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TIG welding bikes

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So, I bought a TIG welder. I even paid a premium for one that works at low currents. This turned out to be a good thing, because today I actually tried welding bike tubing (0.9mm wall 4130 CroMo steel) and discovered that 10 amps is enough to blow holes in the tubing if I even blink funny. So I ended up welding at 1 amp. Yes, one lonely ampere.

I cut a few bits of 16mm tube (0.9mm wall) and started trying to weld it up the way I'd weld up my bikes. Getting enough penetration seems to be easy, it's doing a whole weld without making a bloody mess of it that's hard. I did a simple angled join to start with thinking that would be easy, but of course the pointy end that's tricky to braze was even more tricky to weld without melting it back down to a blob. Which I did. Then I tried 3 mitred joints more like bikes, and after making a real hash of the first one cranked the current down from 3A to 1A and managed to get joints that didn't look absolutely awful.

Cutting the experiment in half longwise showed me that it really is important to keep a nice steady movement when I'm welding, but that I am getting penetration.

Tomorrow I plan to use longer lengths and try breaking the joint. That will be interesting.

day 2

day 3 The whole thing, cut in half, inside and out. The whole thing, cut in half, inside and out. The whole thing, cut in half, inside and out. The whole thing, cut in half, inside and out. top of the middle joint with a (metric) ruler for scale. the angled weld. inside the 3rd and 4th welded joints. first attempt at a mitred joint onto a tube. I think part of the problem was not having a long enough tube, I was welding right on the end of it. looking down a tube. Tricky to photograph (and I'm actually supposed to be vaguely good at photography, it's welding that I'm allegedly learning about) the right hand side has a worrying line on it. So I used a bigger lens to get a bigger photo the files it flat and had another look. The scale at the bottom is 1mm per division. But with the filing that line has vanished, and I couldn't see it on the other side of the cut so perhaps it was a hole or an artefact. Who knows. my photography setup - benro tripod and ball head, pano slide, 70-200/2.8 IS with 1.4x TC, 10mm macro extension tube, 500D close focus lens.
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