I'll post more pics later tonight, I'm about to leave the shop.
Yes, my machine does have balance control and I had good cleaning action (I felt like) but the pic I posted I wire-brushed clean before snapping the pic so I think that scraped away the cleaned area. I start each aluminum weld by using light pedal and letting the ac balance clean the spot before I puddle. Kind of crazy how effective it is. You almost don't need to clean aluminum at all.
I figured out how to keep the puddle from falling through at the edge. It just takes a **** load of rod and feather the amps down slowly.
I ****ing love TIG. I can't believe I waited this long to buy a machine and learn.
I welded on some 16-ga aluminum today, too. I know pulse isn't required but I tried manually pulsing and man things looked better. Kind of wish I had pulse on my machine now. It has the spots for the knobs but the module isn't installed / included.
I finished up the day by going back to steel for a little while. The thoriated tungsten is infinitely better than pure both on aluminum and steel. I've got a ****-ton of pure that came with the machine though. :-/
Getting a lot better at keeping my filler out of the tungsten. I think I only had to stop to resharpen contaminated tungsten twice today.
