Tig welder for use on thin aluminium

[mayoturbo]

Hi I am looking for a TIG welder for use mostly on aluminium but I will also do some mild and stainless steel. I am still learning to TIG I just need more practice and the only way is in invest in one myself. Will be used for fabricating parts for cars (fuel tanks,radiators etc)

I want something with pulse function. Looking for a good quality machine which can run on single phase.

I've tried a Jackle welder but can't get the welds to shine like they do on the miller at work. (also had a newer miller demo welder which didn't finish the welds as nicely)

If anyone has pictures of aluminium welds from their TIG machine that would be great.

This is on 1.5mm

Thanks in advance

 

[Jim Davey]

Check out the GYS 207 and 208 AC/DC machines, I demoed the water cooled 208 today to some chopper builders this morning and they were impressed enough to buy one. Very nice little machine with a nice clean arc, pulse and its not made in China.

 

[wheresmejumper]

If you cant get the jackle and miller to perform like the one at work,it is probably down to setting up the machine right

 

[Jim Davey]

Smooth

 

[mayoturbo]

Check out the GYS 207 and 208 AC/DC machines, I demoed the water cooled 208 today to some chopper builders this morning and they were impressed enough to buy one. Very nice little machine with a nice clean arc, pulse and its not made in China.

I was told that they were Chinese but assembled in France. I'll try one out and see how I get on. The two millers were set up exactly the same! Thanks so far

 

[Jim Davey]

You were told wrong, well mostly. The Smartmig 162 is manufactured in China, in GYSs owned and operated Chinese factory. Everything else is made in their French factory in Laval, which we've been to and is a very impressive place.
There's no money in really small step switched MIGS so China or places like it are the only places where you can make a decent product at a competitive price, they keep control of quality though by having their own factory there, rather than risk their good name by putting their badge on some 3rd party manufacturers set that doesn't give two hoots about quality.

 

[wheresmejumper]

The make and model doesnt really matter for weld shineyness.material,filler,gas,welding parameters do.

 

[hotrodder]

The make and model doesnt really matter for weld shineyness.material,filler,gas,welding parameters do.

^^ This.

Arc quality does vary some along with arc stability when welding thin stuff (talking sub 1mm thickness for it to be properly noticable* though) but virtually all of the results with TIG are down to the person driving... if i set my inverter to the same AC frequency as a big old transformer machine is stuck with the only difference in the results would be down to how bad my DTs are at the time. Somewhere on the forum are a couple of pics of a Beetle exhaust i did for a mate of mine, no weld close ups so no point in finding 'em but i promise you that it's impossible to tell which of the welds i did with my Lincoln v205 and which i did at his garage using a cheapnese POS. My v205 is much nicer to use as the POS had no pre flow adjustment and a gas solenoid that'd activate a sec or so after striking an arc half the time so i had to press the button with torch pointed away from the weld to get the gas flowing and then quickly postion and strike up for real before the post flow stopped

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/threads/surface-of-ally-weld.24510/#post-267950 shows the difference in shinyness of a couple of different flavours of filler wire. This pic is probably 4043 as i was welding a mix of 6063, 6082 and 1050 ally

FWIW none of those were done with pulse. Not a fan of it with ally personally, especially on stuff 1mm or thicker

* accuracy of the HF, arc wander when striking and general arc stability are all more noticable when welding stupidly thin stuff

 

[mayoturbo]

I should also say: material, rods and gas were all the same. I only use a foot pedal, never used torch buttons.

Still have the demo welder at work. The rep didn't seem to know how to set it up for our needs. Perhaps this is the problem?

I've spent hours slowly adjusting balance and frequency and it did improve the weld but still had no shine.

Another thing is I can't get it to tack two pieces of material together nicely with the jackle. It either doesn't arc or it's too powerful

Sorry if I'm not wording things very well.

Thanks for the help so far

 

[mayoturbo]

Also good to know GYS aren't Chinese! Thanks Jim

 

[wheresmejumper]

The newer millers,like the 280dx i know peple are having to change hidden settings like tungsten size and wave shapes from the factory settings to get the best out of them.
dont know a huge amount about them as i have only used ~5 year old 200 and 350dx models.
just that theres a general consensus that they need a little fine tuning out the box on ally.

what model jackle are you using

 

[mayoturbo]

http://www.jaeckle-sst.de/en/products/tig-welding-machines/ProWIG-220-AC-DC.php

This one ac/dc with pedal. Anyone had any experience with it? I think it's quite a new model. It's a bit of a pain to scroll through some of the settings. Build quality looks good though.

 

[wheresmejumper]

Looks very like a Lorch

 

[chevy2]

The newer millers,like the 280dx i know peple are having to change hidden settings like tungsten size and wave shapes from the factory settings to get the best out of them.
dont know a huge amount about them as i have only used ~5 year old 200 and 350dx models.
just that theres a general consensus that they need a little fine tuning out the box on ally.

what model jackle are you using

I have a roughly two year old dynasty 200dx and that has pretty much all the hidden menus as the new 280dx,
Waveforms, tungsten guage arc start, etc etc,
i was welding up edges on the door skin on a 50 year jag ali door yesterday and although i was getting it welded it wasn't going as smooth as i'd like,
then remembered the last AC job was on advanced square wave, back into the hidden menu and onto soft-square wave which is a bit more forgiving and universal then the weldpool became a bit more controllable,
all these machines require some extra time to get familiar with the vast amount of settings and will pay dividends once you work out how to fine tune it for each job.

 

[mayoturbo]

After playing with the "expert" settings it's getting better

 

[mayoturbo]

What do you think of the Miller 200dx? That was what I was looking for before seeing the jackle at a show

 

[wheresmejumper]

Your ac balance looks to be set more biased to en on the last pic,compared to the first

 

[chevy2]

What do you think of the Miller 200dx? That was what I was looking for before seeing the jackle at a show

To be honest i cant fault it, i'd done my research on pretty much all the machines on the market and that ticked all the boxes for me,
it has pretty much every feature and more than you could ever need in a machine of that amperage,
sure, there may be other machines out there that perform better but the 200dx is in the top handful in my book.

 

[Richard.]

Once you start getting into this league of machines any discrepancy in the welding will be down to operator.
I like the Fronius and EWM machines

 

[Jim Davey]

I've always liked the way Millers work on ally.