ABIBLOG: ABICOR BINZEL's Welding Blog

All about the welding accessories TIG welding electrodes

Finely crafted weld seams, clean welded joints, high-quality materials – welcome to the world of TIG welding and tungsten electrodes. Choosing the right tungsten electrode is just as important for TIG welding as the contact tip for MAG welding. The range of TIG welding electrodes on the market is just as colorful as the color coding that characterizes each individual type of tungsten electrode. In this blog post we would like to give you a good overview of the essential tungsten electrodes to make it easier for you to choose if you want to buy them.

The decision to purchase and use a fume extraction system and a fume extraction torch to capture the health-endangering welding fumes directly at the source is becoming increasingly easier for many people. The awareness of the potentially hazardous gases in welding fumes has cleary spread throughout the industry.

No matter how good your welding process is, weld defects are inevitable. Inspection ensures those defects are caught and fixed before your product goes out the door. Leaving this unaddressed can lead to customer issues, premature product failure, and a lot of other avoidable mistakes. In my experience, I have seen a number of issues impact welding. One of my most memorable experiences was during my time at Tower. We would always run into inconsistency in parts which caused a frenzy in figuring out the reasoning why. We'd argue with our internal and external stamping supplies, have holes and trimmed edges that would move or change, and spend countless hours on the robot cells touching up welds here and there. This lead to many different quality issues and wasted time chasing down and troubleshooting these inconsistencies. 

It doesn’t have to be a welding robot!

At some point, the time has come and:

• the manual welder reaches the limits of his physical capacity
• the quantities are too large to meet the desired delivery date
• the topic of automation must be discussed

Automation? Aren’t these robot welding cells which usually take up a lot of space and are really expensive? In order to make their purchase profitable, enough parts have to be processed to operate the system at full capacity. In addition, there is the programming of the welding robot, which requires additional knowledge. Is there no interim solution if an industrial welding robot is still a size too big? Yes, there is: cobot welding.

Are you looking to continue advancing your welding process? You've completed the first step by adding robots to your operation, but now you're looking to improve safety among your team. Step two is setting up a robotic fume extraction system in your plant to improve air quality. The xFUME™ ROBO by ABICOR BINZEL USA and CA is the most effective and economical way to control welding smoke emissions with fume source capture.

If you are looking to invest in Fume Extraction equipment but you don't want to use manual Fume Extraction torches because they are too heavy, your using a Machine/Robotic torch and your concerned about access issues or your simply on a tight budget - then here are a few external kits that you can use with your existing setup.

RAS Torch Kits 

The RAS fume extraction option is an economical and ergonomic alternative to integrated fume extraction torches e.g. RAB GRIP.

There are two physical elements of weld wire to be aware of in a robotic welding application. The first is the cast, which is the natural curvature of the wire. The second is the helix, which is the natural winding geometry of the wire's radial shape. 

Anti-spatter spray, anti-spatter liquids, anti-spatter fluid and more

You have to break an egg to make an omelet. Especially with MIG/MAG welding, weld spatter occurs, which can already be heard from afar. With this »crackling and cracking« small metal droplets are created that are hurled from the weld pool or from the hot liquid electrode end to the workpiece surface or land on the weld seam and the torch wear parts. Excessive weld spatter is caused, for example, by an incorrectly set welding current, a non-optimal arc, incorrect polarity or insufficient gas shielding. However weld spatter occurs ... burnt weld spatter has to be removed again. This rework costs time and money. Anyone who welds wants to keep the adhesion of weld spatter as low as possible. And if they do stick, they can easily be removed again. Here we answer the questions that our field staff are asked the most on site.

ABICOR BINZEL USA is now offering full turn-key solutions to fume extraction welding in both automated, robotic applications and manual applications.

When we look at weld joint detection and the benefits involved, there are two primary features of these technologies: the finding and tracking of the joint.