Hiya

[seanleed]

Hello everyone. I have to say that this place is a mine of useful information and everyone is dead friendly; there doesn't seem to be usual condescending attitude you get on some forums to us newbies.
I'm an electrician to trade but did a lot of s/s TIG welding at my last employers using a Ferm TIG from Screwfix, which is used daily and still going strong 3 years later! I'm going to buy myself a wee hobby MIG and a TIG sometime soon, so have been looking around at the recommendations. I've never tried MIG before so I'm looking forward to having a go.
Keep up the good work and the friendly help.

 

[malcolm]

Welcome to the forum. It's good to have someone with electrical knowledge -the electrical stuff baffles the hell out of me. I just go by the book whenever there's anything I still need to start wiring up before the beginning of this year.

You should find MIG OK after TIG. Much the same idea, but there is a handy self feeding wire that lets you hold the torch in 2 hands. I nearly bought a TIG a couple of weeks ago. I think the advantage of the MIG is speed, but TIGs tend to be more controllable on the thinner stuff and much neater. Do you need both?

I've been on forums where newbies are treated badly. I don't know why that doesn't happen here. Probably mostly it's because we're small. Also we're aimed squarely at DIY people, so DIY questions are kind of expected. Hopefully it'll keep going like this as I like the atmosphere.

 

[seanleed]

Hi Malcolm, don't know if I need both, I like the finish you can get with TIG, but sometimes I'd like to get the job done a bit faster, I'm only going to get wee hobby sets, so it's not a huge load of money to splash out.
Sean

 

[malcolm]

I'm thinking of going in the other direction - I like the weld quality with TIG, but have only ever tried MIG. I've started a thread on the "other welders" section of the forum as I definately want something to help with the thin stuff, but don't know what. Your experience on TIG woud be useful.

I've tried a few MIGs and they all seem to have welded nicely from the 90 and 110 amp ones through to my 155. Reliability on the smaller units might be an issue, and of course max amps will determine max thickness.

One issue of having 2 welders might be sharing of gas bottles. Pure argon isn't so great for mig welding mild steel (there's something on gasses linked from the homepage).

 

[seanleed]

Took me a bit of time to get good finished welds, free from any burning and melted bits, but I got there in the end. One thing I would thoroughly recommend is a HF start. The scratch start works fine and I used it most of the time, (the one with HF start was a huge 3 phase thing on a massive trolley), but when you're holding the torch in the corner of something and nodding your helmet down it's so much easier to just press a button and have it arc up for you, than try and scratch it and then the tungsten sticks and you have to waggle it off and then it's helmet back up, sharpen the tungsten again, back in the corner and have another go. Most of my welding was on 1mm-2mm stainless, but sometimes thinner and sometimes fatter. I had some pics of things I'd made for my car (s/s water bottle, turbo pipes, turbo outlet and oil catch can) but I can't find them. Good old night shift, I even made a stainless ladder out of 20mm box section for the back of my old discovery.