Tig with an arc welder?

Lizooki

Lizooki

Samurai Frogger
Joined
Mar 21, 2005
Location
Stokes Co. NC
I ran across this a couple of days ago
It seems you can tig with an arc welder.
IMHO, I am a good mig welder, but I also think I am a better arc welder.
I would just as soon do arc as mig.
And I have an arc box.
What would I need to do/add the use my arc as a tig unit?
 
You will need to have a stick welder that is DC capable. Then just just a tig rig with a gas valve and a bottle of argon. Just google tig rig for stick welder and they will come up. It’ll have a lug for your - lead to clamp to that goes to the torch
 
It'll be lift arc or scratch start. Many a pipe has been done this way. A ac buzz box will not work at all.
Also you will have zero fine control of the settings. Meaning you cannot ease into or out of the weld heat. Set, strike, and be ready to rock. No playing the pool around unless you run insanely low settings. Then you will over heat the part from time on the weld. Learning this from the start has made many excellent welders. No fancy techno crutches. Just raw amps and a tungsten.

Air cooled so the torch is a little chunky. Also read more durable and less stuff to break.

Biggest thing is it runs hooked up backwards from arc welding. Negative polarity.

Here is a vid of the most basic and very classic set up.
 
Yep. Scratch start tig, used in many a DC stick welders and many, many, many, welds on pipe have been done like this for years. It’s what I started with and still use even though I have a fancy machine. Can’t do X-ray welds anymore but I still do some from time to time with it. :)

If you can get good with this tig setup, everything else is easy.
 
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