TIG with HF 80 amp dc

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So as I mentioned in another post, my TIG torch will arrive tomorrow. It should fit right into my welder, I know I need Argon and a regulator, but is the flow meter I keep reading about another part or just the adjustment on the regulator? I think I'll need a fitting to connect the hose as it does not have anything now. To practice on some mild steel or sheet, what tungsten will I need ? What filler rod should I use wonce I'm ready to practice fillet welds? Also any advice on practice with the rig would be great. Thanks
Reply:Also I don't know what that goofy symbol is in my post or how it got there
Reply:Originally Posted by Bluehunter40Also I don't know what that goofy symbol is in my post or how it got there
Reply:I will have pictures tomorrow. Thank you.
Reply:I just got it, was $79 plus $7 shipping. From northern tool, they sell a 80 amp dc welder like HF, it has the same connector as HF and has gas hose in sausage skin all zipped up. Also has a gas fitting on the hose. Comes complete but I'll need to get the gas tank and regulator. And I think a flo meter as well? I'll also need tungsten as well, the one it comes with is grey no red tip. I guess I'll need several as well and a small bench grinder. I am impressed, I see guys on the web buying stuff separate and this was one click and buy. I don't know much about this stuff, but it looks like I can practice on my own with small stuff. Hell I'm still learning to well stick so I'm really in no rush but I'm excited to try it.I'm interested in building a small 4X6 trailer, welding table, and a smoker. So I think i can manage those things ok with what I have now, but I will be looking for 220V equiptment in the future, and not HF or Northern tool. For my purposes the trailer might be the ticket but I think with square tube and angle I could get something strong enought? I won't be hauling heavy loads. Just homeowner type stuff. Anyway I have to get back to painting the house before my wife finds out I'm doing this stuff. Any comments or advice is welcome. Tim
Reply:Link to welder?Torchmate 2x2 CNC with Flashcut CNC controlsHypertherm Powermax45 Esab ET220i Razorweld 195 MigRazorweld 200ac/dc TigTormach 770, Tormach xstechRazorweld, Vipercut/Vipermig, SSC Foot Pedal Dealer
Reply:Just search harbor freight dc weld, got the torch from northern tool. Look for their 110v dc welder and they sell it as an accessory kit, they also have gas ket as wellSent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Reply:Dam I can't spell todaySent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Reply:http://www.northerntool.com/shop/too...isSearch=20462Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Reply:http://t.harborfreight.com/80-amp-in...l#.UxDvymt5mSM My welderSent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Reply:I thought you meant the welder from northern tool for 79.NevermindTorchmate 2x2 CNC with Flashcut CNC controlsHypertherm Powermax45 Esab ET220i Razorweld 195 MigRazorweld 200ac/dc TigTormach 770, Tormach xstechRazorweld, Vipercut/Vipermig, SSC Foot Pedal Dealer
Reply:[/B] Originally Posted by Bluehunter40I just got it, was $79 plus $7 shipping. From northern tool, they sell a 80 amp dc welder like HF, it has the same connector as HF and has gas hose in sausage skin all zipped up. Also has a gas fitting on the hose. Comes complete but I'll need to get the gas tank and regulator. And I think a flo meter as well? I'll also need tungsten as well, the one it comes with is grey no red tip. I guess I'll need several as well and a small bench grinder. I am impressed, I see guys on the web buying stuff separate and this was one click and buy. I don't know much about this stuff, but it looks like I can practice on my own with small stuff. Hell I'm still learning to well stick so I'm really in no rush but I'm excited to try it.I'm interested in building a small 4X6 trailer, welding table, and a smoker. So I think i can manage those things ok with what I have now, but I will be looking for 220V equiptment in the future, and not HF or Northern tool. For my purposes the trailer might be the ticket but I think with square tube and angle I could get something strong enought? I won't be hauling heavy loads. Just homeowner type stuff. Anyway I have to get back to painting the house before my wife finds out I'm doing this stuff. Any comments or advice is welcome. Tim
Reply:Ya but not a custom trailer to fit your needs and certainly not newSent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Reply:Originally Posted by Bluehunter40Ya but not a custom trailer to fit your needs and certainly not newSent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Reply:Okay, I'll wait till I get a bigger machine. For the trailerSent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Reply:Originally Posted by DSWI've done so many  "how to tig" threads here I've lost count... I should probably start tagging them with "new tig thread" or something like that to make them easier to find.1st go on line to Miller and download their tig handbook as well as the manual for your machine. Read thru them and they will answer most of your basic questions on this. http://www.millerwelds.com/pdf/gtawbook.pdfAs suggested, get some 1/8" steel  ( we use 3" wide 6" long pieces) and grind/sand off the mill scale, both sides preferably. If the steel is oily, you'll also need to wipe it down with acetone ( do not use brake cleaner!) You can skip the grinding if you buy cold rolled rather than hot rolled, but CR is more money. It's usually cheaper to grind. Note a wire wheel will not remove rust or mill scale, only polish it. You need to grind sand to prep.Grind your 3/32" tungsten to a pencil point and set the machine at roughly 125 amps on DC, argon at about 15-20 cfh. Extend the tungsten out of the cup about 3/8" roughly. This will let you see the arc better.1st drill I usually have students do is to just run beads with no filler on flat plate. Try and get comfortable and set up so you can maintain a consistent arc length and travel speed across the piece. You will be using the pedal to manipulate the amps in this drill. As you run the beads, play with the pedal to get a feel on what happens as you depress the pedal. Make the puddle smaller and larger at will. Remember the plate will heat up and if you don't keep cooling it down, it will act like you are upping the amps. I tell students the pieces are cool enough when you can handle them with your bare hands. A quench bucket and several pieces to work with will allow you to keep practicing without having to wait all day for coupons to cool between beads,Next reset the amps to say 90-95 and floor the pedal. In this drill you will now vary either the distance you have the tungsten from the work, or your travel speed ( drill #3 is to vary the one you didn't do in this drill) Get a feel how these changes affect the arc and puddle. Don't worry too much about these right now, the idea is mostly to get you to understand that varying these will change and effect the puddle. For most of the rest of the drills, you'll want to try and maintain as consistent travel speed and arc length as possible and just change your amps with the pedal.After these drills, say maybe an hour of "play time", try to run a bead by adding filler. 1/16" filler is a good size to work with. I usually suggest the students start with a lay wire method where they keep the filler in contact with the plate, and bring the puddle to the filler. Remember you melt the filler with the puddle, not the arc. You can slide the filler along the plate and into and out of the puddle as needed. If your amps are on the low side, some times the filler rod tends to be "sticky" and want to stick to the plate using this method though. Add a few more amps with the pedal if this is the issue. You can also "tap" the filler in like a drum stick or "stab" the filler at the puddle. I usually don't suggest new students stab the filler at the beginning as they usually will constantly hit the tungsten and foul it. get used to grinding your tungsten and get in the habit of stopping to regrind as soon as you foul the tungsten.You also will want to practice feeding filler with your left hand ( assuming you are right handed). Get yourself a length of filler rod, and practice feeding it thru your hand while wearing your tig glove when you are watching tv to help develop the muscle memory for doing this.Once you can run consistent beads the full 6" length of the plate, try overlapping the previous bead by 50%. Once you can consistently do these, you can move on to lap joints, followed by T joints, outside corners, and finally but joints in that order.Then you go back to the beginning for horizontal joints and start the whole process all over again with beads on flat plate... Then the same thing for vertical followed by overhead. After all of this, you can move to thinner  material and start all over again with say 1/16" and then finally start on round tube.Post up picts of your practice pieces along with your settings etc and we'll help you with this.One other thing. Because tig allows you the most control over the weld, it means that there are a lot of things you will have to manage all at once and keep the same to get good results. Best way to learn is to take a class so that someone can watch as you weld and pick up on many of these small changes that you are not aware of. There's only so much that can be done with picts. It's much easier to pick out a lot of this stuff if someone is watching you though.Good luck.
Reply:Thank you very much for the reply. I will do just that. As for my trailer, I'll be fine waiting for a bigger machine. I should have started with the HF 220 arc/tig but I was just testing the waters. So it did everything I wanted it to do. I still need to learn arc welding for that matter but I'm going to put in the time and take your advice so when I get to the class in October I'll be that much ahead. I'll post some pictures soon, Thanks again TimSent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Reply:Originally Posted by DSWI did the above post for someone else here a while ago. It covers most of what we do to teach tig at the tech school. A few changes since you don't have  a pedal, and you are limited in output. Go with 16 or 14 ga steel vs 1/8". You lack the output power to do 1/8". Tungsten can be 3/32", but 1/16" may be a bit better for you with the limited output. Remember to spend some time on the drills running a puddle by varying arc length and travel speed. Since you have no pedal to adjust your amps, that will be your method of heat control along with adding filler. Go with 1/16" filler or .045 filler. Adding filler will chill the puddle and you will want need as much heat as you can get with the unit you have. Go  bigger and you won't be able to melt the filler with the puddle on thin material with your limited amps. The drills we do at the tech school build on each other. Skipping a head just makes your life harder. Spend the time learning and understanding heat control 1st on plain plate with no filler. This is very important. Keep things simple and don't complicate things until you have this down very well. It's tedious and boring, but every thing else depends on these basics. Plain beads evolve into overlapping beads. Overlapping beads evolve into lap joints. Lap joints evolve into T joints. From T joints you go from one thin edge to 2 thin edges on outside corners. Outside corners sets you up for but joints.... Going right to T's means you skipped all the important lessons in between and now have to handle many times the work load all at once. You can't concentrate on one thing any more. You have to manage several variables all at the same time and get them right to get the results you are looking for.As far as trailers, even with my much better Maxstar 200 on 110v power, it's not really up to the job of building trailers other than maybe to tow behind your lawn tractor. It takes someone with a great deal of skill to over come the power issues and your machine just makes things that much worse. You definitely need a bigger machine. 2nd you are hundreds of hours away ( if not more) from having enough hood time in to have the skills to be able to make code quality welds in all positions, every time. Welding table, smoker, small non critical projects, yeah those are fine.
Reply:For mild steel, you need roughly 1 amp of welding current for every 0.001" of material thickness.  There is a chart in a sticky where you can look up gauge vs inches to see what you will be dealing with, just in case you need it.  It is in the MIG/TIG/Stick forum.Postflow is going to have to be "manual".  That is what the knob is for on the torch.  That is to turn on/off the flow of argon at the torch itself.  With that machine you will need to do scratch start---you don't want to drag the tungsten tip as if it were lighting an actual match stick.  Look for videos on youtube so you can see it for yourself.Lastly, return all that stuff and at least get yourself an Everlast Powerarc140.  A couple more bucks, and you would have had 140A as opposed to 80A.  80A won't even weld 1/8" mild steel without pre-heat, so forget about that smoker unless you are making it out of sheet metal.  Same goes for the welding table, and as was said, don't even think about a custom trailer with 80A.  Whatever you do, don't weld galvanized steel or zinc-plated steel.  Fumes will make you seriously ill.  TIG requires everything to be nearly surgically clean, so make sure you have a grinder with a grinding disk, or a flap disk to grind the mill-scale off.  Anything else will just "shine it up", but not remove it---it has to be somewhat aggressive.  A one-gallon can of acetone will be a necessity to make sure you get all crud/oil/grease off the steel, and will go a long way. 1st on WeldingWeb to have a scrolling sig! HTP Invertig 400HTP Invertig 221HTP ProPulse 300HTP ProPulse 200 x2HTP ProPulse 220MTSHTP Inverarc 200TLP HTP Microcut 875SC
Reply:16 ga is roughly 1/16", so you'd be looking at about 60-65 amps roughly, maybe a bit less with no pedal. 16 ga is about the thinnest I'd suggest new guys start with, and it can be quite a challenge. The line between enough heat and blowing holes will be pretty small, especially when doing joints like outside corners and but joints. Good fit up will be essential. As far as start, with that machine you will have no choice but scratch start. It simply doesn't have the electronic circuitry to do lift arc. A router pedal won't do you any good on a unit like this. They reduce input power to the machine to slow the motor on a router. That will not help you change the output on the welder the way you want. As mentioned you have manual control over the gas flow, for post flow, you simply leave the torch in the area of the weld with the gas on. It can take a bit of learning to break the arc and then return to cover the weld with gas, especially with an inverter stick unit. Some inverters have circuitry to try to help maintain the arc when stick welding to prevent stuck rods. That can make it tough to quickly break the arc compared to say using an older style tranny machine. The machine will try and keep the arc lit as long as possible, and in a few cases may try to reestablish the arc when you get back close again..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:Thanks, I understand, I'll stick with 16g. So last question for you, do I keep a bucket of water for cooling the coupons in between beads, or will that contaminate the clean surface?Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Reply:Originally Posted by OscarFor mild steel, you need roughly 1 amp of welding current for every 0.001" of material thickness.  There is a chart in a sticky where you can look up gauge vs inches to see what you will be dealing with, just in case you need it.  It is in the MIG/TIG/Stick forum.Postflow is going to have to be "manual".  That is what the knob is for on the torch.  That is to turn on/off the flow of argon at the torch itself.  With that machine you will need to do scratch start---you don't want to drag the tungsten tip as if it were lighting an actual match stick.  Look for videos on youtube so you can see it for yourself.Lastly, return all that stuff and at least get yourself an Everlast Powerarc140.  A couple more bucks, and you would have had 140A as opposed to 80A.  80A won't even weld 1/8" mild steel without pre-heat, so forget about that smoker unless you are making it out of sheet metal.  Same goes for the welding table, and as was said, don't even think about a custom trailer with 80A.  Whatever you do, don't weld galvanized steel or zinc-plated steel.  Fumes will make you seriously ill.  TIG requires everything to be nearly surgically clean, so make sure you have a grinder with a grinding disk, or a flap disk to grind the mill-scale off.  Anything else will just "shine it up", but not remove it---it has to be somewhat aggressive.  A one-gallon can of acetone will be a necessity to make sure you get all crud/oil/grease off the steel, and will go a long way.
Reply:Water shouldn't be an issue as long as the water is fairly clean. By that I'm talking about no oil that might get deposited on the material. Water in the dunk tank at the tech school can get pretty rusty on occasion but that doesn't really bother the tig guys..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:Okay one more, the formula you gave for thickness with TIG, (.001 inch per amp) does that apply to other types of welding, like stick, mig or flux core?Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Reply:It can sort of apply with stick, but there it would be based on the rod size with some rods. For example 125 amps would work for 1/8" 7018 and 7014 and 95 amps would work for 3/32" rods of the same type. However with material thickness, you can easily weld steel from 1/8" up using 1/8" 7018. You would need to make more passes with thicker material.With mig, "amps" most people think of is a vague sort of term manufacturers use in general to "rate" small units. However "amps" doesn't work for thickness. 125-140 "amp" migs top out at 1/8" under real world conditions, but 180 "amp" migs top out at 1/4", and 200 "amp" class migs top out at roughly 3/8". Go bigger and material thickness no longer really matter when you get up in the 250 'amp" plus sized machines.Miller has both a hard copy slide rule like calculator or an online/app version that you can use to get rough ideas on settings for each individual process. In some ways it's not as usable with hobbyists since it's really set up more for production work, getting the most efficient use of time/material when doing volume work, but it gives you a starting point..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 ReaganThanks. I'll check it out. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Reply:Originally Posted by Bluehunter40Well, I have seen the Everlast Powerarc 140 on YouTube, It has the same connectors as my HF. So the Tig torch will plug right in.