Economical tig welder setup

Some of you guys or gals may not know that you can have tig welding capability without having to have a $2000 welder. A standard AC/DC arc welder will do most everything you will want to weld such as brackets, framework, and such. You will need the welder, a filled argon tank, a standard construction-worker type air-cooled tig rig, and you too can tig weld steel and stainless steel at home. The welder is run in the DC mode on straight polarity, and the stinger (rod holder ) is simply clamped onto the power feed block of the tig rig to supply power through the special coax hose. The ground clamp is attached as normally used to the work. The argon flow meter is set at 10 to 15 cubic feet per hour on the ball type flow meter I have. Of course, there is no foot control for fine weld, ease of starting and such, but I have welded with this rig for about 30 years, and quite honestly I really like using it. The weld heat can be somewhat controlled by judicious application of the filler rod. I use 1/16 rod for most of my welding, along with 2% thoriated tungsten in the tig torch. I turned my son on to it the other night, and he was running really nice beads on a project right off. He had never tig welded before and commented that he really liked using it.
I hope this will inspire someone who has wanted to tig weld steel, but thought they could not afford it.

I use a Thermal Arc Dragster 85 A and TIG torch. I get about 5 starts before I need to sharpen the electrode. For small stuff it works great but I really want an EconoTIG.

feedback
you are right about using the ac/dc stick welder as the power unit for TIG welding.
this is often refered to as 'scratch start' TIG
the problem with this is that you contaminate the tungston and you can also contaminate the weld. for many things this is not too much of a problem but with others it can be.
the tip I learned and have used is that you can take a spare tungston and lay it near the weld and strike ( or drag) the arc across the spare tungston and draw the arc over to the weld zone.

generally if you have a MIG and want to do aluminum, you can use an inexpensive AC arc welder to do a little aluminum welding and do not need the AC/DC stick welder unless you want to do steel as well

on the Econotig
this is the welder I wanted. I have more recently heard that they had some power supply problems with them so unless you get one with very low miles on it, you need to get it for really cheap

bob

rsanter, that's a good tip on using the spare tungsten for starting the arc. I will have to give that a try. Thanks

RJ

Heard that copper makes a good scratchplate as it is soft and won't cause the tung to break as easily as the parent material/steel.

rsanter said:

generally if you have a MIG and want to do aluminum, you can use an inexpensive AC arc welder to do a little aluminum welding and do not need the AC/DC stick welder unless you want to do steel as well



bob

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So for aluminum you would use the AC arc welder in the same manner?

you would need a hf box if you want to tig weld aluminium with an ac arc welder

Com_VC said:

you would need a hf box if you want to tig weld aluminium with an ac arc welder

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good point
I had picked up a High freq box for $100.
since the TIG welders have come down in price the HF boxes are not worth too much anymore

bob