hey there friends what is up i'm chris ewing educator
fabricator and finally mustachio gentleman
my last video i showed you guys how to make some end tables using some really inexpensive equipment
and one of the questions i got on that video is hey can you show me how to tig weld with a machine
that inexpensive it's not designed for that but i think we can make it work let's give it a shot
all right so before we talk about the super inexpensive setup let's go over the parts and
pieces of a traditional tig setup see right here we've got our lincoln aspect 375 great tig machine
and it's hooked up to this cool arc 47 water cooler there's two different types of torches
out there there's water cooled and there's air this particular unit utilizes this water cooling
machine works just like the radiator in your car we've got water out to the torch or coolant out to
the torch we've got our coolant line back in as well as our power and then we've also got
our shielding gas in this case 100 argon that are all going out to our tig torch that allows us to
operate at higher amperages and for a longer period of time than a traditional air cooled torch
the other big difference between a traditional machine like this and our setup that we're going
to have is the foot pedal or whatever variable control you're using what this allows us to do
is set our top end amperage on the machine so this right now if you can see on the screen set to 120
amps that means pedal to the floor is 120 amps it arc initiates somewhere between 5 and 20 depending
on the machine and then it will go up to whatever top end we have the set to pedal to the floor
being this is a 375 allows us go up to 250 amps max so i can put it 250 amps
and then i can actuate this foot pedal it initiates my arc it sends my shielding gas
and i have that variability on the foot pedal now there are other torch designs out there
that will have a finger adjustment right on the torch itself so that we can vary
the amperage there or sometimes it's a simple button on and off when you hit that button on
you get your gas electricity you hit it off again your gas and electricity cut out on
you all right so this little machine should look familiar from my last video this is my
little deco inverter welding machine that i got off of amazon it was 120 when i bought it now
it's all the way up to 130 if you're looking up right now it comes with the weld machine
a stick welding stinger lead and we have our work clamp decent gauge cables i think it came with a
wire brush last chipping hammer thing too that was totally above average this is the
machine we're going to be using so how do we turn this bad boy into a tig welder well
again are the wonderful world of amazon sells us these yes welder tig torches now full disclosure
if you don't have a welding machine yet yes welder sells a kit that comes with the welding machine
and these leads and the tig torch you don't have to buy this separately i did not have this already
cost me 50 bucks so far i think it's going to turn out to be worth it the lead is 12 feet
long and the gas line is 16 feet long so i mean it gives you a decent amount of space this particular
machine uses the 10 25 dens connectors and so that's the little guys with a little block on it
you just plug it in thread it clockwise and it's locked in there the traditional mig setup like or
i'm sorry tig setup like we were just looking at would use a 3550 dens connector so it's a slightly
larger diameter the part that threads in there these ones you'll usually find on machines that
go up to 200 amps i believe our tig torch is rated for 150 amps and you'll see instead of three lines
going into it our gas water in and water out here all we have is our electrical line with what is a
scarily thin lead cable and we have our shielding gas line let's figure out where these guys go
on a traditional stick welding setup most of the time we are going to have our stick welding lead
on the positive side dc electrode positive and then our work clamp on the negative side
when we're tig welding that's actually going to be reverse so we are going to
get rid of our stinger entirely we are going to transfer our work clamp to the positive side
and then we're going to put our new tig torch into the negative side we then have to go ahead and
install our gas line into our gas supply for tig welding we're going to use 100
argon and then this has to get threaded into our flow meter so let's do that now 100 argon
flow meter already attached tank is off just going to go ahead and thread this guy in here
a little snuggy do and we can
open our tank all right so something else i wanted to point out real quick is
i just got this threaded into the flow meter i've got my tank turned on this is a 50 tig torch it
is by not any means not the nicest torch i've ever used um i've got the valve closed all the way but
yeah it's leaking uh if you read the amazon reviews
this is a pretty common problem with these i've got it tightened all the way so what this
is is our gas valve there is no foot pedal in this setup to
actuate the gas and the electricity to turn on so what do we do before we weld we open this up
yeah it's still leaking when it's closed so i might open this up a little more and see if i
can't figure out uh why maybe there's just a gasket or an o-ring or something in there
that's leaking it shouldn't affect the function but it is a little annoying and a little wasteful
of our shielding gas so keep that in mind you get what you pay for all right so what else
comes in this nifty box with this tig torch we get our very own consumables kit now we have
three different gas cups four five and six that all refers to the opening at
the end of the cup there how wide is that in diameter we have a small and a large back cap
that traps the shielding gas and make sure it's only going out the direction it's supposed to
and we have our collet body with our gas diffuser so this will go in first
and all these holes is where the gas is supposed to come out of there and then we have three
different dimension collets one sixteenth three 30 seconds and a 1 8 all pretty much standard
for basically any tig torch that you'll get let's go ahead and get our tig torch set up
let's start with our collet body thread that guy in there and we'll go for the number six
gas cup got that on there next i will be using the three thirty seconds collet to go with the three
thirty seconds tungsten that doesn't ship with the torch so unfortunately you're stuck providing your
own tungsten my case i'm using a two percent seriated that's the gray stuff a lot of people
have great results with the e3 purple rare earth tungsten this should work with just about
anything you've got on hand industry is trying to get away from the red two percent thoriated
because it is in fact radioactive all right so let's get our tungsten threaded in there and
our back cap set our stick out distance a little more appropriately and there we have
an assembled torch all right so before i turn the machine on
let's talk technique for getting this arc initiated now we said with a traditional setup
we're going to have a foot pedal that as soon as we hit that pedal it's going to initiate the
arc we can have that high frequency start make sure the arc jumps from the tungsten to the part
that way we never have to make contact with our part with our tungsten this setup
doesn't have that so how do we get it started just like we would in stick welding we got to get that
tungsten close enough and maybe scratch or tap we either call that scratch start or lift start so
we're basically going to have to do a lift start get that arc initiated with the gas flowing we can
perform our weld and then we have to break the arc and come back to make sure that we're still
gas shielding the end of our weld so that's the technique for an inexpensive setup like this we
go and get the machine turned on and show you how it welds so here i've got some 11 gauge
mild steel just regular carbon steel up here you can see that i've got the machine set to
on the screen here it says 22 but i don't trust that up here it says 65 i think that's a little
bit more accurate we'll see how it goes cheap machine cheap readout don't expect terrible
accuracy and then here we've got our 16th inch er 70s-6 filler wire all right so i'm purging the
area before i initiate that arc and then like i said i'm going to get real close and scratch start
now again if i'm using a traditional setup i'll have either a finger wheel
or a foot pedal where i can control the amperage in real time if i see it's getting too hot
i can back off or too cold i can add in this situation my travel speed and my arc manipulation
are pretty much my only controls how much filler i add to
kind of whip out of there allow the gas to shield the end of the weld there and i think
it was running just a little on the hot side a little bit of under fill along top edge there
let's get you closer so you can see that weld as well not too bad all right let's give that
a shot one more gan with the weld lens on here and maybe you can get a little more detailed view
all right and here we have our first happy little weld and here we can see that second happy little
weld so this 11 gauge material welded just fine with this 120 welder and 50 tick torch
all right so there you have it mr zach mccoy you asked if we could tig weld with this machine
it can be done in fact i'm actually kind of impressed at how easily it went how everything
hooked up i might invest in a nicer tig torch than the 50 yes welder version that's leaking
gas all over the place if you can get past that 130 bucks for welder 50 bucks for tig torch and
you're up and running mild steel this will work on stainless also but keep in mind this is not an ac
machine so you're not going to be able to tig weld aluminum with it having said that i think this is
a great option for people that are just looking to dip their feet into the tig welding world
let me know what you think in the comments and until next time hope this helps