what electrodes do people use and what did you learn with?
I went with 3/32. I got lanthinated, ceriated (only 1), zircronated and the LaYZr ones, along with the dremel mounted sharpener with the diamond stone so I can do grinding near a vacuum cleaner.
I am just practicing laying beads right now. I seem to contaminate it alot. It seems that the 2% lanthinated one is the most durable. From what I gather the Zirconated one might be best for aluminum and the lanthium/zircron/yttrium one might be the best for ferrous metal, if you know what you are doing.. but in general it seems that the lanthinted one gives me better results for everything. The cerinated one seems to have great reviews but I found the one I have seems to give me the hardest time.
They seem like a minor factor until you get proficient with the hand work.
And I did find an interesting one, Yttriated tungsten, which seems new and rather undocumented, but I feel like it will probobly only be a minor difference.
I tried to make a torch holder basket out of the stainless filler rod by welding a big one with a small one for a first project but my stainless substrate was thinner then the rod so it turned out to be a hard weld, I managed to tack one on in like 6 places but the second one got melted so I decided to just practice running beads on the rest of the sheet metal. Right now I am only working on a 1/4 inch flat bar (3 inch by 3 feet) laying on the welding table loose with the clamp on the work piece, waiting for more metal for the table top.
I also experimented with solar flux B, I mixed a bit of it in a bottle cap with anhydrous isopropyl alcohol, brushed it on the bottom of the work piece with a acid brush, and it greatly improved the surface quality on the underside of the piece of stainless sheet (the weld area was floating in the air), when I started to run beads on the parts without it, there was alot of 'sugaring' on the bottom.
The foot pedal control is very confusing (i prefer the O/A torch 'distance' heat control method), but it does allow me to get less of a messed up bead on the edge of the metal if I reduce power on the last bit.