Cheap 3 in 1 tig welder - any one used one?

Thanks Murray. There are 2 BOC depo's around here. Or at least I think so. One in Redditch. Further but a lot less traffic.

One awkward for me to get to in B'ham supplier does a one off deposit on the bottles. £80 deposit for a 20L with 4m^3 gas refundable and £96 for a refill. That's 3' tall. A 2L may be suitable for me. £25 deposit and £26.40 for the gas. Or a 9L, 30" tall for £55 and £48. They state pure argon. I did know about that. A place I worked at tried medical argon what ever that is and it didn't work out.

Not sure if I can compare these prices with BOC directly. No signs of what their rental charges are and there seems to be a charge for collecting refills - £14 ??. BOC's PD size is ar 230bar and contains just short of 500l of gas. The other's 2L one is at 200 bar and contains 420L of gas. I think I can assume usage is 7 L / min So circa 1hr of welding. Their 9L one looks to be a good option for a "small one" - 1.2m^3 gas. An hour of solid welding in my terms is a lot. Nearly 3hrs should be OTT.

This is the outfit selling gas like this

**LINK**

I'll phone BOC and get actual prices but suspect if they do charge £14 odd for collect I'll buy from these people.

Looks like disposable is out but at least I could get my deposit back if I find I have little use for it. I like stick welding and hope I can still cope with it.

Not sure what argon light is for ?? Not sure about welding aluminium either. There is a youtube video showing it being done with DC and not totally sure but think I was using DC when playing with fusing 1/4" plate. That's why I had a nose around youtube.

I took a look inside it. Looks pretty workman like to me. Neat and tidy. Not that this means a lot in terms of electronics. It comes with some collets etc and fittings for the cutter. Looking at the rating of commercial units there is a slight chance it will cut 6mm cleanly. Not much chance just a slight one. They claim 8mm but other units give 2 figures. A clean cut and I assume a bit of a mess.

More posts since I finished this one. Thanks. There is at least one other local no rental supplier around but they don't  state prices - phone and ask. I'll look for more tomorrow.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 15/12/2016 23:16:08

Argon, I pay £4.99 per month rental less Vat but not sure what the refill price is, i think it's about £35.

Don't have any MiG gas invoices handy

These are the large bottles, in fact they stand about 6" taller than the BOC or Air products.

Small oxygen 3' tall is £4.50 per month rental and £7.00 for the refill.

This is from Gas Direct at Newark

Help !

I would seem sensible to get a single stage regulator and a flow meter. This is one for instance

**LINK**

But I take it that the gas connection on a cylinder comes out at 90 degrees so to get the flow regulator pointing upwards the bottle would have to be lying on it's side.

Am I missing something or does it need another connection of some sort as well? This one is preset to 3bar too. Some come set to 2 bar.

The same sort of arrangement is available from lots of sources and all seem to be the same..

John

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John,

Get your yourself on **LINK**

All in a decent bunch of guys and in my experience, very helpful.

Nick.

Hi John.

When I was working we changed gas suppliers and their cylinder outlet was 90 deg out compared to the previous ones.

The gas suppliers soon got very good right angle adapters for us.

Edited By V8Eng on 16/12/2016 14:44:14

LOL Too much internet browsing for the things. Brain fade. The gauge end of the one I linked to can be rotated in any direction as can the flow gauge. That means it can be vertical.

The only problem with that listing is a tail for the pipework. He sells right hand and left hand tails or one of each. I'm pretty sure it should be right hand but why not mention it in the listing.

Some where I saw a cheapish 2 bar preset regulator and a flow gauge intended for 2 bar. Also 14L/min max which I think is more suitable for tig. It doesn't seem to be in my browser history.

John

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He doesn't because rh is for non flam and lh is for flam gases?

I was considering one of these see what Santa thinks

I bought of a place called ToolsToday. Both parts by Parweld. The flow regulator is 0-14 l/min. I just can't find the other one I had seen so the regulator is preset at 3 bar. Many of them seem to be.

Painless place to buy from - click on paypal and they even get the address from them - unlike some.

John

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I'm not the font of knowledge but in my 30 years or so experience of BOC and Air Liquide, the outlet was always vertical (coaxial with the cylinder axis). Probably not a great surprise to find that BOC regulators have outlet and inlet at 90 degrees with gauges appropriately oriented.

Murray

If you check out Air Products cylinders, (in the 10L size) you will find the control valve at the top and outlet at 90 deg to the cylinder axis.

This link leads to a 4 page pdf which shows that in detail.

**LINK**

Edited By V8Eng on 17/12/2016 09:06:37

I have an adaptor **LINK**

so that I can use the same regulator, either side or bottom entry, on either type of cylinder valve.

Personaly I have a Side Entry Regulator, as most if not all of the Rent Free cylinders and the smaller X or Y size BOC, have side rather than vertical outlet valves.

Nick.

Edited By Nick Hughes on 17/12/2016 09:54:05

Hi all,

I'm very pleased with Hobby Gas, £50 deposit and the gas seems reasonable.....depot's everywhere and you can use any one to exchange bottles, my trouble is it needs to back to the UK for ra efill.........oh well.......

clogs

Doh if that's the case I'll have to buy an adapter. I based my choice on the link for rent free bottles I posted earlier. The outlets look to be horizontal and they state same fitting as BOC etc. It looks like that supplier is the only rent free one in B'ham. Opposite side of the city to me. Some national suppliers list others but they seem to all be motor factors and I doubt if they really have stock.

How can I identify which tig torch the unit is fitted with. There seems to be several variations all w something or the other? Same with the cutting torch.

John

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The torch is this one. Nice colour co ordination with the ceramics. Shows excellent taste.

**LINK**

Proving difficult to tie down the size as the collet length is 36 1/2 mm which seems to be unusual. The Parweld catalogue shows both shorter and longer ones.

The easiest answer to that may be a new torch body as the collets only seem to be available from China. Cromwell do one for £10 with a silicon rubber head.

The cutting torch seems to be the usual 40 amp one going on the sizes of the parts. I found a more expensive 30 amp plasma cutter and they reckon that will cut 8mm cleanly with 50 psi air pressure. The duty cycle of that one was 33% despite the cost.

John

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You can get TIG brazing rods and they do braze very nicely and only put heat into the local area. I have TIG weld copper using thick copper wire and welds looked good but I couldn't recommend whether they are suitable for pressure vessels!

I'm currently more interested in fusing rather than using filler rods. I need to make up another dog cage for the Forester. I made up the one for the previous car and some one else did the tig work on it - no filler rod. They charged me for the time so thought I would try myself. I might get the same people to plastic coat it afterwards.

I have tried this before. Some parts were being made out of 1/4" aluminium plate at work. The welder left some scrap about so that I could have a play. Just stitching wasn't that difficult. Trying to run a long seam was. The metal heats up more and more so the torch speed needs to be just right otherwise it melts through the plate completely. Stitching steel for short lengths should be a lot easier - I hope.

John

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As you say, the work heats up as you progress, so ideally you'd be able to reduce the current without interrupting the weld. That's why foot pedals and torch-mounted adjusters are widely used. I found aluminium was more sensitive to heat buildup, perhaps not surprisingly.

My ancient Miller Interlas TIG welder didn't have a pedal and the only ones I could find on ebay were extortionately priced so I tried a couple of approaches. Firstly I used a variable current source (a modified bench PSU) with a small torch-mounted pot to directly control the mag amps in the welder. This worked as intended but realistically you have plenty to do with your hands as it is and only one befuddled brain to control them. I thought there must be a better way. My second solution was a large wire wound rotary pot (a rheostat, I suppose) that I got from Farnell, with a large foot pedal arrangement. This worked well, mimicking the genuine article and allowing me to enable the output and vary the output current with my foot.

Sheet metal can be fused easily if you prepare and position the edges carefully so that you melt down the edge of one or both of the sheets to provide filling. You can join tubing etc without filler but it won't have the same penetration and strength. Whether it's strong enough depends what you are making.

If you use copper wire to TIG braze, you should be prepared for a fair bit of popping and lots of frustrating inclusions. Electric wire and plumbing pipe are not very pure. They contain a fair bit of oxygen and other impurities. Try butt welding a couple of pieces of copper pipe or brazing some steel and see how you get on. Conversely, if you use Sifsilcopper rods, you won't have that problem. Ask me how I know. TIG brazing is fun and surprisingly straightforward.

Murray

aka autogenous welding

Andrew

It's left me wondering if silver solder could be used with tig. I would have thought that the biggest problem with brazing is getting a low enough current on some machines.

Just for people who might be thinking of Xmas and lusting after cutting the compressor needed surprised me. From looking around a 30amp unit like this one is likely to need one able to deliver 3.5 bar at 100 l/min - 3.5 cfm. Go for something bigger and it looks like over 4 bar may be needed at the same flow rate.

My idea of a compressor is one that can drive decent sized brads. Buying a compressor isn't an easy task. Few state delivery rates. The only mass market ones I could find were by Sheppach. While I like the look of one of their oil less types it will only deliver around 65 l/min at this pressure. It all reminds me of my car spraying days. Tried all sorts and then bought an Apollo low pressure unit. In the right hands, not mine they could produce results that were better than the manufacturers could just using a few psi and a constant flow rate. The makers still seem to be stuck in 10 bar and low flow rates. Many decent spray guns don't need that but do need the flow rate so they stick bigger and bigger tanks on them that don't really help.

This might put me off plasma cutting for good. On the other hand I might start looking at compressors.

John

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