The Chopper Compendium

I was welding some Bungs on an Oil Tank,all was fine.Today I welded the last one on,& the Weld Pool was spitting & poping all over the Place.Needless to say the weld is riddled with Holes.I grabbed a piece of Scrap...saned it down, tried to put a Bead down, same result.Took another piece,sanded & wiped with denatured Alcohol...no better.Took the Torch apart,cleaned the Cup,took some of the Tungsten off & reground,even turned up the Gas thinking maybe the Line had a Hole in it & wasn't getting Gas to the Torch...nothing helped.I don't know what to look for next.Here is a Pic of what The Welds look like on the piece scrap Steel....the Machine was set at 70Amps....Gas was like 12 to start...turned up to 17-20....

I get that too from time to time I wonder if its something in the base metal hope someone with more experience answers this

I've only had this happen to me twice. 1st was running out of gas...can you hear/feel the gas flow. The 2nd was using painted filler rod (long story)...cleaned off the paint and it fixed the problem.

Spent ages last night on tips and tricks, trying to find an answer, could be any no. of things from an ill fitting electrode wrong cup size bad earth contaminated rod??, Ive also had the symtoms on my college course but it usually came down to trapping air? doesn't give you an answer sorry..maybe shake the bottle, purge the system?

Think I got it narrowed down to a Gas flow Issue.Possibly at the Pedal.Connection might be bad or the Pedal itself...

You are using a red tungnston?

red for streel

green for aluminum

yellow for stainless

I use the 2% for everything.

I use red for stainless and steel never had a problem with stainless I actually weld more stainless than anything I was thinking my filler rods for regular steel sit for long periods of time I try to use a red scotchbrite pad on them before I use them seems to be less of an issue but I still get it from time to time

I've had the porous weld problem a few times. It's always been me forgetting to turn on the gas or light surface rust on the rods. It happened once with my mig and it was a bad connection at the machine.

With someones help I was able to pin the Problem down to the Pedal.I put some pressure on the Cable wherecit goes into the pedal,& was able to get a clean Weld.Looks like a new Pedal in the near Future.