Welding Tips and Tricks

I'm thinking of getting a water-cooled TIG torch, probably a no. 20, and having no experience with them, I'm wondering how much of the torch is cooled. Most images show tubes underneath the removable handle--does the coolant travel any farther, into the "neck" and up to the head? One image I saw even showed a "water jacket" in the head; it's hard for me to believe that it goes this far in most torches. Basically, I'm wondering if water-cooling will only help keep the handle tolerably cool, or whether it helps with the head (which I occasionally grasp to get into tight spaces) and its internal components.

Even in the cheapest ebay chinese water cooled torches, there is a small 1/8" diameter copper tube that to up to and around and over the torch head that it is brazed to. I've dissected one completely. So, yes, the whole torch is water cooled. Quite easily.

The coolant does travel up into the neck. The cup and collet body or gas diffuser will still build up some heat, but nothing like on an air-cooled torch. The duty cycle will vary with brand and model, but most will at least be 100% duty cycle for 200A on DC and somewhat less on AC.

I've melted the back cap off a 17 series air-cooled torch on a machine that maxed out at 175A...didn't take that long. With the 20-series torch on my Miller I have never gotten it where it was more than just warm. The difference is so huge I added a water-cooled setup with a 20-series torch to my Everlast just yesterday. I wasn't using it much, mostly because of the air-cooled torch.

Seeing Oscar's post...I didn't realize the tube went over the head, but it makes sense.

G-ManBart wrote: I've melted the back cap off a 17 series air-cooled torch on a machine that maxed out at 175A...didn't take that long.

That’s a helluva trick. I have never heard of such a thing, nor have I ever experienced anything remotely close to that using a #17 with a 200amp TIG.

All the way around the head of the torch, encircling the collet body. See here. https://stores.ae-welding-industrial.co ... uper-flex/

I run a CK #20 flex neck on my Syncrowave 250, and I can weld quarter inch aluminum plate all day without exceeding the duty cycle of the torch and it never even gets warm. I went water cooled after getting burned through my welding gloves by a cheapo air cooled torch one too many times.

cj737 wrote:

G-ManBart wrote: I've melted the back cap off a 17 series air-cooled torch on a machine that maxed out at 175A...didn't take that long.

That’s a helluva trick. I have never heard of such a thing, nor have I ever experienced anything remotely close to that using a #17 with a 200amp TIG.

I wouldn't call it a trick, but I was welding maxed out on some thick material making some blacksmithing tools. It was the stock torch on a Lincoln Square Wave TIG 175. I'd probably been welding for around an hour, and the torch was on the edge of uncomfortable when the tail cap fell off...the brass part that threads into the torch was still in place and the plastic is pretty thin where it goes around the brass.

That was pretty much the final straw for air-cooled torches for me.

I don't know how weldcraft makes the convertible torches like the one I have but the liquid does not go all the way to the head on that one. Mine has convertible heads where you can just unscrew them and put a new one on. The watercooled part must end somewhere close to the threaded brass receptacle where the heads screw on. It clearly transmit enough heat out to never get hot because mine has never been hot.

Mine is both convertible and flexible. I don't know how they do that because the thing is not very big.