Summary
- A March 11, 2026 article from Xiris says thermal imaging can reveal TIG tungsten wear before damage becomes visible.
- The test was carried out with Wolfram Industrie by adding small amounts of oxygen to argon during welding.
- The main takeaway is simple: thermal data may help operators catch degradation early and act before weld quality drops.
A new article from Xiris looks at a practical problem many TIG welders know well: tungsten wear often stays hidden until it starts affecting the arc and the weld. In the test, Wolfram Industrie used a Xiris XIR-1800 thermal camera while adding very small amounts of oxygen to an argon shielding gas mix, with the goal of tracking how contamination changes electrode temperature and wear in real time.
What stands out here is not a new tungsten grade, but a new way to watch the electrode. According to the article, the thermal camera picked up heat build-up and early oxidation before the damage was clearly visible to the eye. The test team says oxidation is a critical failure mode because it can make brittle oxides form on the surface, shorten electrode life, and even contaminate the weld pool in sensitive applications.
The article also keeps one foot in real production. The setup was placed on an automatic seam welder, and the authors say this kind of monitoring could fit long, continuous weld jobs such as tube mills, pressure vessels, and automotive lines.
Source:
Arshdeep Kaur
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