We’ve written a lot about tungsten electrodes here on JoeWelder.com, from tungsten electrode stick out gauges and new tungsten electrode sharpeners to Weldcraft brand tungsten electrodes and our premium tungsten electrodes, the new Sky Blue ArcTime™ Hybrid All Purpose Tungsten.

Whatever your preference– ceriated, lanthanated, or thoriated tungsten– we always recommend buying your tungsten electrodes from a trusted source. At Arc-Zone.com we pride ourselves on being that trusted source, offering a wide variety of high quality product to optimize your specialized welding application.

That said, we are pleased to announce that the Made-in-the-U.S.A. Sylvania tungsten electrodes are now available for sale at Arc-Zone.com– in stock and ready to ship. We will maintain stock of 7″ length in the most popular diameters (.040″ to 1/8″) in the following tungsten blends:

• PURETUNG® / Pure Tungsten (Color Code Green)
• 1% Thoriated (Yellow) Tungsten Electrodes
  
• 2% Thoriated (Red) Tungsten Electrodes
  
• 1.5% Lanthanated (Gray) Tungsten Electrodes
  
• 2% Ceriated (Orange) Tungsten Electrodes and
• ZIRTUNG® / Zirconiated (Brown) Tungsten Electrodes
  

Other diameters are available, contact Arc-Zone.com to discuss your specialized welding application.

As the summer winds down, and there is a hint of that Fall chill in the air (that could be wishful thinking), my thoughts always turn back to school….

If you feel the same way, and you plan on being in Cleveland, The Lincoln Welding School has announced their upcoming schedule:

The Lincoln Electric Welding School, which has instructed more than 100,000 students since its inception in 1917, announces its fourth quarter schedule for 2008.

It is the oldest and one of the most respected arc welding schools in the United States. Classes are taught by the school’s seven full-time instructors who have more than 100 years of combined industry experience. Courses are designed to teach the arc welding skills that employers want. Lincoln-trained students are in high demand by welding fabricators at pay levels that tend to exceed the industry average.

Classes range from a six-week basic course to an advanced 15-week comprehensive course, as well as one-week classes on specific welding processes, certification and customized programs. Students spend 80 percent of their time in the booth learning to weld. Additionally, Lincoln limits class size to 15 students per class in order to maximize learning and guarantee one-on-one instruction time.
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Doing business online we always wonder about the people on the other side of the computer screen, and we figured you were wondering too. So we put together this video to let you know what Arc-Zone.com is all about.

Let us know what you think! We had a lot of fun putting this together. More to come, so stay tuned!

I can’t tell you how happy it makes me when Big Name Racing companies like Penske Racing, Chip Ganassi Racing, Richard Childress Racing, and Furniture Row Racing place orders with us!

They could buy from any number of suppliers. Actually, most any welding equipment companys’ Sales Rep would give them (at no charge) just about anything to get in the door. But these winning organizations buy from Arc-Zone because they want the good stuff and they want to talk to someone that knows what’s happening - someone that knows what they are trying to do, and help them with the tools they need to get the job done.

That is very gratifying for me and the reason I founded Arc-Zone. So even if you’re not one of the hottest racing teams we’d still like to help you out. Give us a call, or Ask Joe™.

See you at the races!

We’ve just added the Ron Covell How To DVDs to our line up. Ron is one of the premier metal fabricators in the custom automotive industry. Add a Ron Covell DVD to your Arc-Zone.com order and Weld Like A Pro™

On my list of things I must do is attend one of his advanced metal working classes, but for now we have his DVD’s!

I watched the TIG welding Basics and was impressed with the quality of the video, and the content — nothing flashy but good useful information. And my staff tells me that Ron Covell and his team up the coast in Freedom, California, have been great to work with.

After watching I wanted to go straight to the shop and start burning some rod — Thanks Ron — we look forward to working with you!

If the upcoming American Welding Society conference isn’t your cup of Joe, maybe the Ink-N-Iron Festival is for you:

June 6-8 aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, Calif.

The best tattoo artists in the world and a series of additional events will make this 2008 edition a hit. There will be 280 artists from 30 States and 25 Countries representing all the tattoo styles pricking away with their machines in an exciting atmosphere, where a car show and music become an integral part of the event, mingling with the artistic expressions of the artists at work. This convention will be both a sort of art gallery and community festival.

Jim Watson, aka Joe Welder will be heading up to check out the Car Show.

The car show is for Pre-63 hot rods, kustoms, classics and vintage motorcycles– vehicles that are nostalgic in appearance. ABSOLUTELY NO high tech street rods, tubbed rear ends, fiberglass, billet aluminum, mini or monster trucks, muscle cars,or foreign cars allowed.

Check out last year’s show online –>

Automatic welding, for which the equipment requires little or no observation or manual adjustment, has enabled industry to dramatically accelerate output and increase quality. This conference covers new technologies in automatic controls, training and management innovations, and automation breakthroughs for the latest welding processes, including friction and thermal stir welding, hot-wire tungsten arc, laser/GMAW hybrid welding, as well as automation technologies for traditional processes, such as submerged arc.

May 13-14, 2008 ­ New Orleans, Louisiana

Register Online Today.

Conference Sessions Include:

• The Welder Shortage
• Who Will We Train?
• Welding Automation – Solutions to Common Design & Application Challenges
• Real-Time Quality Monitoring Using Data Fusion Techniques
• Innovations in Robotic Welding
• Laser Hybrid Welding – What, Why, Where and How
• Magnetic Pulse Welding – Automating the Next Generation of Welding
• Design for Manufacturing with Robotic Welding
• Understanding the Nature of Hazardous Welding Fumes in the Workplace and Steps that Can Be Taken to Reduce Exposures
• Innovations in Submerged Arc Welding
• Basic Control of Hot-Wire Gas Tungsten Arc Welding for Procedure Development and Production Applications
• Friction Stir Welding of Littoral Combat Ship Deckhouse Structure
• The Impact of Fiber Lasers on the Material Processing Market
• Thermal Stir Welding

Conference Schedule Details Available Here.

Legacy is Weldcraft’s “economy series line” which is going after all the reverse engineered knock-off torches that are sold on price. You can read the official Weldcraft press release about the Legacy TIG Torch here.

This unit is a basic WP-17 torch body with the new Red rubber molding and features a very nicely made and well designed amperage control built into the handle!

We checked one out recently and had an opportunity to play with it — the handle features a comfortable design with built in amperage control and cable strain relief on the back end to improve flexibility and torch control.

It’s another example of how good design engineering and manufacturing practices add value to the market and continue to establish Weldcraft as the market leader in TIG welding torches!

Got a call from Bob who is the welding engineer at a plant in Georgia that manufactures interior and exterior automobile parts (seat recliners, window regulators, door locks, door frames and molding). This is a super high volume production line and as part of the manufacturing process, in addition to roll forming and stamping, they TIG weld utilizing 4 robotic work cells with 4 TIG robots in each cell.

Bob graduated from Ferris State University where he learned about TIG welding, but the bulk of his real world experience to date has been in resistance welding. He’s been working in the plant for the past year, learning more hands-on TIG and one aspect of the job has been to make improvements. The plant has been having some consistency problems from arc starting problems to inconsistent arcs. Plus, they have been and going through quite a bit of tungsten– changing tungsten electrodes once for every 12 parts.

“I did some research on the internet and found your site,” he said. He told me he read our articles about tungsten electrodes and the first thing he realized was that even though they have a dedicated tungsten sharpener, it is set up to grind radially, not longitudinally.
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The Plasma Arc Welding process is an interesting and technical process, it can be considered very basic, but that said, there are many things that can go wrong.

We get a lot of calls from customers using Plasma Arc Welding torches that have failed. So we developed a check list that we go through to determine what caused the torch failure.

Generally the PAW torch body arcs out internally, which can be caused by low quality replacement parts, inferior tungsten electrode, poor or inconsistent tungsten electrode grinding, dirty parts, gas leaks in the supply hoses, worn out power cable leads….

Most commonly, however, plasma arc welding torch failure is caused by incorrectly installed replacement parts.

That’s right, operators consistently install the ceramic electrode insulator/gas distributor in the wrong direction, or worse yet they modify it by breaking of portions of it! This is common on the Thermal Dynamics 3A series torches.

The part #9-2240 (photo) is a technical ceramic molded piece that has a series of strategically placed gas channels and distribution ports which optimize the inert gas that flows through the torch and directs it to the constricting tip which then forms a superheated column of Plasma gas. It is absolutely necessary that this piece be installed with great attention to cleanliness and that it is positioned correctly.

Note: there is a newer version of the part #9-2240, pictured below.

Pictured here (left) is the new style of the 9-2240 insulator / gas sheild.

The end pointing to the top left corner is the sleeve or collar end which is directed up to the top of the torch toward the collet / insulating cap.

Pictured here (right) is the 9-2240 insulator / gas sheild with the sleeve or collar pointing to the bottom right corner of the picture.