Tig Recommendations?

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Hi All, New to site and so far have enjoyed reading and checking out all the projects that you have all done, cool site!Anyway I am experienced at stick and mig but not tig! Planning on building a small aluminum boat and would like to pick up a tig machine that will do the job reliably but not brake the bank! I have always been a miller fan and have a 212 with a spool gun and have welded aluminum with it with some success but the tig weld are so much nicer looking and the tig seems easier to control.I'm thinking in the thousand dollar range give or take? Any suggestions?I would evan consider a used unit in decent shape and it doesn't have to be miller.Thank You in advance
Reply:Best suggestion would probably be a used Syncrowave 180 or 200. You can often find very nice ones in the $900-1400 range. Alum needs AC and amps. The Diversions are a bit underpowered for alum ( 1/8" max) with a fairly low duty cycle at the amps needed. They also lack all the advanced options like balance that can help with alum.Some of the bigger older AC tigs are also decent deals on a budget. Many here have bought machines like Zap's Miller 330 A/BP. Prices I see for these on CL is usually in the $500-900 range ready to go less a cylinder. If you don't already use one a good Cl aggregator like Crazedlist or Searchtempest, will help your search. I usually use "welder" and sort the list manually from there.Avoid the cheap imports. Quality is spotty at best, and customer service sucks. They also have a well deserved reputation of some very poor business practices. I'd point you to examples, but these companies have  these sorts of threads moved to their areas where they are promptly deleted or edited to remove the "evidence".Don't expect to buy a tig and jump right in on your boat. Tig in general takes a bit of time to learn, and alum is harder than steel to  do. A class would be a worth while investment if you want to get there fast. Start with steel and get heat control down on an "easy" material like 1/8". When  you can do 1/8" steel in all positions, move to thinner steel like 1/16" and do it all over again. By that point you should have heat control down to the point you don't have to think about it. Then move on to alum and learn to do everything 3 times faster at higher amps..No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! Ronald Reagan
Reply:At the OPs price used brand name is the only thing I'd go for.  In fact about a year ago I did.  I couldn't get an SD180 or 200 anywhere near a grand.  Most were closer to what one might cost new, and they were a model or so older, but they had nearly zero hours on them.  They seemed to be bought for a project that was never finished or even started.  Mine came from a welding inspector for operating engineers who decided he didn't need a TIG/stick while he was unemployed. Shop around, you'll get something.  I'd also avoid the imports with a couple of exceptions.  Thermal Arc and perhaps the Eastwood.  Eastwood only because I trust them from what I've done with them previously.  It's going to take a little while for a TIG noob to get the chops for an AL boat.  I think many of those nearly new welders you see on CL are from guys that bought them to do something then figured out that TIG isn't the easiest of the processes to learn or that they really didn't need it anyway.If I were starting from scratch this time I'd buy a Hobart EZ TIG, learn how to weld then when I got the process down sell it used (retains value well) and buy a name brand at least 200 amp class machine either used or new depending on what my situation was at the time.Last edited by dstevens; 05-08-2012 at 08:22 PM.Enough stuff to build and repair wrinkled up race cars or bring a classic back to life...
Reply:Thank You for the reply, greatly appreciated!I have thought about taking a tig class!  I want the project to come out nice not just a hack job and thrown together!Planning on doing all the unseen structeral welds with the spool gun than all the exterior seen welds with the tig!
Reply:Do not buy a TIG machine to build a boat!!!On a boat you would have many feet of welding and that is not for a TIG machine.Even a small boat can take many feet of welding. REad that again.You need to call some of the aluminum boat building shops in Washington if you really want the right information about welding machines for aluminum boat building.It is a specialized area. Welding machine set ups for boat building is very specialized.Spool gun? how many drive rollers? push pull system? etc., etc.,.You need a MIG welding machine for a boat and it needs to be set up for aluminum.If it is a large boat 30 feet or larger it would cost a lot less to build with steel.Large aluminum boats for fishing are kept out of the water most of the year.Aluminum condensates 3.75 times more than steel so in cold weather it would be raining inside the boat.Insulation of aluminum boat hulls is a big discussion compared to foam insulation in a steel boat.ALSO The larger a aluminum weldment is the more heat it will give off so it takes a lot of heat input, that is why MIG is used to build aluminum boats.The small weldments can be TIG welded but mostly a door latch or small part.TIG is designed to have low heat unput and good penetration.Last edited by Donald Branscom; 05-10-2012 at 01:23 PM.AWS certified welding inspectorAWS certified welder
Reply:Originally Posted by frostopThank You for the reply, greatly appreciated!I have thought about taking a tig class!  I want the project to come out nice not just a hack job and thrown together!Planning on doing all the unseen structeral welds with the spool gun than all the exterior seen welds with the tig!
Reply:Donald, thank you for the reply! Yeah I really should have gotten the next machine up from mine the 252 which I could run a push/pull gun from!Does any of the aftermarket outfits make a push/pull that is compatible with the 212? I know miller doesn't!
Reply:see belowLast edited by Kevin Morin; 05-11-2012 at 01:04 AM.Reason: dual post
Reply:frostop, I'd like to remark on your ideas from the point of view of a few hundred welded aluminum skiffs.  Welded skiffs come in several sizes and the scantlings should be proportional to those LOA's.What is not as obvious is the effort to weld different aluminum material thicknesses that are implied by various skiff sizes.The effort to weld a 14'-20' boat that is 1/8"/0.125"/3mm aluminum plate with a 0.030" or 0.035" MIG wire feed is not out of the question with a 80 hours of practice.  It is harder to attain good welds by twice for every ten hours anyone skips in this rule of thumb. Flat bench welding is not practice for boat welding.  Kneeling below your bench and welding under the bench in a crouched position is an hour of real world practice; unless you have a rotisserie welding fixture. Position welding in boat building is the norm: bench welding is little realistic preparation for boat welding. So the figure given above is not for a few weeks of welding strips on the bench- its for real out of position welds.But, most new welders of MIG aluminum have such low standards of acceptance they excuse themselves and (therefore) produce somewhat poor looking work.  Most first off boats are twisted, wrinkled and otherwise poorly built because most folks don't take the time to learn what is involved to build a welded boat 'right'.As the material gets thinner in hull plate scantlings the effort and practice go up by a factor or 100.  So if a 1/8" boat will be a few hours or practice multiply that by 20 get to an acceptable level for 0.080", that is truly proportional thickness to 'small' skiff hull forms.Practicing with 0.030" and 0.035" wire with proportional metal out of position, for hundreds of hours, is not an undertaking 98% of all would-be builders will finish. Their work shows the results of their knowledge and skill.Using TIG is possible for small (>14') hull forms but the work/preparation/practice is now a factor of about 500 hours of practice/experience to be able to deliver a good uniform quality of weld to the boat.What is the primary issue? The ability to predict and control edge contraction to avoid wrinkling the sheets of the hull. This means the welder has to be experienced enough to produce a uniform small bead (that implies higher travel speeds) and to put those welds down in an overall pattern that produces uniform- not spot contraction.here is a little 14' in 0.100" aluminum tacked up clean. Here it is welded (both MIG and TIG) and the hull is still fair.This is not a boat that could be built very easily by someone just learning (I have no idea what hull number this is for me but somewhere north of 350) as the implied weld sequence required is not something that will be #1 provided in plans or #2 obvious without building a few hulls; or #3 able to be welded without many hours of practice.  ( I was in the 7-8k+ Hrs of watching an arc at this build.)Thin aluminum requires more skill to weld that thicker, keeping a hull like this fair is not a skill learned in a first skiff.  In fact it is harder to keep this thin stuff fair than heavier more tolerant plates.Here is a 17' rowing dory with 0.080" bottom panels and 0.100" plates that was both TIG and MIG welded.Welding this material while keeping the hull fair is a "non-trivial exercise" that is pretty hard to do even if you've built a few boats.You may consider the MK Products, Cobra SX a small push pull that may adapt to the smaller capacity power supply you've listed. This small torch will run both 0.025" and 0.030" wire which will weld thinner material. But....I would recommend that you start with a 16' to 18' skiff of at least 1/8" or thicker metal using a simple spool gun and running 0.035" wire as the most likely to result in a successful build.I do not suggest you take on a truly small skiff of the type shown here, since the materials and welds require more experience than you've listed.  It would likely result in a less than 'sellable' boat- but if you'd stay with the size recommended (above) your likely result will be more useful, less homely and more likely to help your learning about welded aluminum boats.I hope you are able to read the post for its content and not to think I'm giving you a hard time.  I hope you'll be able to avoid the mistake I've seen many new boat builders make- they mistakenly think a small boat is easier than an 18'er of 1/8" or 0.160"/5/32" material.Because the scale of welding in aluminum is not proportional in skill below 0.125" thickness- I recommend you stay with that scantling to avoid conditioning your success on welding thinner material.  I find it is not an accurate understanding of the metal or the building process to believe that thinner hulls of smaller boats could be welded with less effort and skill than the 1/8" or heavier boats of slightly larger sizes.I am an enthusiast of new welded aluminum builders and would help in any way I can to assist you to build in this material.  I do hope you will consider the countless mistakes I've made and list here before you decide to build a 12' dink in 0.060 or 0.080" without more research!Cheers,Kevin MorinKenai, AK
Reply:Kevin,I am not offended in any way by your post I welcome it! I believe that you are following another post on another forum an a scrambler build! The boat that I want to build would be like that one or larger.I consider myself to be a descent steel welder with a mig, but aluminum is a totally different animal and I realize that, this is why I like to read all of these posts that have good information from experienced people like yourself, thank you very much!I am not planning on building this boat for at least a year, my plan is to build a couple of smaller less critical things like a toneau cover for the small pickup and a canopy for the big pickup and couple of smaller projects all out of aluminum 1/8" to 3/16".Again I value your opinions and thoughts, thank you!Last edited by frostop; 05-11-2012 at 12:25 PM.
Reply:frostop,I think your ideas to begin working in welded aluminum are well found and the scrambler garvey or a truck bed cover are good places to get your hand in.I'm not sure if this has been mentioned anywhere here that has been in your reading? but.... almost all wire feed guns both push only pistol style and the push-pull types can be run on 'almost' any CV power supply.What is involved is to find a source of power for the gun or feed cabinet which may or may not be from your welding power supply.  If the brands match then the power supplies are usually matched but if not-then substitute power supplies are not all the difficult to locate and connect.Next is some form of external trigger circuit and ALL CV welds have some form of multipin connector so learning which pair is needed to #1 close contact's (dry no voltage) or #2 close contact with power (powered on/off) is not very hard if the power supply has a schematic available?Last is to make the power connections which are again pretty straight forward in all MIG applications.  There may be a water cooling feature in the push pull gun (?) but that is easily done external to the actual power supply as it is rarely valved or controlled except in TIG applications.So almost any gun can be adapted to almost any power supply with some accurate research and a little solder and some connectors.The MK CobraSX gun is very small and air cooled but would work for the smaller size wires. It will not handle 0.045" wire therefore it would not be a good choice if you're going to build a larger skiff; >20' of 3/16" or heavier metal.However, the old reliable Miller spoolmatic  gun can often be seen on eBay or Craig's list or other used sources and would likely work well?  http://www.millerwelds.com/products/...poolmatic_30a/   Miller has a series of different adapter power supplies or controllers to run this pistol style push-only gun from a variety to different power supplies.It is somewhat heavy, large and not very agile, but it would run 0.035" wire and (I believe**) parts are still sold?  Generally spool guns with the wire in the gun at your arm are lots less than push pull guns so they're more affordable to begin.I use TIG more than most skiff builders because I use a TIG gun, not a common torch.  So my remarks about TIG are cautionary, but I would surely have one on hand to do the corners, tie-ins, tanks and small joints often found in frames while they're being made up from bar and plate stock or cut pieces.** don't own one can't say what's still supported.good luck, please don't hesitate to ask if any welded aluminum boat building questions arise as there's no sense you repeating the millions of mistakes I've already made- often, more than once!  I hope I'm able to call them (all) lessons learned?Couple of pictures of my current skiff, 25' walk around, 7' bottom, 9' gunwales,  3' sides, sealed deck, outboard powered, 0.250" bottom and internals, 0.160" deck  and upper topsides, 3/16" guard deck and transom elements, 1/8" cabin.Cheers,Kevin MorinKenai, AK
Reply:Kevin,Wowzer... If for no other reason, I now want to visit Alaska just to see your boat shop operation.  Those are really nice hull designs.  Do you have any more pictures of that garvey / skiff?And thanks for posting all the info about the trials and tribulations of boat building.  I have a very little amount of experience in wood and everything you say rings really true.  I have no plans to build an aluminum boat but if I did I would be reading every word you posted 100 times.Thanks
Reply:RodJ,I don't have a shop or an operation! I'm in between rental shops waiting for a legal matter to settle on my last business.  I don't have a crew; I just build a boat now and then to pass time- keep my hand in- so to speak.Thanks for the compliment on my designs, I enjoy the concept-to-water process of welded boats and smaller boats make that less distance; so I only build what I draw but don't sell designs.  I use the hull type description garvey to describe a pram type bowed hull like a jon boat with some V.   Or "a skiff with the bow cut off" - or 'two transoms'; one forward, one aft.  I show (above) a rowing dory, a tiny green 'chick skiff' (just a deep sided version of planing skiffs- not allowed to plane) and the last is an offshore (modest V hull) planing skiff shape. since the thread is not active, I will post more pics of any of the boats, -green skiff; rowing dory; offshore V bottom? There are many common aspects to skiff building regardless of material. Not that wood or plastic resin boats get arc welded but they still require shaping and forming parts in a sequence to build.  Some of the best welded aluminum builders I know began building wood/glass composite boats.cheers,Kevin Morin
Reply:Originally Posted by frostopHi All,  the tig weld are so much nicer looking and the tig seems easier to control.Thank You in advance