confirm if it's fine once I have it...

In the meantime waiting for the adaptor for my CK torch, I did my first welds! Can't wait to use the CK though, it's so much more comfortable to hold.

Started with just moving the torch (green numbers). I think gas was still coming through the tubes or something for the first? pre gas was only 0.1 s too, so I upped that to 0.5 s, then I started trying to add filler (blue numbers), but the position was a bit awkward so I started a new column of welds and it went much better!
View attachment 260673
View attachment 260674

thanks that's really helpful

 

[AdamS]

thanks that's really helpful

No worries, I'll let you know re-the hose tail. My adaptor seems to have gotten lost in the post, but Wecs customer service was great, they said wait until today and let them know if it still hadn't come, did so (and it hasn't), and now they're sending another by 1st class tomorrow. I'm sure I'll have the first one turn up in a month or two when someone finds it in the back of the lorry/van/train/bag/corner it was lost in .

I did some more welding with the machine today. Realised I had been setting the wrong balance... was setting the pulse balance to 32% rather the AC balance, which was still at 50%, and I was wondering why my tungsten balled so quickly (though 150 A / 75 A pulse with 32% pulse balance worked quite well otherwise)! Tried straight AC today without pulse. Read last night about AC frequency and the arc, so upped it from 125 Hz to 250 Hz and with the AC balance sorted at 32% instead of 50%, the tungsten kept a nice point, and wow! The arc was so focused and I had lots of fun running beads. I've started noticing a lot more now too... like the orange glow around the puddle when things start getting a bit too hot. Think I'll go back to pulsed though, lets me weld for longer before the whole sheet of aluminium is gets really hot!

 

[AdamS]

For those that might find this useful, I played around with the multimeter tonight on the Sealey pedal and this is how it's wired by default (I couldn't find a diagram online anywhere), luckily the first pair of pins I tried was the trigger, and second pair was the pot at max when pedal depressed so it didn't take long to figure out. I'm not sure how min and max on the pot are defined so I labelled it how the resistance between that pin and the wiper pin behaves:

 

[PSweeney]

No worries, I'll let you know re-the hose tail. My adaptor seems to have gotten lost in the post, but Wecs customer service was great, they said wait until today and let them know if it still hadn't come, did so (and it hasn't), and now they're sending another by 1st class tomorrow. I'm sure I'll have the first one turn up in a month or two when someone finds it in the back of the lorry/van/train/bag/corner it was lost in .

I did some more welding with the machine today. Realised I had been setting the wrong balance... was setting the pulse balance to 32% rather the AC balance, which was still at 50%, and I was wondering why my tungsten balled so quickly (though 150 A / 75 A pulse with 32% pulse balance worked quite well otherwise)! Tried straight AC today without pulse. Read last night about AC frequency and the arc, so upped it from 125 Hz to 250 Hz and with the AC balance sorted at 32% instead of 50%, the tungsten kept a nice point, and wow! The arc was so focused and I had lots of fun running beads. I've started noticing a lot more now too... like the orange glow around the puddle when things start getting a bit too hot. Think I'll go back to pulsed though, lets me weld for longer before the whole sheet of aluminium is gets really hot!

try this manual, i’d stay off pulse for the moment, try 30% AC balance, 85 AC Frequency

https://441fb7a4-fa17-4540-a834-dc3...d/fc2fb8_5dfe813803874a489296804d6f9dc801.pdf

 

[steve-l]

I'm new to this forum, but not new to welding. I own several welding machines including Mig, Tig and Stick. I have noticed several trends over the past few years that we welders can do little about and several that really disturb me. I would like to know how others feel about these observations.

First, the cost of our welding machines have dropped drastically as the new machines migrated from transformer based to inverter based. Good as that may sound, it has created a serious downside. The new inverter machines are NOT economically repairable. I know the name brands state otherwise, but replacement parts quickly become non-existent over time. So keeping a modern inverter machine in use over a long time and relying on its repair ability is a fools errand. A new strategy is required. A shop today must have two machines for redundancy and be prepared to scrap the broken one and buy a replacement at failure time. Now that said, it makes little sense to buy the name brands at premium prices because one, they don't weld any better and they are not repairable anyway.

Second, Tig is rarely used in a production environment. Most users of Tig use them for one-off jobs as the process is generally too slow for production reasons. Yet most of the new machines are labeled digital and use some semblance of settings storage in local memory. They have only one pot and each setting has to called up out of storage, then adjusted as desired and restored back to memory. This is a huge pain in the ass. It is not how the machine is used. As each job is different, I need individual controls (pots) for each setting that I can in seconds reach over and tweak as needed. There is no reason to store these settings in memory as they will generally never be used again. I believe this change benefits only the manufacturer, certainly not the end user.

This brings me to why I placed this thread on this forum. The Sherman brand (Jasic) has both the "Digital" and the "Analog" style machines in production. I really like the 320 amp Analog model for several reasons. The first being it is a 3 phase machine, which puts a much lighter electrical load on your shop's power source and it has a much higher duty cycle than the single phase 200 amp models in those current ranges most jobs require. Both models are advertised as IGBT inverters as well. I would like to hear others opinions on these points.
Thanks in advance,
Steve

 

[Gazz292]

Well, i'm soon to be the owner of a sherman 206p, with foot pedal, £480 from weldes.co.uk, they got them back in stock (dunno if it's just for black friday) the same welder without the pedal is £560.

Now what else do i need to get, i'm coming from mig welding, having never tigged before.

i've got an old auto darkening helmet, but i can't see any mounting for cheater lenses on it... and i know i will need them, i'm 43 and in the past year my close up eye sight has been getting worse (used to be able to read the info on a surface mount chip, now i can't see clear enough within 3 feet of my eyes to solder the damn things on without using my magnifier light)
Do all modern auto darkening helmets take cheater lenses? or do i need to get one that has the specific mounting for them?
i've seen youtube vids and they just seem to slide in on a rail?? or do they clip in somehow?

I will get some tig gloves,

Gas.. think my only option where i live is rentfreegas, 10 litre 200 bar bottle is £68 for the gas, and 55 + vat i imagine as the gas is, so £66 for the rent... sorry, deposit on the bottle.
only other near me one is hobbyweld, but that's 9 litre, 137 bar bottles for practically the same price.
I've got my regulator i used to use with 5% co2 argon mix with the mig. oh yeah, i'll need a flow meter / peashooter.

Consumables, i'll be getting some filler rods from weldes, they do packs of 10 x 50cm rods for a few quid, what rods should i get?
i want to weld mild steel thats 2 to 3mm thick, angle iron, box section etc for my bus simulator rig, and play with aluminium.
Should i go for 1.6, 2 or 2.4 mm rods? or a selection of them all.
the mild steel rods are easy, one type to choose from it seems, but for alli there's 3 to choose from, the alli i have is just some scrap plates, no idea what they are exactly....

i could do with finding a place that will sell me off cuts of metal to play with, but living near scarborough and being fairly new to the area i have no idea where to try.

Tungstens, isn't there a universal one that's good for ac and dc welding?

i'd like to get a flex head for the tig torch, but i'm not sure weldes sell any, so i just look for a flex head for a t-26 torch and it'll fit the stock sherman torch?

Anything else i will need? i will have to somehow make up a little welding bench thing, that should be the first thing i make really, something that can sit on my wooden workbenches in the shed, and be storable under the bench when im not welding, thinking a plate with legs on it... possibly a welding blanket under it, but i think i'll be stuck buying a bit of plate steel off ebay for this... what thickness should i go for? 5mm, 8mm, bigger.

This is all a hobby for me, i wont be welding that often, but now i will own a tig welder i will deffo be using it where before i'd use a pop riveted connection just because i didnt want to deal with the splatter from the mig welder.

 

[daedalusminos]

I would get rods and Tungstens in 1.6 and 2.4mm - I'm using ceriated on both Al and steel.

 

[steve-l]

Gazz292,
You will need soooooo much more for Tig. You will need a grinder before anything else becauseyou will constantly stick the electrode in the weld and rod. Tig takes lots and lots of practice. You will be very frustrated in the beginning. Though. be prepared. You will need a large selection of Tungstens and sizes as well as cups. There are so many different combinations. The same goes with filler rods. It isn't the neded for different alloys, but sizes as well. It is important to note that although Tig welding is similar to Oxy/Acet, you did the rod into the melted puddle, not the plasma stream. The rod dip actually cools the puddle, so if the rod is too large, the cooling effect is too large and the droplet will be as well. It is a careful balance. Practice, practice and more practice.

 

[Gazz292]

thankyou... that's some very good advice, i am under no illusions that i will be dunkin the tungsten a lot,

i have a little 4 inch bench grinder doing nothing, i even have a brand new wheel for it, so i can set that up as my tungsten sharpener, when i get my 3D printer for xmas, i'll print one of the jobbies that you clamp to a dremel with a diamond wheel in it, and it presents the tungsten at the correct angle to the wheel, but by then i may have learnt not to dunk.... lol who am i kidding.... i have arthritis and some joints on my hands are less flexible than others.

I was even wondering if they did training wheels for the tig torch, like the ones for plasma cutters... i remember when i was using my mig a lot many years ago, i used a spot weld nozzle on it... has 2 tabs that protrude from the end, designed to hold the nozzle at the right height above the bit your spot welding, but i used it to keep the torch off the workpiece easier on long runs.. tho i did learn the bad habit of dragging the torch, and recently read that i should have been pushing it... if i'd learnt that with the mig i would be better set for tigging.

the tungstens, i think the grey painted end ones are the ceriated ones?

So, i should get 1.6 and 2.4 rods n tungstens, i could be a pain and say i'd go for 2mm then as thats between the sizes

 

[AdamS]

try this manual, i’d stay off pulse for the moment, try 30% AC balance, 85 AC Frequency

https://441fb7a4-fa17-4540-a834-dc3...d/fc2fb8_5dfe813803874a489296804d6f9dc801.pdf

Thanks PSweeney, I've printed that out!

Why would you recommend not using pulse for now? I found 2 Hz and dipping every other pulse got me in a good ryhthm but maybe I should be dipping based on what I see rather than a rhythm? Is that why?

I watched Jody's YouTube vid on AC freq last night and how the high freq severely reduced penetration... I checked my beads from 250 Hz and indeed as pretty as they were, they were just sitting on the top of the metal ! I'll give 85 Hz a go tonight and see how I get on

Sealey pedal update:
I've rewired this now and it works a treat (for other newbies, remember to set machine to 2T and hold the pedal down for 5 secs to enable it -- before you turn the gas on or you'll of course waste a fair bit!)

Here is how to wire it (luckily I got blue and white the right way round first time, so it didn't work backwards ):


Oh... And make sure to trim the wires about 5 mm or the sheath isn't inside the connector clamp! Nothing a bit of self amalgamating tape couldn't fix (not that I didn't check the wire lengths myself... )

 

[Gazz292]

What does this machine come with in the 'consumable parts in the tool box' ??

is it 'spares' or just the bits that assemble the torch? i can't seem to find a picture of the 'tool box'

 

[steve-l]

If you are doing steel, the thoriated ones (Red) are superior because they keep their shape and don't ball up, but they are no longer sold in Germany because they are very lightly radioactive. I buy them in the US and China. I don't know if they are prohibited in the UK. Just buy them from AliExpress if so. Two skills are very important. The first is the ability to feed your rod smoothly. You need to be able to do this with both hands with your gloves on........not so easy to do. Tip, practice with a rod while watching TV. The second is maintaining the correct torch height and angle. To do that you will need to prop your torch hand on a smooth support. Not so easy to do either, especially as you get older. I built a stainless steel polished tube with a mount That I clamp on my welding bench. Sliding on that tube is a pivoting boss that has a clamp. It also holds another polished stainless tube. I can then adjust this horizontal tube parallel to my intended torch path providing steady support for my torch hand. It's a great crutch and it really helps. As you get older it's harder to not wiggle and shake, so hand support and work position becomes a really big deal. Another tool I made is a work support that allows me to support my part so that my torch path is parallel to my hand support tube. I did this by acquiring a large stainless steel pan. I then wound 1/4" copper tubing back and forth in the pan bottom. The tubing I drilled with very small holes about every inch or so. The tube is crimped on one end and fastened to a bulkhead fitting mounted in the side of the pan. The outside of the fitting has a hose barb that can be used for Argon back gassing. On top of the tubing I placed a stainless screen then filled the rest of the pan with 1/4" stainless steel balls. I also silver soldered a copper bar to the pan to use as a ground point. This pan allows me to place my work piece in the steel balls at any angle I wish. I chose stainless because the balls will not rust and they can be washed. This rig is very nice for welding titanium and stainless. To save gas a construction paper cover can be made to concentrate the back gas to the part in the pan. This rig was not cheap those stainless balls are expensive. I ordered them in Italy, but I had to sign my life away. They thought I was a terrorist! In the end it's all about clean metal, clean rods and practice.

 

[AdamS]

What does this machine come with in the 'consumable parts in the tool box' ??

is it 'spares' or just the bits that assemble the torch? i can't seem to find a picture of the 'tool box'

Mine came with 1.6, 2.4 and 3.2 mm collets, a 3.2 mm collet body (this size only), a short and a medium back cap, and if I remember correct, standard 4, 5 and 6 alumina cups. I think that was all so I didn't have what I needed to start welding with 2.4 mm tungsten.

I bought a stubby gas saver kit on Amazon that was reasonably priced and came the next day, as well as a lifetime supply of all sorts that was ridiculously cheap and is coming some time in January from China . Also bought a Furick Jazzy kit + their stubby kit. The Furick gas lens looks better quality but I tried both that and the cheapo one with a No. 6 cup on aluminium and the results were the same at 5 lpm gas flow, but I'm a complete newbie so maybe there is a difference I don't notice... I'm only using the cheap one now as it's gonna get covered with any spatter from dunking the tungsten and other newbie mistakes! The wedge collet that came with the Furick kit is way better than the standard ones though. With the number of times I'm removing, grinding and putting back the tungsten, my first standard collet started to deform (I may have overtightened the backcap a few times, but either way that's not an issue with the wedge ones)...

 

[Gazz292]

cheers,

i've been wondering about those gas savers / gas lenses, i can see me going through my first bottle of argon fast, and at 65 quid a time i can't afford to be changing bottles too often.
is the gas saver and gas lens thing the same? would the pyrex nozzles be something to consider or stear clear of for a beginner.

it seems 2mm is an option for tungstens and filler rod in europe, but not in the uk,
wondering if that could be a catch all size to start with, .4 of a mm between the recommended 1.6 and 2.4mm stuff,

tho looking at the tig amps chart, i might be wanting 1mm rod for some of the joints on the bus sim i'll be building (1.5 mm steel plate).. and they say 1.6mm tungstens for upto 3mm, but, thats for steel... is it the alli that neest the 2.4?... bod this is all so confusing,

if i really need smaller rod, i've got plenty of 0.8mm mig wire, and have read about twisting 2 bits together etc.

 

[Kram]

Got a black friday email from Weldes, its gone up a bit 560 now, I paid £464 with the 52 piece consumable kit.

So, i should get 1.6 and 2.4 rods n tungstens, i could be a pain and say i'd go for 2mm then as thats between the sizes

2mm would be a pain as no one sell collets! Its not a standard size, only sold by Weldes? I

You'll want 2.4mm tungstens for most AC aluminium as it runs lot hotter.
1.6mm for DC with thinner stuff.
Lanthanated seem best for AC or DC. The Cerated that came with the 206 was no good.

Mig wire works well enough for practise

 

[morssdn]

As far as cheater lenses go, i wear my normal close up specs inside my welding helmet, I also have a stronger pair for the purpose (that is near enough the same as my latest prescription ).

 

[Gazz292]

yep i got that email, the welder on it's own is £560, but the same welder with the 50 quid foot pedal is... £480!! i'd noticed a week ago that it showed 'there are not enough in stock' for it all the time.

When i bought mine they had 97 left, theres 96 now, so someone else has just got a good deal (click 'product details' on any of their items and it shows stock levels)
the link to the discounts is :
https://weldes.co.uk/gb/prices-drop

Or you need to be in 'sets' for tig welders to find that offer, searching ac/dc tig welders just shows the £560 one.


Right, so i'll get the 1.6mm tungstens n filler rods for the steel i'll be using, and some 2.4 for when i do alli.. just been reading about how alli soaks up the heat a lot more, hence the higher amps needed.

 

[Gazz292]

I bought a stubby gas saver kit on Amazon that was reasonably priced and came the next day,

Any chance you could link to that kit you got? i'm seeing lots of gas saver kits on amazon, varying in price wildly, and i'm not sure exactly what pieces i need for the torch on the sherman.

 

[kptim]

Has anyone the welde
website discount handy