MIG or TIG ??

Carl, go back to bed!!!

 

MIG is cheaper and WAY easier to use. Any idiot, including me, can make passable welds with it. TIG is more expensive, makes better looking welds(skill dependent), and is WAY harder to use(there is that skill thing again). The key is practice and more practice. If you want to butt-weld steel sheet, must be TIG. MIG will just burn through. But if you are making motor mounts and brackets and stuff, go MIG.

I've seen a guy tig a beer can (I think ours are the same thickness as yours) back together and it hold water, but it's an art (what drunk guys will do just to prove they can!). As Danny said, for regular fabrication, a mig is the way to go. Al

Go MIG.....   TIG is a LOT more effort for the same end results...  (As Danny P. said)

Carl,

 

I own both a TIG (Tungstun Inert Gas) welder as well as a MIG (Metal Inert Gas) or (GMAW, Gas Metal Arc Welding)     Each of the welders has a purpose but as mentioned it's easier to use a MIG.  There are 100's of "Do it yourself" videos out there on the internet and all you have to do is Google "MIG Welding" to find them.

 

The next part is important.  If you're going to buy a welder, save up your money and buy either a Lincoln or a Miller.   Over the years, I've owned both but started with a low cost welder running on 120 Volts A/C similar to the ones sold at Harbor Freight.     I then bought a commercially sold Lincoln welder, still 120V from a warehouse store.   The heat range selector was a "click" type in other words, it had selections A,B, etc up to E.  with nothing in between.    I worked well but when I stepped up a Lincoln SP125 with infinite wire speed and heat selection, my welds improved as well at the penetration..  

 

Lincoln now sells a SP135 and it too runs on 120 AC household current and a good used SP125 or a SP135 are excellent 120 Volt machines..    

 

Several years ago, I purchased a Miller 211 that runs on either 120 or 240 AC.   I mostly run it on 240 and it's a great machine, great weld penetration and you can allow the machine to automatically select the wire speed or you can manually control the speed.

 

Now, there are 2 different ways to weld steel, one is with a flux wire and the other requires a bottle of co2/argon.     The flux acts as a shield when welding as does the gas.  The gas makes for a much cleaner weld as you don't have to clean up slag left behind by the shielding.   

 

Interestingly, with the right MIG machine you can butt weld sheet metal without burning holes in the metal.    

 

Typically if you're welding with a 120V AC machine, 3/16" is about your maximum.   With a home version 240V you can weld 3/8 inch steel

Carl. Will get quote later today.  Alan

 

 

 

I learned welding on a Forney 250 amp stick welder, taught by my Navy CB uncle.  I always thought my welds looked like bird-poop compared to his.  His were straight, even, and looked like a machine did them.  Mine were wavy, varied in width and depth and looked awful.  

 

I had seen him weld everything from several inches thick (construction machinery) to floor board sheet metal with a stick and his welds looked great.  I tried to stick-weld the body panels on my '46 coupe and instantly burned through.  Someone else showed me how to weld sheet metal with a torch (two torches, actually) and I got pretty good at it.  Torch-welding is the only way I will (or can) weld sheet panels, even today.  I tend to use metal coat hangers for welding rod, just out of habit.

 

When the time came to buy a welder for the "Pearl project" I got a Century 90 amp MIG unit from Sam's club for about $350 bucks.  This is Lincoln's home and hobby line, but it had a gas feed for whatever shielding gas mix you wanted, infinitely variable heat and wire speed knobs, a feed hose and handle made by "Nozzlehose" and internal parts the same as Miller and Lincoln.  It worked pretty well, as long as you kept the internal mechanism clean.  The MIG was way easier to use than a stick welder, I found I could massage my welds to look slightly less like bird-poop and they all held but I still did a lot of grinding off to make things look nice - but that's just me and my poopy-welds.

 

Then, we moved and Chris inherited the MIG and used it a lot on his race car, then he built Pearl's trailer with it and THAT's how he really learned to weld.....practice, practice, practice.  The trailer welds started out looking better than mine and got progressively better until his looked like my uncle's - maybe better.  Many of you have seen the trailer and it looks every bit a commercial build.

 

Like Larry, Chris and I have both graduated to something better.  Chris traded up for a Miller 220 volt MIG unit with a 70% duty cycle.  My old Century was rated for only 30% duty cycle, meaning that if you were doing a lot of continuous welding you had to stop every so often to let the welder cool off.  No big deal, just a nuisance.  I inherited my brother's Miller MIG 40% duty cycle along with his Lincoln TIG.  Both have shielding gas, but he used the TIG to weld aluminum on snowmobiles.  I have yet to play with the TIG, but rest assured, my TIG welds will look like a shinier version of bird-poop, whereas my brother's (and son's) welds looked like our uncle's.

 

My brother bought the TIG specifically to weld aluminum.  For everything else he always went for the MIG.

 

Hope this helps, cuz Larry's post mentioned everything else other than the duty cycle thing (Or my bird-poop).

Gordon,  good follow up.   I purposly didn't mention duty cycle.  It's been my experience that I can't exceed the duty cycle on a welder.   As it was once explained to me by the Miller Representative, duty cycle mostly applies to those who use the machine in a pure professional mode, in other words they weld constantly all day, every day.    The Rep. said that the home mechanic/fabricator rarely if ever will even come close to exceeding the duty cycle even on a "low duty cycle machine'     

 

I purposly left   out "duty cycle"  because I didn't want Carl's brain to bleed digesting all of the information provided by other members and myself, and now "you".   It's on your shoulders to apply first aid to Car's brain should he spring a leak.   LOL

I used a borrowed Oxy-Acetylene torch when I welded my center tunnel after shortening it.  If it had uneven gap - heat it up and bend the hot metal with a hammer. It gave excellent penetration and a grinder cleaned up the high spots. Like Gordon said - wire coat hangers can be used.  I used a cheap Marquette Mig with Argon for the pan tins.  Echo the recommendation to avoid the cheap Harbor Freight ones. I took a continuing learning class at local tech high school - we had a shot at each.  Instructor said to find old metal and practice.  

 

I still like Cory's picture of Sartwell welding his chassis with bare chest and no gloves.  Get a little hot slag in your shoes and you'll dance for an hour plus it leaves a scar.

So THAT's why I have scores of teeny-tiny little scars all over my hands and wrists...  

 

I shoulda been wearing those silly gloves all those years!  

 

Good point on the duty cycle.  An easy way to get around a 30% duty cycle is to go into "stitch mode";  weld about a 2" length, then move ahead to skip about 2", then another 2" weld, then skip another.  When you get to the end, go back and fill in the gaps.  This also keeps the metal you're welding from heat warping as you go along.

 

IIRC, my Century was rated for 30% and I know I pushed to over 50% on one project and it did fine.  Of course, between normal stops, running out of wire, moving around the piece to get a better work angle on it, changing the clamping, yadda-yadda, Larry's right - it's usually pretty hard to even approach the top of a 30% duty cycle for most non-commercial (read that amateur, like you and me) welders.  Plus, for the three times a year I end up using my welder, I ain't never gonna become good at it!

 

Sorry about the brain-bleed there, Carl!  Really, it can be pretty simple:

 

Just ask Santa for a 90 amp, 110 volt MIG from Lincoln, Miller or Century with infinitely variable wire speed and heat control and a shielding gas attachment.  Then, watch the how-to welding videos on You Tube and practice, practice, practice........

 

Oh and BTW:  Why get infinitely variable wire speed and heat controls?  Because it will be easier to "tune in" to the correct feed speed and heat for whatever you're trying to weld.  The welding tip and wire will make different sputtering sounds and different penetration/puddling depending on the metal you're welding, how deep you're welding and so forth.  By "fine tuning" the controls by ear, you can home in on the correct weld settings every time.

You need not experience hot slag falling into an unlaced work boot ......I have.or have a pop go in your ear......

 

 

Great info, guys.  Thanks!

Where are you located Carl....   I still have a very  good Miller 225 amp 70% duty cycle wire feed TIG unit with tank and regulator....   Needs a new gun assembly, but still works well...  I've moved into a much smaller house and need to "down size" the garage area....  Unit runs on 240VAC @ 30amp...

I guess I was trying to keep it simple. Yeah, you CAN butt weld sheet with a torch or a MIG, but IMHO it is way easier and prettier when using TIG. TIG is a little much for some people to grasp, kinda like a clutch as opposed to an automatic. Did you ever use a wire feed MIG set up to weld aluminum? It works, but it's NOT pretty!

 

Good comments all, especially about continuous adjustments. Mine has a knob for wire speed, but switches for current. No complaints here, the welder was FREE!

 

I took a continuing education class also, it turned out to be worth it.

Leon, Carl is in CT.

Danny,   With a wire feed welder you can weld amuminum provided you can reverse the polairty to the torch.   Also, pure Argon is needed as the filler.  With very little practice, the welds on aluminum with a MIG can look great.

Carl, Ive really enjoyed my Hobart Handler MIG, kinda suitcase size (not including bottle). I cant remember what It cost ( I traded for a sculpture)

Remember to get appropriate gas mix for steel,stainless etc.

Once I saw something on a sculpture that needed a little stitching as I was walking by the piece and quickly did it, later when checking the time I noticed little pieces of metal burned into the crystal of the Tag Huer dive watch my wife bought me for our 5th anniversary!

Also welding in flipflops or shorts not recommended (hot metal down between sock and shoe very painful!

Wear a Auto darkening helmet to save your eyes, eye burns also very painful, feel like eyes are filled with burning sand and shooting pains. The lookaway style of eye protection is dangerous and inaccurate. (done when i thought i was immortal in my youth)

Ive done the aluminum welding Larry mentioned and you can also buy wire with a (flux coating?) so you don't necessarily need gas to weld but it is better with gas.

 

Some guys (me too sometimes) as previously mentioned still prefer to use oxy/acetylene and rod (old school)so as to not overheat/distort metal.

Speedbucket...are you saying you weld aluminum with a torch ?

No David, not aluminum, steel, the way i wrote the post was confusing sorry.

 

Although I bought some aluminum welding stick from a Snake oil salesman at the Del Mar Fair one year and it did work on the aluminum beer cans but no joy for anything serious.

I, like alot of poeple in high school metal shop learned to rivet, then weld with oxy/acetylene before arc welding, we didnt have mig or tig in our school shop in the 70's.

FWIW, I really enjoyed torch welding,soldering and brazing, very easy to control and kinda artsy and therapeutic in a way.

I gotcha. I've gas welded several airplane fuselages in 4130 steel but have always been fascinated about gas welding aluminum. Tried different torches, fluxes, lenses  and filler rod and can do a bit but not with any regularity. I've mig'd .050" 5052 fuel tanks too but the freakin' wire feeder kept jamming and I didn't spring for a spool gun.

FYI,   When Shelby imported the all aluminum AC bodies to make his legendary Cobra, AC welded the body panels together with a gas/oxygen torch and aluminum fill rod.

Larry, I can't remember the setup. but either polarity wrong or improper gas 'cause the aluminum/Mig welds were UGLY! I made shock top extensions(1/2" longer at the spring perch) for Lenny and I on our Spyders, but trusted the welding to my friend who was basically born with a torch in one hand and a Bridgeport in the other! It didn't matter how ugly it was because I chucked them in a lathe, turned them down and cleaned them up nice. They are still on our cars today.

All of the old timers who I went to for an education in welding 101 are now gone.  The guy who taught me how to gas weld thin panels was an alcoholic body shop guy who I only once saw sober.  His work that day looked awful.  I figured out years later (when I was older and more world-wise) that the beer had a calming effect on his nerves and allowed him to produce better work.  He was the last of the "lead men" around here, and he applied lead to body panels with a torch or two, depending on what he was doing, and he was an artist, but the beer eventually killed him.

 

It's a good thing we at least have Youtube to go to for short tutorials in shop crafts to get us going, and there are still evening courses to show us finer points for not a lot of money.  When I was a kid (under 16) I thought I knew a lot about welding until a friend's dad dropped him off when I was trying to weld a broken, cast iron knotting needle on a hay baler.  It was going badly, even for me (frustration comes on quickly when you're a kid and have the attention span of a fruit fly).  

 

His dad looked at what was going on and told me I hadn't prepared the needle properly to accept the welded joint, I had the wrong stick size, I had the wrong heat, I was supporting it wrong, you name it.  I began to think I was wearing the wrong color socks, too, and beginning to get mad when he told me he was a field welding engineer who worked for Airco and he helped other companies weld better.  

 

He grabbed a file and showed me how to re-work the needle break and prep it right, selected a different stick from some he had in the trunk of his car (what I had were poor for cast iron - who knew - and how many people ride around with 20 different types of welding rods in their car trunk?), re-set the heat slightly cooler and showed me how to hold the stick at a different angle to get a better weld.  I learned more in that 30 minutes than I had in several years of messing with it on my own.

My best freind is a pipeline welder and it amazes me that he can walk in and do a cert weld for some kind of stainless military fuel plant upside down in a tank with a federal inspector watching him for $1500 and hour, one continuos weld in one shot.They then X-ray it to insure correct penetration and no cracks and God knows what else and he passes no problem. Sometimes it's 145 degrees in the wells or pipes, Amazing! 

Hes always trying to teach me, but there is ALOT to it and I only weld occasionally so it's hard for me to retain.

 My father in law in Arcadia CA said Von Dutch did his best work almost plastered on beer, that and he was real grumpy sober, he never saw him without a beer in the 50's.

Some here have met a machine shop owner friend of mine who fabricates Stanley Steamer parts, suspensions and boilers from scratch... Randy does "robotic quality" welds by hand and makes it look effortless.

So where does a Stanley Steamer stop for fuel? Check this out.

Man, you guys are killing me. All I want to do now is go out in the garage and burn some wire.

Make BIG sparks - They keep your garage warmer.  I'm jus sayin.....

That's amazing. I did not know that was even possible.

Ahhh....So it would seem that the secrets of aluminum panel welding have not yet made it to the "People's Republic of Stanistan"?

 

I will say right now that I have never welded aluminum.  I've seen others do it with both a torch (they had different colored gas bottles so I assume they might have been using a different gas mix from ocy-acetlyene - any decent welding supply place could answer that) and with a TIG welder (this was my brother, using a different gas mix , 20% Argon/80% Helium).

 

I have heard that experts can butt-weld just about any compatible metal without filler rods, especially aluminum, and found this video you might enjoy.  I will never approach being that good, although I have managed a few steel butt-welds with a torch and no filler (but they still looked like bird poop, just less of it):

 

http://www.gartrac.com/fabrication/gaswelding.htm

 

I also believe that there were a lot of women welders during WW II who were torch welding aluminum on airplanes - I'll look for some info on that.

 

Found something:  http://www.tinmantech.com/html...-acetylene_torch.php

 

It would also look like "normal" oxy-acetelyne gas mix is used, so maybe those different colored gas bottles I remember were just from a different supplier.

 

gn

I think alloy cars out in Florida weld up their hand fabricated 550 Spyder bodies

Pretty much every fab shop has a guy who's really good with a TIG, and they all hate AL.

 

I've had many, many AL pieces made by guys who are way better than me with a TIG, but did not have any idea that something as complex as an AL car body had ever been gas welded-- I didn't know it was even possible. The welding supply guys always come to the supply houses with "miracle stick" that purports to make gas welding repairs of all-AL HVAC/R coils possible-- but since cleanliness is next to godliness when it comes to AL, it never really works out, since the coil bends are about beer-can thickness, pitted, and filthy.

A little more info on Shelby's Cobra's being welded with a torch.  

 

About 10 years ago there was a show on TV called Dream Car Garage featuring Peter Klutt from Canada and the co-host was a Canadian motorsports announcer named Tom Hnatiw (he passed away in 2012), Peter  owns Legendary Motorcar Company in Canada and they do OUTSTANDING restorations.

 

  One of Peter's customers owned Bob Bondrandt's Cobra that he raced back in the 60's and they wanted it restored.   It was originally a left hand drive car but had been converted to a right hand drive for Le Mans.  They removed the body and boy was it flimsly.  Then they converted it back to a left hand drive.  When the body was off, they found a lot of bad aluminum and they showed how AC had originally torch welded the body panels.  

 

For originality, they replaced several hand fabricated body panels via an oxygen-acetlyene torch.   They had to be very careful as they heated the metal and applied filler.   The welder was  obviously well skilled as he made it look easy.    After welding they had to grind and smooth the metal but it looked original just as AC had to do when the bodies were originally manufactured.

 

I believe that show is back on the air on Velocity TV (part of Discovery's multi channels)