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

It's a pity you can't use hot air to weld with.

He's creating enough.

Anyone come across these bottles. This price if for the bottle outright filled with gas. Refills £60.74

**LINK**

Not sure what 10 lb means. If weight of argon it would be about 7.5m^3 at 20C I suspect that isn't what they mean.

Also found a place that will sell me 240,600 or 950L of liquid argon. Wonder what pressure that is at. Boiling off I would suspect.

**LINK**

John

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Another in Brum is Energas. Not sure how they sell gas but Smethwick and a trip down the worst long high street in Brum. Google reckons 18min. If t wasn't for the usual 5 to 6 buses going along stopping every 100 yds that might be correct.

I needed a new pump for the boiler a couple of months ago. Same area and took nearly 1hr. Bit quicker coming back.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 10/01/2017 23:13:25

You can use helium for TIG but it is mighty expensive. Over in the states it is common to call the TIG/GTAW process Heliarc because they often use helium by default.

To save money you can mix helium and argon. Typically you would need a regulator for each and some kind of mixing valve.

You would only need to mix if you wanted to get some of the helium advantage without fully paying the price.

The advantage of helium is a higher power arc. Helium gas has a higher ionisation potential than argon, and that means the voltage generated across the arc gap is higher. If the voltage is higher for any given current then the arc is more powerful.

You might want to use this for say copper welding. I don't think there is a reason why you couldn't weld copper with argon, but most hobby welders run out of welly before they can be usable on a material like copper. With helium, perhaps you can get a bit more energy into the material.

I don't know exactly how big the practical advantage is, but I'd hazard a guess that it's about 1.5 times on the current setting. If you have a 200A welder on argon that might be the difference between a silver soldered and welded copper boiler.

Edited By Andy Ash on 11/01/2017 00:18:14

Indeed you can't but you can fill ballons with it which would save having to buy Helium

Thanks Andy. I did wonder why. Looking further it's more conductive and also has higher heat conductivity figures so as you mentioned used on aluminium and copper as they conduct heat rather well. Last time I used a tig welder I found aluminium melted way too easily for me at times and didn't for the welder. He got it just right. As then I am more interested in fusing things with tig rather than filler rods. Initially anyway. It's tricky on aluminium. Watching it looks to be a doddle on steel - stitching rather than seams anyway.

JS might like to note that he could weld with hot CO2. People have to excuse him. I believe he used to think he had been knighted but has been ok since he took the pills.

John

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For anyone is mad enough to buy a hobby compressor that should give 100l/min at 4 bar and costs in my case a touch over £100 I've modified it a bit.

There was no filter or drier on it or output gauge. I was going to fix that with bent pipe and compression fittings. I nosed around and found Aroplus in Redditch. They stock a huge range of fittings for this sort of thing. Some items take a day to arrive but no min order and I could collect so no postage charge. Turns out it could be done with various BSP fillings.

The reservoir is vertical on this one so doesn't take up much floor space. The air outlet comes like this.

It's angled down which is why I though bend pipe.

Finished up like this.

The fitting on the right of the filter is a breakable joint. Sort of nipple thing with an O ring on the nipple so can be rotated as needed and tilted a bit. The hole in the plastic to the left of the first shot will probably be needed to add a bracket to stop the stuff tilting when the line air line is pulled but it seems solid enough.

I aught to tidy up the ptfe tape.

Not sure if it's a mad purchase really. If I graft a twin cylinder pump and motor onto it total costs are probably lower than buying one like that. Actually it might save getting on for £100 and in any case might be ok anyway. It'll look a bit odd if changed but still take up little floor space.

John

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I've found a build fault in it.

Not to clear in the photo but the black shroud at the side if the fan has pretty big crack in it. Epoxy needed.

I took the cover off to see if I could remove the gas connection on the back and replace it with the male half of a euro coupler. Not much chance of unscrewing it. Then reached for the saw as there is plenty of bsp sticking out. Tried to fill the hole with something so no bits would get into the valve and had a surprise. Interesting attention to detail. It goes in a little way at the size expected and then reduces - less likely to snap off or bend etc.

I've been curious about the ground connection on the chassis - the silverish nuts bottom at the back. They mention must be grounded. I looked in a manual for another welder that has the same connection. Seems it's optional but can be used to ground a metal bench to reduce emissions. I don't usually weld with the ground clip on the bench so might not be needed. In fact I don't think I ever would.

The pipe couplings used on the gas valve are unusual. To me anyway. They look like the type where the nut goes on the pipe, pipe pushed on and then nut done up. Looks like these are tightened up by screwing the nut the other way. There is also a bulge in the pipe tail that's some way down the plastic tube.

John

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