Welding Tips and Tricks

Being a total noob TIG welder, and not being in the mood to spend $300 or so on a tungsten grinder, but understanding that a properly ground electrode could only do good things for my so far pitiful attempts at the art I decided to spring about 50 bucks for a STILO TIG electrode rotator. The ad copy said that you put an electrode in the device, hold it against the grinding wheel or belt and the STILO automagically rotates the electrode for a perfect grind. Sounded like a good idea, so I ordered one off of Amazon. Total cost, shipping and all was $52 and change. Since it came out of Big Spring TX, just a couple hundred miles west of here or so, I got it in two days. It was in the mailbox when I got home from work last night.

I took it to work today, and gave it a try. It performs as advertised. Just chuck up the electrode and hold it at the desired angle against the side of the grinding wheel. Within 30 seconds, you've got a nicely pointed tungsten. I immediately noticed that the arc starts were more focused and precise than they had been with the "multi-faceted pyramidial" points that I'd previously been grinding by hand.

In summary, the STILO TIG is a neat little device. I like it. It saved me about $250 and that's likable too. There are two versions. The blue one, which is the one I got, handles 1/16" and 3/32" electrodes. The red one does 1/8" and 5/32" tungstens. I may find I need that one in the future. For now, I figure if Jody can do 90 some odd percent of his work with 3/32" electrodes, there's no need for me to get fancy at this point in my TIG career.

I use what ever drill is closest to spin mine. I picked up an old black and decker 3/8 in corded drill at a garage sale for 10$ that stays next to my bench grinder just for that purpose.

I like these two pin vises for sharpening my tungsten.

http://www.commandoproducts.com/drillha ... large.aspx and the one from MicroMark tools, part #21104.

You can buy either one online for about $10. The Commando Products one holds smaller tungsten in the handle and the MicroMark one fits in my pocket nicely.

Len

I use my old Bosch cordless drill and a belt sander.

Noticed to my horror recently that the chuck on the drill is shrinking! As the tungstens get shorter, now and then the (plastic) chuck has been kissing the belt sander. Oops.

Time to get a cheaper cordless drill...



Kym

Cheaper the drill the better for sharpening. The grinding dust kills em after a while.

The first thing I learned when I started tig welding was that I needed a smaller electrode and smaller filler wire. I don't see a good reason to limit yourself to one size. I generally weld with the smallest tungsten I can, on DC anyway.

I bought a cheap bench grinder just for tungsten sharpening. It has developed nice grooves in the center of each wheel, and I still freehand them.