Thread: DIY TIG Welder

Originally Posted by Edd

$7k? Sounds like a Fronius MagicWave 2200.

Yiipes !That was the old price, and thats without the water cooler and foot pedal.

You don't wanna know what the new one is going to be ?

I hear to expect price increases of the order of 20 to 30% because of the $ in all manner of imported goods.

Regards to all
Grahame

Yeah I figured as much, as it recently came to my attention that our lathe (AL340A) has gone up over $1000 since 2005.

Maybe David Gingery will sell more books because of this.

How's this coming along? Any updates?

It's 90% done. Unfortunately there was some problems with the HV coupling due to the type of transformer I used (switchmode neons don't work well with Tesla coils and these sorts of things). As uni is about to start, it will be on hold for awhile. When it's done in the semester breaks I will update.

The idea of making a tig welder is very appealing, time to dig out the ferric chloride and etch kit !!

Matt.

Sorry to be so late to the party. I just found this today.
I had a thought as I was going through the plans and design of the high end TIG.
If you had an old TIG, one of the Transformer based units that was basic. No pulse, dwell, crater or frequency adjust this would actually be perfect to add those features. What's more it would really cut the build cost. You would have your gas solenoids, rectifiers with proper heat sink, HFstart circuit and a host of the other high dollar parts.
I have two TIG units that were designed in the 70's and 80's. The one is a Hobart and the other is an Airco. The Hobart's electronics are as basic as it gets. There are two time delay relays that are self contained units for controlling the post flow and preflow of gas. The current is controller via a set of large SCR's that are almost directly connected to the pedal.
The Airco is a bit more advanced but nothing like this.
My thought is that these types of units are cheap to buy, due to their age and limitations.
This design and a bit of adapting would bring those units current with technology and features and of course, due to the way things were built back in the day, would be a very nice and reliable unit.

Thanks to the guy that put in the work on this.
There are several folks in my circle of car and fabricator friends that have old TIG's simply because we can'[t afford the big guys. This gets us there without needing to mortgage the house to do it. Thank you.

Go the old Hobarts Aircos and Millers.

They were all built and designed like brick outhouses.
as a result a lot are still running 30 years later.

Dead right mate, they will be handy bits of gear with a few modern tweaks.

Go for it brother.

Grahame

Update:

I've finally finished the HF box, but the gas solenoid/relay control box is still a work in progress. I'm pretty much continuing this over at CNCZone in the existing thread, rather than copy and pasting it all again. If anyone wants a look - I think you can view attachments without an account, but if anyone has any problems, I'll reupload the pics to this forum.

"http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21978"
"http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showpost.php?p=741953&postcount=130"