Welcome to Weld.com. I'm going to be running off of the AHP AlphaTig 200X today. I'm going to be running a lot of stick off of it. We started out doing a little plate here on an entry level thing about running straight beads and blending them together. I was running 532nd 7018, about 160 amps or so.
And this is the first time for me to run this machine, so I want to see what it's all about. ACDC. Okay, so I want to run all these different sizes of rod. I'm actually kind of challenging myself here.
My cameraman and I have a bet. By the way, if I stick an electrode, cameraman said he'd give you 10 bucks every time I stick an electrode. So if I miss an amperage or do something squirrely and stick it, y'all collect somehow. I don't know how you're going to collect, but I have eighth inch 7024. I have 332nd 6010. 8th inch 6010, 532nd 6010, 332 7018. I have 532nd and I'll find something else over there. I think I have some 6013 and I'll just run everything.
So here's my challenge to you. Y'all go get something to drink, grab your textbook because I need to know what all these different rods run at, okay? You need to know what polarity they run at so you can set your machine up.
I can change polarity on this machine by switching leads. I can run alternating current just by the face of the machine. I believe the electrodes are set up right now where if I switched it back over to DC welding that I would be DC reverse polarity or electrode positive, but I could change that in the DC by just switching the leads. First thing we're going to run is 1-8 inch 7024 and I'm going to run it on alternating current.
I believe I'm set at 120. Somebody tell me. Let me get my hood on. I'll check to see what amperage it is and we'll rock and roll.
Be right back. All right, let's give this thing a run here. Let's dance.
First thing I'm running is 1-8 inch 7024. My objective here is to run a bunch of beads and run them all in a very straight line. I'm on alternating current and it doesn't even sound like it. This is the tightest, most impressive alternating current I've ever seen, ever. What I haven't checked yet is to see if I can change the frequency in the stick mode of alternating current.
If I can, I'm gonna be doubly excited. Trying to keep the same width. I'm gonna come out here to the edge of the plate.
I'm gonna push back through my pool so that I don't, what? What? What is that?
I wanna fill this back over here at the end where my crater is. And Well I have my slag hammer and my wire brush but apparently I don't need it. There's my slag. That was fun.
Let's do that again. You want to? I'm going to run another weld right next to that one.
That bead profile looks pretty good. I am going to give it a little slick them up wire brush work there. I'll get to you after a while I guess.
I didn't need to use you at all. Let me check my machine here and see if I've got a frequency change. I'll turn it down to 40. I left my amperage alone, but I did notice that this machine, when I set the machine up, I just... I didn't notice that there was a frequency adjustment for the AC side and it is active when you're stick welding. Now I think that is like double extra cool.
I have not seen that before. Maybe I need to get out more often. I turned it to 60 hertz, 60 cycles a second, which is what I grew up on. Those of you that have welded with alternating current in the past had known that 60 puts out a pretty good buzz. Okay, I did something over here.
If you're in my class, I'm asking you to burn all your electrodes down to two inches because we need to make good efficient use. If you have a half of electrode, save it, don't throw it away. Okay, you need to learn to do restarts all the time anyway.
Yes, I'm making it all the way across the plate with one electrode, but if the plate was in longer or any shorter then I'd have a bunch of half rods you need to use them up and I did something over here with an old electrode it's a trick that somebody taught me years ago you can take these iron powder rods if you want to get a good hot burn-in over here on the edge of the plate and stand that rod up there and it kind of acts as a heat sink. Yeah that part's ugly but if you look at the edge of this if I needed to face this off where it was pure weld it's there. Now the first rod we ran had some slag peel but this one at 60 Hertz the flags off there already I'm not gonna beat the daylights out of it. I don't like people that continually, it's not the people, I just don't like hearing that sound of people banging their plate all the time. And if I did it right now, you'd probably get annoyed and turn this video off, but you need to keep watching because we're gonna do all kinds of stuff here.
I have a question for you. Okay, we're running on alternating current. Why would I do that? Or I should say, what is the biggest advantage of running on alternating current with seven 7024. Those of you that have done beam work, putting base plates on beams and stuff like that, you might get to this answer real quick, but there's a challenge right there.
You can put it in the comments. The question is, what is the biggest advantage to run an alternating current with 7024 or 7018 or any electrode that runs on alternating current? Okay.
I'm going to change. this frequency and go real high with it. I'm going to turn it up to something. Don't know what yet.
We'll find a good number. The frequency to 170. Now this I can hear. I'll tell you this right straight up, normally alternating carrots have pretty heavy sparks.
A lot of BB's, a lot of spatters. Everything that's coming off of this is pretty small. Very small sparks, very small...
We call them dingleberries, don't we? Now here's about the time where I need to go cool this plate off. We're saturating it with heat, running multiple beads. I'm going to switch rods and I'm going to change amperages. I'm challenging myself to guess and hit the amperage for the size of rod that I run.
I haven't decided what I'm going to pick up yet. I switched the machine over to DC. I've changed the amperage down to 80. I'm getting ready to run a 6010, eighth inch 6010. This was the slag that we had coming off of the eighth inch 7024. alternating current.
This slag here, this is a, this is a 7024 is an iron powder rod. Got a lot of iron powder in it. It's like a production rod. 24 indicates that the two in that, in that numbering system tells you. that it's flat and horizontal.
6010 is a violent digging fast freeze type of electrode that has a cellulose type flux to it. Cellulose sodium by the way. It runs on DCEP. Okay so when we strike an arc with this I want to drag this forward slightly and I just want to barely lift up so that it'll flatten out.
It's just my personal thing but I kind of run it in a gentle stitch. rocking motion here. Let me get going and we'll show you what we're talking about. Again, doesn't matter what electrode, need to be running straight lines. Same width, try to keep them straight.
Great. Hmm, this is interesting. I'm holding a pretty short arc.
And my arc is going out. Come on sweetie, you can do it. I am gently touching the rod on the plate all the time except when I'm lifting up.
Now this is interesting. First thing I'm going to do is check my ground, check my connections. I am gonna finish this bead whether this machine likes it or not.
Hmm haven't seen that in a while. You're not going to get any slag peel with 6010, at least I never have in my entire life. If you do, let me know.
Oh, I want to witness. It's a light, flaky slag. Little spatter 6010, 7010, 8010, 6011 they're all kind of like a fire breathing dragon.
They put out a lot of spark. Give me a sec I want to check some things out on the machine here and find out why that was kind of cutting out. I switched the amperage up on this to 85. I twisted leads.
I couldn't find anything. I'm running this rod with barely any motion at all. I'm not stitching.
Hmm. I've had about enough of that. Short fuse that I am. I'm going to switch to an eighth inch 6011. What's the difference between 6010 and 6011? 6010 is high cellulose sodium runs on DCEP.
6011 is high cellulose potassium runs on alternating current or DCEP. Let's try the 6011 and see what happens. Almost had a stuck electrode, ten dollar from the cameraman.
Well I'm able to pull off my little stitch here. Plus I'm long arcing. You can take a 6011 and gouge and long arc. There we go.
Well I'll have to research that to find out what's going on. I need to clean this up. We kind of ruined our beautiful plate here.
We've got a lot of spark stuff. Let me go clean this. I need to clean mill scale off over here anyway.
Be right back. I left the machine 85 amps I was running eighth inch 6010 eighth inch 6011 now I'm running 3 32nd 7018. Does that run the same amperage? Why would it?
It's smaller rod why would it be the same amperage as an eighth inch 6010 or 6011? By the way, the polarity, correct polarity on 7018 is alternating current or DCEP, which is reverse polarity. positive reverse polarity. Now why would this, even though it's a smaller rod, why would it run the same amperage?
Because it has iron powder in it. It takes a little bit more amperage to combust this. So the cool thing to do, I remember when we worked in the refinery a lot and we were up in the racks or away from our truck, cool thing What you could do is pick a combination of rods that you could, you know, minimize going back to the truck and making amperage changes for.
If you had a bunch of 6-inch pipe, schedule 40, I'd usually run 8-inch roots, 8-inch... hot pass switch to 332nd to do my fill and cap if I needed to do a fill and cap. If it was larger diameter and or schedule 80 or thicker pipe a lot of times I would run 532nd, 632nd, 6010 and eighth inch 7018 those two run about the same amperage.
Okay See you just learned something. How cool is that? I haven't stuck a rod yet I know the cameraman is getting nervous.
So maybe I'll do it on this one here Almost I heard him flinch over No stitching with this rod. Simple drag motion. I just thought of something.
I wonder how that is. I always think of cool stuff when you're welding. Under the hood.
Not able to make it all the way across the plate with the 332. Slag peel almost. It's a beauty. Let me check something on the machine.
Be right back. What I thought about while I was welding was maybe there was a dig feature on the stick part of this and I didn't find one. So again, I'm new to this machine, so I'm not scared of it, but there's a lot of bells. whistles on there. You need to learn all the adjustments.
Okay I welded almost all the way over to the end and I'm not able to, I ran out of rod. So instead of restarting right here, I'm going to cheat a little bit and turn this back around or I could just switch hands and I'm going to strike the arc and come back over and stop on top of that button. How about that?
That's another point. You can learn one-handed. You know when you're learning, brace yourself. Don't try to do it all out here.
We'll get to that later on like when you're running in grooves. Brace yourself so you can be steady. After you get good with one hand, you can switch hands and run the opposite way.
Learn to run both hands, I should say, not the opposite way. Good at times it's good to be able to run with both hands. I can tell you a funny funny story about me teaching myself to weld pipe with TIG with both hands.
I taught myself on a 1958 SA 200 Lincoln SA 200 crank machine. One of the smoothest machines I've ever welded with in my life turned about 1750 rpm. No amperage control other than it's electrically hot all the time so whenever I barked up on the truck and arc whatever I had the machine set at that's what I had so you don't can't have a foot pedal save you.
Anyway I was teaching myself how to weld pipe in my garage got real good at it left-handed switched over to to do both hands and switched over to right-handed and whoo it was rough look like a hub. Monkey molesting the football there for a while. I mean, I just went through tungsten and couldn't get started and then it was so bad. It's kind of like, kind of like me trying to get up on one water ski for the very first time.
I mean, it was just horrible. Well then all of a sudden I got it and I'll tell you how I got it. I was thinking about it driving down the road.
I just, you know, you just feel stuff come to you and and I realized what I was doing. Doing wrong. Anyway, I got real good right-handed.
And then I thought, wow, I got this down. This is cool. Switched back over to my left hand and I couldn't weld left-handed. Saved my life.
Short learning curve, though, to bring it back to left-handed. Anyway, I thought that was funny because it was... because it happened to me, you know. Okay, we've done 7018, 6010. We've run AC. I need to switch something up here and go DCEN.
So I'm going to switch leads, probably go back to the 7024. or if I can find some 7014. Let me get that on board. I couldn't find any 7014, so I substituted some 6013 for you. I switched the leads. I'm over to DCEN, electrode negative or straight polarity. 6013, what polarity does it run on?
Correct answer would be any. That's the correct answer on the test. Does it run any polarity? Does it run different on each polarity? Sure it does.
On E and it tends to deposit quite a bit more material, heavy deposition here. Got a rutile flux in it. Now the numbering system. 6013, 60,000 pound tensile strength. The one means it runs in any position.
The three indicates the flux and the electrical characteristics. Okay, any position. Would you run this rod uphill?
Because I don't like running it uphill. I like running it downhill. It's not a heavy penetrator.
It runs good on sheet metal EN downhill. You can run it hot. Doesn't make a real crowned up weld when you do it that way. 7018, same thing, 70,000 pound tensile strength.
It has a one in the third digit, which means it runs in any position. Would you run 7018 downhill? I don't.
I hate it. I love running it uphill. Doesn't run worth a hoot downhill for me.
Slag runs down in front of my front of my pool. Get to know your rods. Get to know the characteristics of your rods.
Polarities, setup, amperages, everything. Doesn't hurt to know this stuff. All right let's run another bead here.
Again DCEN. Turn this machine up to 105. This is not a rod that you'd whip around either. Straight drag is fine. Gently touching the plate all the time same pressure Which is very light by the way Pretty quiet, pretty good Anybody know what that is toward the end?
I'll give you a clue To answer one of your questions that I asked you a while ago, and what is that? again I believe that would be slag peel. Kind of like it when that happens.
One more. That was so much fun. Let's do that again and then we're gonna do a little experiment, little test here, see if we can have some real fun.
Alright here we go. It didn't do it quite as bad at the end of that one, but it wanted to, it started to. So here's the point. We ran a bunch of different rods. We ran multiple amperages, multiple diameters, multiple polarities.
We didn't stick a rod. The cameraman's happy because he's not shelling out large amounts of cash. So let's try one more rod. We'll go back to 7024 and I want to try something. I used to do this in demonstrations.
I don't know if this, I know this 7024 has been sitting out for a while. But I want to I want to see if we can do this. We used to do this with 7024 and 7027. Strike an arc. You know when I was growing up, you know, we were, I started welding school when I was a junior in high school and I won't say we were punks, but we had a sense of humor.
We liked to have a little fun. Somebody figured out take a 70-24, strike the arc and just lay it down on the plate, let it run by itself and a good fresh rod will actually run pretty good. That's how we used to cheat on our weld test.
Let's see I want to I want to switch back over to I got to switch back over to you know what I'll just do it on DCEN but I need to go up to like 150 amps. I'll go DCEN 150 amps eighth inch 7024. Thank you. There's a little more spatter around the rod. You know it ran.
A little different ripple pattern in it, a little longer. I guess the point to make there would be You know, a good short steady arc and you're directing that in there. Some of these iron powder rods they're very forgiving.
You can lean them quite a bit and they're pretty good. Generally if you're keeping a rod 20-30 degrees pointed into your work, you're fine. You know you're getting the arc stream in there. You can gently drag it on the material. If you're in a groove situation and you're going uphill with 7018 in a groove, the ability to feel dragging the rod on the leading edge of the pool with your rod 10 degrees forward.
straight in 10 degrees downhill you'll be fine you'll be make quality welds all the time so again you know we ran a bunch of different rods different polarities different sizes different amperages the a the AHP alpha TIG 200 pretty impressive what I really thought was cool about this was the ability to change stick welding AC frequency you know I've never I don't think I've ever been on a machine that would do that that and I see some advantages to it. Need to answer in the comments why would you run alternating current? What's the biggest advantage of running alternating current stick welding?
I hope this helps. I'm Bob Moffitt with Weld.com. Thanks for watching.
Make sure you subscribe to the videos. New videos come out every week. Thanks for watching. Oh, it just cut!
Whoo, that was brutal. I was checking the machine and there was an explosion. I don't know if it came out on audio or not.
Wow, I feel better. I'll tell you that. I'm kind of lightheaded. Alright, you ready? Okay, I'm just gonna laugh a while.
I don't know if I can weld while I'm laughing, but I'm gonna sure try. It's getting late and we're getting goofy around here. Alright, let's give this thing a run here.
Let's dance. I can't win. Alright, here we go.
I'm hoping we're rolling here.