Dave's Tips

How to identify TIG rods.

I thought i'd do some short videos to show a few little tricks which help you get along as a welder, some of you may already know what I am telling you in the video but hopefully I can help someone with my information here.

The first video shows you a method which I use to identify which of the most common two Tig filler rods is which, most filler rods are identified with a four digit code but some are not, and anyhow if you happen to burn off the bit with the identification on, you would be left guessing what you have in your hand, if you are anything like me, in a busy welding workshop environment and you have lots of partly used rods on your welding table and you just want to get that job finished and don't want to get a new rod from the tube, here's what to do. The most common Tig filler rod for Aluminium is 4043 the next most common is 5356.

A word of apology though, I have just watched the video through again and realised that I have shown you the wrong side of the identification on the 5356 rod so it does not say 5356 on the side you see, it did on the other side,sorry, I am a better welder than I am video maker!