Winston wrote:

On 5/21/2010 10:08 AM, Richard Smith wrote:
writes:

On May 21, 9:43 am, wrote:
I have a Bobcat 225 welder I just aquired. I have always want to learn
to tig. What is the minimum I need to buy to practice tig with this
machine?

Thanks!

If you are good at oxy-acetalene welding, you will be good at any
other kind of welding.
Assuming you have the tungsten electrode, and ceramic cups, and argon
gas, you then only need some clean scrap and filler rod. It's very
much the same process as gas welding (not brazing).
ignator

In addition to above...

TIG to me seems like - well, coming from oxy-acetylene - TIG in the
early stages like trying to learn to drive a car without instruction
where the car will readily do 1300MPH and no-one has told you you
should be doing around 30MPH - 40MPH. You get "cinders", you see red
smoke condensed everywhere - and to an onlooker you see sparks jumping
out.

Wow, that wasn't my experience at all.

(...)

I started TIGing after only soldering.

After asking questions, reading, experimenting and 'tuning' my workspace
and tools, I found I could make acceptable welds without much trouble.

Thanks to Don Foreman for helping me with 'helmet issues' (more figurative
than literal!).

The process is very quiet and very nearly intuitive. I like it a *lot*.

Check with our friends at sci.engr.joining.welding for excellent answers
to your questions.

--Winston

I started TIG after years of electronic soldering and found it pretty
easy to learn as well. The previous description sounds more like MIG
with the wrong settings to me.

I will recommend again to all: Get the $5 or so set of welding
"calculators" from Miller. These are cardboard slide-chart things for
MIG, TIG and stick that help you find starting parameters for any given
weld and are very useful.