knowone wrote:

Sounds good Jon.

This is not near the machine that you have though. That sounds to be a good
price for the Squarewave although, I still don't really know prices for tig
machines.

I have soldered and brazed all of my life and hope learning tig will be
easier for me.


Easier than soldering and brazing? I doubt it. Soldering and brazing is
done with a joining material that melts at a lower temp than the parent
metal, making it much easier, in one respect. Unless your temp gets totally
away from you, the workpieces won't drip on the floor. When welding, you
are joining approximately homogeneous materials, so getting the molten
area too large guarantees that pieces of your workpiece will drip on the
floor!

Say, Jon, have you thought of pumping air into your helmet for stick? You
could even rig up a small muffin fan in it to create pressure to keep out
fumes

What do you find difficult, if anything, about tig'ing aluminum?


With steel, you can read the temperature, even through the hood, by the
color
and/or the brightness of the weld puddle. Too yellow and it is about to
fall
through. With aluminum, you don't get any color at all, just a change in
the surface finish as it goes from solid to liquid. If the puddle gets
too big,
it goes blop on the floor.

The TIG electrode runs REALLY hot with aluminum, due to the reverse
polarity part of the cycle. It lights up like a several thousand watt
arc lamp,
which it is, of course. Something I've found to help is to position the
torch
so the TIG cup shields the direct light from the electrode. Then, the
electrode
is lighting up the workpiece, but not shining in your eyes. That gives you
good view of the surface of the metal. I have to get up REALLY close to the
weld area to see what I'm doing. Probably practice will help, there. I
may also
have some mis-marked alloys that are SUPPOSED to be weldable, but the welds
crack as they cool, right along the weld. I suspect these are not the
weldable
alloys they are supposed to be. I was getting some really nice-looking
welds
on them, but then they cracked. I'm waiting for a serious project in
Aluminum
to come up, and then I'll probably buy some traceable alloy to be sure
it really
can be welded. I've been practicing on scrap, mostly. I did get one
piece that
welded beautifully, and I could bend it 180 degrees with only modest
cracking
(which many aluminum alloys won't take even without the welding.)

Jon