General: Tig welder

[Burdekin]

Can anyone recommend a good reasonably priced brand of tig welder? It’s for my P1800 project so will be used to weld mild steel panels mainly.

Cheers,

Mitch

[mak-one]

Why do you particularly want a tig welder? if you are only doing mild steel panel work whould not a mig welder do the job. A decent mig set is way cheaper than a tig and easier to use IMO.

[Burdekin]

Thanks for the reply.

I already have a mig but a tig is much better and easier to control the weld metal with and is ideal for welding seams and doing panel butt welds where quality of weld and less heat input is important. Also with a tig I will need to do less grinding so again less heat introduced into the metal. Granted mig is better for many situations and I will probably still use it more. I haven’t done any tig welding for 15 years but I use to do it every day and I was very good at it (if I do say so myself) and if you ask me tig is easier than mig especially when you consider the quality of the weld between the two and how easy it is to control the weld pool with tig.

Cheers,

Mitch

[DJS]

Hi Mitch,

I use mig and tig. Mig is good for plug welding etc. Tig is great for invisibly butt welding in panels / repairs. You can also manipulate a tig welded joint after welding. Mig and tig will both cause distortion whilst welding. You can easily planish a tig weld. This is more difficult / almost impossible with mig due to the weld being harder than the surrounding metal.

I wouldn’t be without a tig welder now.

[Gordon Hunter]

After graduating on a scratch start invertor, I bought my AC/DC TIG machine from R-Tech Welding, a British firm (though inevitably a lot of parts are made in China)(not necessarily a bad thing!) who used to supply to trade and industrial outlets only. More recently they have been targetting the home and DIY market and I think you can find them on eBay. My machine, a 201 has been spot on. It is a 'modular' machine and you can buy a foot pedal (which I have) and a water cooler for it as well if you are turning out large volumes. I have even butt welded 8mm steel plate with it!

I had always used gas to join old and new metal, but with the TIG you can ramp up the amps with the foot pedal from next to nothing and with the control you can get almost no holes without adding filler rod which makes planishing a lot easier.
The heat seems to stay a lot more local than with gas, so there is less distortion on the work peice too. Having said all that, I still love my gas welding and won't give it up. It just depends on the circumstances which method I'll use. You can't have enough tools though IMO!

Though you may be limited by your workshops electrical supply, I would always try to buy a machine a couple of notches above the spec you think you will need as it is surprising how often you end up wishing you'd got a higher spec model.
You can ring R-Tech up for a chat and you will find friendly, helpful advice.

Hope this helps.

http://www.r-techwelding.co.uk/

[dheming]

I got my TIG welder in the summer of '09 and it's quickly become one of my most useful tools. Pretty much any project no matter how small requires a bit of welding. This single tool transformed me as a fabricator. The biggest things I like about TIG is how much control you have. Being able to vary the power going into the metal via the foot pedal is supremely useful for the thin stuff. I also like that adding the filler metal is totally independent of the arc. Plus having the ability to do a fusion weld without filler at all is pretty neat too. Not to mention that an AC/DC TIG machine can weld just about any metal out there(steel, stainless, chrome-moly, nickel superalloys, aluminum, copper, bronze, titanium, etc). So yeah, I TIG weld everything I make.

Whereas with MIG once you strike the arc you're committed to your settings and you're laying metal down continuously. Also I've read that on thicker metal the first part of the bead is usually too cold and has to be ground out and redone for critical applications. Many of the MIG machines I've seen friends use constantly have problems with the wire feeding through the copper collet in the torch. There's quite a bit of spatter that gets all over the place and has to be cleaned off. No thanks.

I have a friend at my shop who is into the Chinese inverters due to the super low cost. He has a 200 amp DC only machine that he got for around $350 or so that he loves. It's also a plasma cutter which is a pretty nice feature to have. I don't have any brand recommendations for this class of welder but whatever you do buy make sure they will take care of you if there's ever a problem with it. I've actually been meaning to give his machine a try to compare it to my Lincoln, but he doesn't have a foot pedal for it yet. I'll let you guys know with some feedback when that happens.

If possible get a machine with HF start which is definitely preferable to scratch start. As Gordon Hunter mentions get the biggest machine you can afford. I got a 225 amp machine so thankfully I can weld most anything that I'll ever need to build at this stage in my endeavors. Inverters are a lot more efficient than transformer based machines so they draw less power from the wall for the same output amperage. Most of the cheap TIG machines are inverters because circuit boards are a lot cheaper(and lighter to ship) than massive transformers. Either way, good luck.

[RollingThunder]

I bought a TIG welder a few months ago although I haven't had a chance to use it yet. Its an old model by Telwin Tecnica (Italian) which had rave reviews when it was released. Just a basic 80amp DC scratch start jobbie, but it only cost me just over £100 from a welding shop getting rid of old-new stock. I got a hose and torch from another shop for £80.

Of course I can't weld aluminium, but I can weld mild steel, stainless steel, copper and so on, so its fine for my needs - I was after TIG's tidy and accurate welding ability rather than a point n squirt MIG which I detest. If you must weld aluminium, then you'll be needing an AC welder which costs serious money - nothing less than £1000 is likely to be worth buying.

I'd recommend you go for a reputable brand welder rather than a chinese jobbie from ebay - TIG is all about a smooth consistent current, which the chinese cheapo welders apparently do not provide.

[tom-madbiker]

i would look at the r tech range i have an r tech mig that i love and there customer support is absolutley brilliant

[Burdekin]

Thanks Gordon and Tom, also did a bit of google research on the R-tech tig welders and they have an excellent rep so went for their unit. Thanks again!

[Oilline]

Plus 1 for R-Tech. Bought my AC/DC tig from them and very pleased with quality and performance. About to buy one of their Plasma Cutters.