I need a TIG welder. If you’re familiar with welding but not so much TIG welding think of it as a more civilized weapon from a more civilized age. All the sparks and slag and violence from MIG and stick are all but gone. This feels more like soldering. One of my favorite things is you don’t have to add material to TIG weld. The welder uses a tungsten electrode that doesn’t melt so you can just sit there and pump heat into your work piece all day if you want, at least until the work piece ceases to exist.
The Outline
This is actually pretty simple and relatively inexpensive, at least compared to buying a new or used TIG welder. First we need a stick welder, sometimes called an electrode welder, pretty much the most basic kind there is. Found a Lincoln Tombstone Buzzbox on Craigslist for $!00. It’s probably as old as I am and is nearly bulletproof, PERFECT.
Now we need some ancillary hardware. We need a TIG torch, preferably with a button on it, you’ll see why shortly.
There’s a suitable choice in my store.
I also would recommend some additional cable but it’s expensive and really is more of a convenience than a necessity. Just to extend your ground cable. Mine ended up way too short. You will also want to get some crimp on lugs to fit the studs you need to bold the cables to and if you want to make your life easier down the road I would get some of those twist-lock welding cable connectors.
Next we need an ArcPig These things are great, it basically converts your welder’s output to high frequency and also allows you to start your arc without touching your work piece with your electrode. You don’t want to get molten steel on your electrode because it will contaminate it and then it will melt and the electrodes are pretty expensive.
Sheesh, I just noticed ArcPigs are now about $500!!!! Mine was only $300 not that long ago. Well a new TIG welder is probably 5000 instead of 3000 now as well, whatever we need the arcpig.
Speaking of electrodes you need some of those. I like the lanthanated 3/32. I find the 1/16 too thin, they seem to disappear really fast. Also it is important to note lanthanated basically translates to RADIOACTIVE because they contain lanthanum, there is also thoriated electrodes which contain thorium. Lanthanated electrodes have some of the best all around characteristics and work well for steel and aluminum and are recommended for beginners as they are a bit more tolerant of mistakes. It is highly advisable to wear a respirator when you sharpen these. The radioactive material is released when you grind them and you don’t want that in your lungs.
I would also get a box of consumables if you can spare the cash. New gas lens and tip covers and all that junk. The less experience you have the more damage you will do to your hardware and those are the first things to go.
You also will need filler rod. I got a box of steel and a box of aluminum but you know what you need. Get bigger gauge if you will be welding big stuff and smaller for small stuff. If you use too big of a filler you will just make a mess or possibly destroy your work trying to melt the filler and too small will just seem to evaporate into thin air.
Lastly we need a bottle of argon and a pressure regulator. This will likely be the 2nd most expensive piece or maybe 1st. This is one of those pedantic, unnecessary barrier to entry type industries. There’s a million different size gas bottles and the guy behind the counter at airgas or wherever will do everything he can to make you feel stupid if you don’t know the exact right terminology and exactly what you want.
I found a bit of a trick to deal with this. If you go to AirGas’ website and register you can view their products and I believe it shows the most commonly purchased tanks for the size. Find what you want on there and then go to the store and tell them exactly what you want based on that.
I believe I got 125 cf (cubic foot) bottle. I expect it to last me a very long time.
BUILD IT
So now you just need to stick it all together. If you got a Lincoln buzzbox like me it’s AC only so there is no specific ground or electrode cable. I’ve heard there is some kind of polarity but I’ve seen no evidence this matters and having closely inspected the inside of my welder and happening to know what I’m looking at all there is in there is a transformer so there’s no real polarity on the output side. Anyway you need to splice the ArcPig in to both cables on your welder. The instructions are great and so is their support so you shouldn’t need my help with that, plus if I don’t help you can’t blame me if it doesn’t work.
It’s worth keeping the ground and torch cable as short as is feasible because the ArcPig is outputting high frequency AC, this means loads of RF noise. If you put a 50 cable on it there the coil is going to be a massive induction transmitter and your neighbors might complain that their AM radio doesn’t work. My point is you’re making an antenna.
So once you get the wiring done you need to hook up your gas. It’s not very complex. Just screw the regulator into the bottle, screw the TIG torch hose into the regulator, turn on the valve on your torch, turn on the valve on the bottle, adjust the regulator to about 10 PSI, turn it all back off. You might want to get an extension hose, I had to. I also ran into an issue with a replacement torch I got. The hose fitting was different, worse yet one was metric and one was imperial. Fortunately I have a lathe with gearbox to cut both so I made an adapter. I doubt you’re finding that adapter at your local Ace Hardware so take that into account when you’re buying your parts.
Next you need to set up your torch. Take one of your shiny new electrodes and grind a point on the end of it. Some folks get a bit carried away in my opinion creating a 2 inch long point on the thing, that’s a lot of expensive tungsten turned to dust. I prefer to grind something of similar proportions to a sharpened pencil. Then you need to build the torch. Cap goes on the back with the collet inside of it, gas lens goes on the front, tungsten goes through the lot with the cap clamping it in place when you tighten it. Lens cover goes over the lens.
PPE
You should be about set. One last thing, maybe I should have mentioned this above since it means buying more stuff. You need some PPE. A welding helmet is essential. As far as I’m concerned an auto-darkening helmet is mandatory for TIG. Mine died the other day and I tried to use an old always dark helmet and I couldn’t accomplish anything, I couldn’t keep my torch and filler rod in the right place while dropping my helmet so when I struck my arc I was nowhere near where I need to weld.
Another very important thing is your welding gloves and sleeves. The high frequency arc this thing generates will give you something similar to sunburns on any exposed skin. Similar but way worse, you will burn 100 times faster and the burns will be way worse. I literally have scars on both biceps from learning this one. I recommend leather sleeves with straps that go around your neck to keep them pulled up. I also have some elastic ones, XL in fact, but I guess my raging guns are so enormous they stretch the elastic enough to make a nice polka dot pattern all over my arms where the arc flash is able to get through. This won’t happen with a solid sheet of leather.
Get some good gloves. You can tell they’re for TIG if they have a heavily reinforced index finger. If you weld a good amperage for a while your index finger next to the torch is going to get up to about a million degrees. I have about 5 pairs of gloves so far and I still haven’t found any that really do the job. I have to throw them off and let them cool pretty frequently.
That’s All
That’s the gist of what I know about TIG welding and building a dirt cheap (only $700) TIG welder. I know you can get stuff that’s cheaper than that these days, especially one of those Harbor Freight Invertor TIG welders. You do you, if it does the job good for you. I haven’t tried one of them but I know that tiny box isn’t putting out 200 amps and know they’re scratch start which means no high frequency which means likely poor aluminum welding results. I have used their MIG welders and I’m afraid I’d rather stick with my CA glue and activator. I’d recommend learning as much as possible watching Youtube before you go down this rabbit hole though. I’m happy with my welder and I use it all the time but you might be less impressed.