Welding Tips and Tricks

There is a bloke on a UK forum that has made a tungsten grinder attachment that can be used on a Dremel. After a lot of requests he started making them and selling them to people.
I already own a tungsten grinder but I liked Stu's idea so much and the fact that I would not rely on super expensive proprietary spare parts that I ordered one to try.
I received my kit today so here are some pics:

The grinder comes with 4 holes (1.0 , 1.6 , 2.4 & 3.2mm) on the top to flatten the tip of the tungsten, 5 screws with holes placed in different angles (2 of the screws are drilled to accommodate the more common 2.4mm size and the rest for 1.0 , 1.6 & 3.2mm). There is also a slot you could use to cut the tungsten.

Tungsten grinder by Taz00, on Flickr

Everything required to use it with a Dremel is included in the kit.

Tungsten grinder by Taz00, on Flickr

Here it is fitted on a Dremel 8200 next to my ESG Orbitalum

Tungsten grinder by Taz00, on Flickr

Tungsten on the left is from Stu's grinder and the one on the right from the Orbitalum. Do not pay too much attention on the fact that the one from the Orbitalum seems smoother since I have had the same disk on it for a long time. When it was new the result was similar to Stu's.

Tungsten grinder by Taz00, on Flickr

General observations.
- The ESG is smoother with no vibrations compared to the Dremel with the EZ Speedclick system but this has nothing to do with Stu's kit and is a fault of the Dremel.
- The finish of the grinder is perfect.
- The thread that attaches the grinder head to the Dremel is too tight and it takes some lubrication and considerable force to bottom it out (at least on my Dremel)
even then
- The supplied spacer is not enough to achieve the 26mm distance shown on Stu's youtube video.
I decided not to leave it bottomed out as I was afraid of stripping the plastic Dremel threads when I wanted to remove it, get rid of the spacer and adjust the distance without it.

The grinder is fantastic and there is no way I would have payed for a grinder like the ESG Orbitalum if Stu's grinder was available at the time.

The thread on the grinder is here:
http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/thre ... nder.44866

Looks like a nice bit of machining that gentleman did.

I may have to look at getting one, once I'm doing enough TIG to justify it, and not constantly dipping the tungsten!

Yeah, I reckon I'm gonna need one also. Sure will save a lot of trips to the bench grinder. I think it'll be a step saver even while I'm still dipping tungstens.

LDB

save us alllll the trouble of reading 18+ pages for that one crucial bit of information please: how much is it shipped to the USA??

I saw the price of 70 Pounds for the head alone, so around $107 USD, plus shipping.
That said, the price may have changed between January 2014 and now, so contact him?

and add another 100 for the Dremel. Getting close to the 250 for a corded Sharpie.

Nice addition though.

Can you grind with a blob on the tip or do you have to cut first?

If you go for a corded model such as the 3000 you can easily buy it new for less than 50 euros.
Most people anyway will already own a dremel.
The cheapest Sharpie grinder I could find on 220V was the fixed angle model (20 degree only) at 300 euros + shipping so we are talking about a big difference both money and spec wise.
However as I wrote the appeal for me was the fact that you are not tied to expensive proprietary spare parts.

If you have a blob on your tungsten you can use a bigger hole to insert it and grind it or cut it on the side slot. This is the exact way my ESG works.

That's a really cool idea. Does this guy have a website to order these, or did I miss it in the original post?

Just pm him in the mig-welding.co.uk forum
The link of the original thread is on my first post.
He did mention that he intends on putting them up on eBay some time in the future.

looks great. i hope it works even better