Inexpensive TIG machines

I can't run a TIG without a foot pedal. As far as I'm concerned it's not possible and it's just a joke pipe fitters and the like play on the rest of us, like mechanics and blinker fluid or boy scouts and cans of dehydrated water :p
 
Okay, there is another set of questions. The ones that I am looking at appear to have lift arc and/or HF start. I just had no idea what that meant. Still don't, but at least now I know that it is a good thing. :D
skillgannon said:
Unless you really really need to weld aluminum I would avoid looking for that option just because it adds a lot to the complexity of the machine and the price. When I was looking it added about $1000 to the machine. I checked out the little Eastwood and that would probably work great for what you need. If you can find a option that has lift arc or high frequency start but doesn't have a foot pedal it would give you maximum value. Foot pedal is needed for aluminum and ultra thin materials but is rarely used for other steel tig work. I would recommend getting some 3/32 E3 purple tipped tungsten although the red thoriated is fine. You will also need a bottle of argon and a regulator. I prefer a flow meter over the guaged type.
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Left handed screw driver......
kuraki said:
I can't run a TIG without a foot pedal. As far as I'm concerned it's not possible and it's just a joke pipe fitters and the like play on the rest of us, like mechanics and blinker fluid or boy scouts and cans of dehydrated water :p
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jdm61 said:
Okay, there is another set of questions. The ones that I am looking at appear to have lift arc and/or HF start. I just had no idea what that meant. Still don't, but at least now I know that it is a good thing. :D
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If you use a scratch start you have to touch the elctrode to the work just like stick welding. The problem with that is that sometimes your tip sticks and you break it off and it contaminates your weld and screws up your tip all at once. Lift arc senses when you touch the work and turns on the power once you lift back off. High frequency has a separate high frequency (high voltage) that leaps the arc gap and allows you to start without touching the work at all. If you are doing aluminum its AC so you run high frequency constantly in the background to hold the arc path open. With steel the high frequency shuts off after the arc is started. HF is nice but I would recommend at least lift arc as a option.
 
kuraki said:
Well I have an Everlast Power i-TIG 201 and an i-MIG 200E on the way, so I'll let you know soon. One is being delivered today, but I don't know which one. The other hasn't shipped yet. They're each ~$500 machines.
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I have the 115V Everlast Mig for 3-4 years now. No complaints. I don't do a ton of welding but I do believe they compare favorably with regards to duty cycle/Amperage.
 
I do believe you can scratch start tig on a piece of copper placed on your work and move on over to what you want to weld if you are worried about tungsten contamination with scratch start.

Hilariously, in the beginning, you are going to have arc strikes all over the place making actual welders turn over in their graves.
 
Its just easier to have the others. Sometimes you still get the elctrode stuck even with lift arc. When you break it loose sometimes it breaks the arc other times it bends or breaks the tungsten. A good welder can make a good weld with just about anything but I'm a believer that its good to cut down on obstacles when you are learning.
 
The Eastwood has HF start and comes with a pedal. The holder for the stick is extra. The Amico is kinda vague on what it comes with. Doesn't look like it has a pedal. I suspect that counts in part for the price difference. I think that I will spend the extra few bucks and buy the Eastwood.
 
So here is the next question. Do you really need a filler metal rod when tacking together damascus stacks and attaching a handle? I saw Claude Bouchonville do both without any filler rod multiple times, but I think he had a fairly powerful TIG welder.
 
The entire reason I ordered the TIG was for tacking damascus billets and doing full welded seams on restacks or mosaics etc without filler.

The rebar, I would want to use filler but it can be done. You inevitably lose some diameter without filler and it's a weaker weld regardless of how powerful the machine is.
 
It doesn't take much to tig weld steel. A weld without filler works best on thinner materials where the melted edges are more than 50% of total thickness. That said you are not trying to make a lasting structure. Basically so long as something like hot and cold cycles or hard use doesn't shear the weld it will work fine. So if you zip up the corner and then zip up all of the seems fir a dry weld there is no place to start that shear. You may or may not have issues with random tracks on the side. If you have to add filler metal its pretty easy with steel. You can just lay it where you want to weld and wash over it.
 
The Everlast MIG developed a problem right away. The gun was staying live even when the trigger wasn't pulled, so if you contacted the wire to the work, it would burn back to the tip. The welder still worked, but that's not acceptable. I contacted Everlast and within a day I had a return UPS shipping label to send the inverter back, and they sent me a replacement.

Both my replacement MIG welder and my TIG welder that was backordered arrived yesterday. I hooked the new MIG up and just welded a couple beads on 120v with .035 wire to test, and it works great.

The TIG is a Powerarc 160. I set it up but have no Argon and no tungsten so I haven't done anything else with it. I've got some thoriated tungsten on the way and Friday I will fill both my 75/25 bottle and my Argon bottle when I go to get more liquid nitrogen. In the mean time I'm running a 220 circuit for the welders. So hopefully this weekend I should be welding with both units at full power.
 
kuraki said:
The Everlast MIG developed a problem right away. The gun was staying live even when the trigger wasn't pulled, so if you contacted the wire to the work, it would burn back to the tip. The welder still worked, but that's not acceptable. I contacted Everlast and within a day I had a return UPS shipping label to send the inverter back, and they sent me a replacement.

Both my replacement MIG welder and my TIG welder that was backordered arrived yesterday. I hooked the new MIG up and just welded a couple beads on 120v with .035 wire to test, and it works great.

The TIG is a Powerarc 160. I set it up but have no Argon and no tungsten so I haven't done anything else with it. I've got some thoriated tungsten on the way and Friday I will fill both my 75/25 bottle and my Argon bottle when I go to get more liquid nitrogen. In the mean time I'm running a 220 circuit for the welders. So hopefully this weekend I should be welding with both units at full power.
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Electrode burn back is either no shield gas ( you will see white power and burnt areas ) or elctrode positive. I don't know why I'm telling you this. I'm having problems with mine when doing high frequency pulse on aluminum and not switching from high frequency start to high frequency pulse and it balls the elctrode while it is switching. I'm not sure if it's a setting issue or a controller issue. If you have problems with your next one really get into any hidden menus to see if there could be a problem there.
 
You're misunderstanding. The MIG gun was live whenever the welder was on, like a stick holder. It would burn the wire off because the wire feed wasn't on unless the trigger was pulled. That's just not functioning properly. There were no menus, it's an analog machine.
 
kuraki said:
You're misunderstanding. The MIG gun was live whenever the welder was on, like a stick holder. It would burn the wire off because the wire feed wasn't on unless the trigger was pulled. That's just not functioning properly. There were no menus, it's an analog machine.
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I was up late. Sorry. Lol
 
Yeah, Kuraki runs a very large steel fabrication company with a few hundred employees. He knows how to weld, I have seen once where he didn’t read the tape measure correctly though.

Hoss
 
DevinT said:
Yeah, Kuraki runs a very large steel fabrication company with a few hundred employees. He knows how to weld, I have seen once where he didn’t read the tape measure correctly though.

Hoss
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Yeah, I saw that too. :confused::rolleyes:
 
I've run 220 and picked up some thoriated electrodes. First project with the TIG will be sealing up 416/cfv san mai for a dry weld in my mini atlas, so just doing a fillerless weld on a rebar stud to show how that looks. This was all done at 100 amps with a 3/32 electrode using the thumb switch and hf start.

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