Poor Man's Tig Welder

[mattawajeep]

I have some sheetmetal that needs welding on my car, as well as a bunch of gun welding projects that need to be completed so I decided to set up a cheap Tig welding rig. If you have a DC capeable tig welder it's really easy to set up.



My Dad's old Lincoln AC/DC stick welder:





124CF Argon bottle I bought last night at Oxarc in Pasco (130 bucks for the filled bottle - a really good deal)

Locally it was $250 for just a 80cf bottle - no gas...





Power and gas hookups for the tig torch. Real easy.





WP17 Tig Torch with gas valve and adjustable head:






Here's my second attempt at laying a bead. My first attempt was a giant crater in the metal as I forgot to turn on the gas......

65 Amps, 3/32 Tungsten






That worked out so well that I went straight to adding in filler.

75 Amps w/ filler:




4th bead at 85 Amps:




I'm still a bit shakey, and I have a lot of technique issues to work on - but this was way easier than I thought it would. Gonna go collect a bunch of scrap metal and see if I can't get anything actually welded together.

[OldGreen]

That is nifty as heck.

[White trash]

Sweet! I've been eyeballing the harbor freight tigs for awhile so I can start fabricating chassis and parts for R/C crawlers. What's your investment so far sans tombstone?

[mattawajeep]

Sweet! I've been eyeballing the harbor freight tigs for awhile so I can start fabricating chassis and parts for R/C crawlers. What's your investment so far sans tombstone?

With the Argon bottle I'm just over $300.

Argon Flowmeter - $65

Power Adapter (for the stick welder to clamp on to) - $5

Torch - $65

Accessories - $45 (New gloves, stainless wire brush, 3lbs of various filler rods, 3 different sizes of tungsten and adapters, and various gas nozzles)

[mattawajeep]

I'm impatient.....



Didn't have any sheet metal to practice on so I grabbed up one of my old projects that I attempted to assemble with a mig welder back when I was just starting to weld.

It's a British WWII Sten MKIII:




I gave up on this thing probably 4 years ago and ground out most of my old welds. This thing is made almost entirely out of <1/16" sheet metal.

Did this with 1/16" Tungsten at 45 amps with a piece of 1/16" filler rod:



Not great, but one of the reasons I picked this project in the beginning was that these things are well known for their ugly welds. Authenticity calls for a bit of slop. I think after I clean up all my old welds, and sandblast the whole thing it will look very close to an original gun. I'm having way too much fun.

[79chevy39.5's]

hm, thats neat now if i only had better power in the garage id be snooping for a ac/dc machine

[jhonlee2050]

its is easy to built a cheap Tig welding rig if you have the necessary tools and materiel to work on and you have all tools and equipment so it wont be difficult for you
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