Question for welders

[dmc3535]

I decided to teach myself to weld. I decided to go the most difficult route and begin with TIG welding. I kind of already know what the experienced guys are going to tell me to do - "don't start there..." Sorry, I'm stubborn.

Can anyone point me to some good resources to learn to TIG? I'm pretty sure I have the basics, but I want to research a little more.

Also, can anyone tell me what "lift start" is? From what I can find, it appears to be the difference between a foot pedal and something else...

 

[gmm213]

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=182606

Check here

 

[Zeke]

First of all, go to weldingtipsandtricks.com There is a whole section on TIG. Not the most basic site, but a damn good one. Jody there will tell you in one or 2 videos how the lift start works.

But if you're anxious to know, it's when you place the tungsten on the work, activate the switch and lift off the work. At that point an arc will start. Some TIG operations are "scratch start." That's the same as striking an arc with a stick welder.

Any DC stick welder can be used as a scratch start TIG. You'll have to manually turn on and off your argon gas. Some lift starts can incorporate a gas solenoid for automatic gas.

If you really want to learn TIG (and I don't criticize folks for starting there), get a better machine with the foot pedal. Go one step further and get a DC/AC machine so you can weld AL.

 

[2mJps]

I decided to teach myself to weld. I decided to go the most difficult route and begin with TIG welding. I kind of already know what the experienced guys are going to tell me to do - "don't start there..." Sorry, I'm stubborn.

Tig is not that hard stick is a lot harder.

 

[bsaint]

I dont understand why tig is considered difficult? I found it was the easiest to learn because you can stay on it until you get a nice weld pool and add filler as you go. I find the hardest to learn was arc welding. Tig is only hard to make look pretty.

 

[Voi]

I'm sort of in the same boat as you and thinking about a DC arc/tig inverter.

If you google "lift tig vs high frequency" (without the quotes) the very first link is a useful read. It's from another forum so I won't post the link here.

If you read some of the other links you'll find people are using foot pedals in some fashion on machines without high frequency start. It's not clear to me if they're adding some sort of HF start to a scratch/lift machine or if the pedal is contolling something other than the voltage or what.

 

[justanengineer]

I dont understand why tig is considered difficult? I found it was the easiest to learn because you can stay on it until you get a nice weld pool and add filler as you go. I find the hardest to learn was arc welding. Tig is only hard to make look pretty.

Bc the internet is full of wanna-be experts. I think most associate "difficulty" with operating the equipment and not with ease of making a quality weld (the real hard part IMO). Personally, I found MIG to be the hardest to master quality on but the easiest to learn to operate the equipment, which is why I suspect so many folks think its "easy." TIG is the opposite, I think its dead nuts simple to make a quality weld bc you can slow the whole process down and really focus on the weld puddle, but it does take a tiny bit (not a ton) of two hand-eye-foot coordination. Id also say TIG is one of the easiest to make "pretty" welds with, but thats again due to slowing the whole process down.

 

[bobcatdan]

Take a class at the local tech weld. Welding is one area in particular where it is very easy to learn the wrong way of doing thing. Once you are use to doing it the wrong way, it is very hard to adjust to the right way.

 

[gmm213]

My teacher taught it to us last because of the hand eye coordination. And the fact that we learned aluminum which a lot of people seemed to have a problem with even though i found it relativity easy