Just wanted to say I’m glad so many of you found this post to be of interest. Also wanted to point out that this really was a ‘throw together’ project... about an hour, start-to-finish. If there had been more time to think it through the design would have been different. What would I change? Origina...

Recently I was asked to do some TIG welding underneath a car. Since my preference was to be able to use my foot pedal for better control (instead of my euro-style push-button torch) I decided to put together a pedal holder to allow for foot control when lying on my back. I threw this thing together ...

You might try looking at the Weco line of welding equipment. I've been using their Discovery 171-TMax DC TIG machine (current version is the the Discovery 172T) for the last five years with never a hint of trouble. The machine is DC Tig and has fairly good pulse features. It has HF and lift start, l...

That little sculpture was the result of about two weeks of effort. The welding was done using my Weco 171T DC machine with a CK-9 and SSC foot pedal. Most of the 'fill rod' was double-twisted lengths of mig wire due to the small working size. What doesn't show is all the cutting and machining work. ...

Mike, The hands are the hex-heads of those bolts, sawed off and welded back on end-wise (at the appropriate angle). The fingers are made from sections of large carpenters finishing nails. I did some low-amperage long-arcing to heat them to the point where I could easily put a bend into 'em, then cut...

Just a little fantasy piece I have been working on for the past week or so - "The World is Nuts" - not quite finished.

Be sure to check your back cap on the torch head. Sometimes the thing can leak. I had that problem once. I had just purchased a new medium-size back cap. For some reason the O-ring groove in the thing had been machined off-center so that a whisper of air could get sucked in. That really screwed up m...

Yes, the connector end on the gas line is a quick disconnect. Which particular kind of quick disconnect is not to be determined from the photo on its own. Perhaps a few appropriate measurements? In any case, I'm sure your local welding supply house will be more than able to give you assistance with ...

Nelson, You would be amazed at just how small a hole will let through the correct flow of gas. So, it's probably better to 'sneak up' on the size of the hole. Start out with something on the small side (I had chosen for a #75 drill bit). If you find that you aren't getting quite the gas flow you wan...

mpete, What you are missing is that the initial 'gush' is that tiny bit of argon gas trapped between the flowmeter and the welders own gas solenoid. When you trigger the torch, the welder's gas solenoid opens and that bit of 'higher pressure' trapped gas 'gushes' out. Of course, argon gas is also co...

I ran into exactly the same problem, went to talk with my local welding supply house tech to figure out what was going on and found the answer. :D The problem is this: A flowmeter regulator works with a primary step-down diaphragm arrangement dropping the high pressure gas in the cylinder (2000 PSI)...

Judging by your etching test I would say that you did not wait for the base metal to puddle, but merely succeeded in melting your filler metal onto the fillet instead of into it. The wide weld bead (laying on top of the base metal) also indicates that you are holding your torch too far away from tha...

If this stuff is actual silverware (coin silver, sterling or such) then simple order some drawn silver wire from a jeweler's supply house and use that as the filler. Silver wire is available in all sorts of gauges, so you have your choice of diameter.

What about drilling holes through those alignment pieces in the same places as those spot welds.
You could then reattach them using the plug weld technique.

Just thought to post a little project I’ve been working on. This is to be a fairly robust rolling table to support a really heavy, cast iron, hot foil stamping press that a friend of mine uses for her leather work. The legs on this are 5cm square tubing with 2mm wall thickness. As you can see in the...

Another possible place to look for the problem is the back cap on your TIG torch... you know, that part you screw in at the back to tighten the collet that holds the tungsten electrode in place. If the O-ring on that back cap is damaged or otherwise not sealing, then the torch will suck air in from ...

I think that it might be easier to give you adice regarding the size and type of torch if you could post some representative photos of the kind of work you have in mind.

I have done jewelry work in the past, though using tradional methods and not TIG, so I know how silver can develop those pesky oxides during melting and soldering operations. My suggestion would be to try building a little walled 'gas dam' of something (small slices of sheet metal or perhaps firebri...

What I mainly weld is relatively small sculpture work made up of bits of this and that. So issues of penetration, oxide coatings and a host of other bug-a-boos that haunt us all when we consider a welded join for construction purposes just don't mean a lot. Therefore, I save all my cast-off ends and...

I'm in agreement with Garry on the low amps. Over here on my side of the pond the rule is 25 amps for every millimeter of thickness for ordinary steel. That would make a minimum setting of 75 amps for the three mm of your thinnest plate. Of course, if you can handle it, upping the amps slightly will...

I ran into a similar situation when I was putting together my own welding table using sections of square steel tubing. I decided to close up everything real nice and neat and then... bang! ... just as I'm finishing it up the weld kind of puffs and explodes on me. :evil: So what is happening? The ans...

Judging from your photos I think you have an issue with your shielding gas. I don't think it is pure argon. What makes me think so? That grey weld line and the brown scum around the edges. I've seen that during my welding class when some of the students accidently hooked up their TIG welders to bott...

Hey everybody, just wanted to add some information to this very interesting thread. After reading about this question of excess volume and/or pressure in the feed line and whether or not to move/mount the final stage of the regulator closer to the back of the welder I decided to try to sort out my o...

I would definitely suspect the quality of the sensors in your helmet in this case. When I went in to purchase my current TIG welder the dealer definitely advised me against purchasing an 'el-cheapo' helmet. What he told me was that the cheaper helmets work just fine with either stick welding or wire...