Edit. I thought that I'd posted this in the questions but ended up in General. So I thought I'd tag Matt Hayden in case he doesn't see it here. 

Not real crazy about what I saw when cut and etched some sample 2F welds with the dual shield at 25V/250 IPM 35 CFH C25. They look OK on the surface, but about zero root fusion, and pretty shallow penetration. The etch wasn't great and didn't photo well. The 1/4" material was spotless clean and square; no rounded over sheared rolled edges. It was belt sanded square. Maybe I was traveling a little too fast? The throat is definitely under 1/4". Thoughts anyone?

Photo 1 cross section is pull beads top left/bottom right, and pull top right/bottom left. Photo 2 is pull, and Photo 3 is push.

Edit to add: Not sure what the hell is going on. Ran two more beads. Photo 4 is 25/250 and photo 5 is the Auto Set suggested 22.9/265. Slower travel speed to build up a bigger bead, which it did, but as you can see in the last photo, the root fusion in both is terrible. Squashed it in the 40T press and it held up OK, but I would hope so, welded on both sides.

Happy New Year! Hope you all have a great 2025. Last night Mother Nature put on a great light show for us here in Alaska. Better than fireworks!

Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday. We plan to keep hitting it hard in 2025 with lots of new stuff. Anyone have any welding related new year's resolutions they'd like to share? 

I wanted to practice on some .063 x 3" aluminum tube, so rather than cutting short pieces I decided to make pie cuts. After making 2 90's I went a step further and made a ram's head. Then a couple of saddle cuts into a cross, on to 3 more 90's of different radii. Then what the heck, put them all together. Man, did I learn a lot, like how to fill holes and the criticality of torch angle, and so much more.

Man today I got my order from weldmonger.com. I bought a fupa 12 with a titanium ring and a sticker. I'm so happy because I got three stickers and you all know we love stickers in our orders JODY COLLIER thank you so much. I've been filling up my case with cups and gas lenses tungsten and all the goodies from weldmonger.com. you guys go check out weldmonger store and you won't be disappointed. 

4043 practice beads on 3/16 6061. It's what I have to practice on.  Miller #17 torch 2% lanthanated tungsten, furick pro cup #8 balled tip from letting the tungsten do it's thing, 3/8 stick out, 165amps. Feeling pretty happy since this is my first go at this. Thanks to Jody for about 25 hours of watching his videos over and over every night here trying to learn. Any feed back would be welcome.