Thread: teach me to weld

G day kwappa,
Welcome to the forum,

You have come to the right place then ,cos there a pretty god mob here. You can learn to weld here straight off the net,

There's a few blokes right here from this forum here that have had little or no previous "hands on tuition "and are presently pretty fair sorts of welding operators as a results of from help and instruction the blokes here.

We have all sorts here and most of them are happy to pitch in with the skills ,advice and experience.
To be honest though ,we have got most of started on stick and mig.
Tig straight up may be a steep learning curve.

There won't be many problems that you will experience that the collective "we" have not experienced ourselves.

As far as a machine to cover your needs it sounds like an AC/DC stick tig is what you need.

Yes they are migs that that weld aluminium but the tinny thickness opens a whole new can of worms.
you are going to pay premium $ for an AC/DC inverter unit
As far a brands go ,I do usually advise blokes to stick with:

• with what is well known:
• has a good back of the parts and accessories needed.
• has a warranty of at least 12months
• has some repair facility readily available if it happens to go leg up.

If a vendor can offer these you are on the right track

We have a shipload of previous posts on help new blokes get up and running with welding .

The first thing is to find your self a welding machine and safety gear.
Good quality and a auto darkening helmet, safety glasses are a good start.

Grahame

How much do you want to spend? If you want the capability to weld aluminium your going to be better off with a AC TIG machine, nearly all of them will do normal arc welding (stick) which is a huge plus as its far easier to learn.

What sort of power do you have? Single phase or 3 phase?

As for the machine, you will be looking for something in the 200A range. Brands to look at would be WIA, Cigweld, Lincoln, Miller and Kemppi, if your looking for something a little cheaper UNI-MIG make decent machines. Try to avoid cheap Chinese imports as parts are hard to get. You will also need a bottle of sheilding gas, typically argon or some sort of helium mix. That will set you back around $12 a month in rental +cost of the gas.

AC Tig ,they are a transformer powered welding machine.

I am not aware of inverter based models made as AC only.

Are there still manufacturerers producing new ones?

Possibly if theres some old Cigweld trans tigs around the ridges ,one may suit ,well.

Grahame

yeah ive got single phase electricity but i got a power point for the aircon that is 15v i think the one with the bigger earth if that helps
yeah the welder you mentioned sounds good as i can weld everything with it the aluminium is about 3 -4 mm thick so pretty thin and i dont wana wreck it how much do you reckn i should look at spending just so i dont get ripped off
thanks alot for the quick replies guys

Originally Posted by Grahame Collins

AC Tig ,they are a transformer powered welding machine.

I am not aware of inverter based models made as AC only.

You can buy inverter TIG welders that will do AC along with DC no problems.

there is a kreiger 200 amp mars 200 mig welder for sale anyone heard of these
only wants 435 nearlly brand new

Kreiger are rubbish, steer well clear mate

Do you want a TIG or MIG welder? You can do alloy with a MIG but you will need a spool gun along with a bottle of pure argon. Where as with a decent TIG all you need is the argon and you are set for welding aluminium along with any other metal and you always have the stick option when something calls for it.

Hang on a bit !

Were'nt we talking tig?We were talking about the tig as it best suits the thin alloy of your tinny.

The mig will weld on your tinny- for about about 2 seconds before it burns through the thin plate .

The brand you mentioned is likely some obscure Chinese brand from Ebay- a big unknown is probably the best one can say about it.googleed it for a couple of Ebay refrences -not too encouraging.

Grahame

yeah we were talkin bout tig sorry mate and right again it was off ebay
so your advice is get an ac tig welder first and go from there
thanks heaps for all this info guys as you can see
i am an absolute novice
lol

also grahame just so i got this straight tig is like a super braze where your actually heating up the metal to melt the rod
and this is also suitable for stuff like boat trailers and that in the future when i master the art well start with rivet holes first hey haha

Originally Posted by kwappa

also grahame just so i got this straight tig is like a super braze where your actually heating up the metal to melt the rod

TIG is usually even hotter than that. You want to melt the parent metal with enough amps.
When it's molten, you add the filler rod to make a larger weld pool. The filler rod can be the same/similar metal as the piece itself a lot of the times unlike brazing.

and this is also suitable for stuff like boat trailers and that in the future when i master the art well start with rivet holes first hey haha

Boat trailers you can do with stick welding. It's a little easier outdoors and it's good enough for thicker material like in trailers. You can weld the boat itself with TIG.

Originally Posted by kwappa

also grahame just so i got this straight tig is like a super braze where your actually heating up the metal to melt the rod

No, brazing is nothing like welding,in any form, at all.

The brazing filler wire is melted in the molten pool of deposited filler wire.The parent metal is never molten at any stage during brazing.

The brazing filler "bonds" in to the parent metal ,much like water frozen on the face of a sponge would bond into its substrate.

One metal does not fuse into the other.

With welding, be it with tig stick or mig, the filler wire fuses or melts into the parent metal.

Quite honestly to begin with, I believe you would be best served as a beginner by spending a few dollars on a stick welder and electronic helmet and gloves. and just start out simply to begin with.I would tend to walk before trying to run so to speak.

There are loads of things to do with stick,and some simple stock metal section shapes and an angle grinder.

Quite honestly I think you will learn easier and cheaper that way.



Grahame

that sounds like a good idea grahame in actuall fact i borrowed a stick welder of my brother in law today havent used it yet as i just come home from work but its an old flow arc machine but it only goes to 135 amp actually its pretty strange its got two things on the dial its a screw in dial and one side is high amp the other low amp but both sides go from 0 to 135 maybe you know y i dont have a clue obviously but is 135amp suitable for any so to say structual welds
ive seen a couple of machines that do tig and stick just lookin for one round 800 or something do you think its possible to get something decent in that range
thanks for all yor help guys ive learnt a bit already and as grahame says you gotta know the proccesses before you can do anything

High and low corresponds to different taps on the transformer, just leave it on the high output.

135A will drive 3.25mm rods easily, assuming you have the skill it will do 'structural' welds no problems.