Grind your tungsten
When TIG welding steel, grind your tungsten to a point using a fine grit grinding wheel dedicated ONLY to tungsten. Grinding anything else on that wheel can cause the tungsten to become contaminated. Make sure that both the weld joint area and the filler metal are clean, since dirt can cause a
rc instability and contaminated welds.
You have a variety of TIG tungsten types to choose from, each color-coded for easy identification. You can find a more detailed description of tungsten types and their uses here, but it’s important to remember that Ceriated tungsten can withstand higher temperatures. A 2 percent thoriated (red band) is ideal for use with steels and pure (green band) is ideal for aluminum. This is true UNLESS you have an Inverter type TIG machine. Most Inverter-type TIG units can run a sharpened two percent Thoriated or Ceriated (orange band) for EVERYTHING.
Until next time,
Andy Weyenberg
Motorsports Marketing Manager
Average (Not Rated)
April 11th, 2012 at 1:23 pm
I grind my steel welding rod tips using my dremmel tool with a diamond cutoff wheel. Works GREAT!
I’ll chuck up the rod in an electric hand drill and grind the tip on the abrasive side of the wheel with the hand drill spinning as fast as possible. It makes perfect tips and is quick, too.