I'm no Josh at Brown Dog, but

DRAG-ULA

DRAG-ULA

Club Member
I gave my 54 year old tig welder a tune up, I can finally weld aluminum!! I always struggled with aluminum on my machine before. I've been setting money aside for a new Syncrowave, but now I might spend the 2500 on something else.

IMAG0092.jpg


It's not pretty, but it's a start.

IMAG0091.jpg
 
Always good to save money, and it only proves how good guys like Josh are. I can't imagine how my welds would look aside from spotty with holes!
 
I took a welding class at WCC that covered MIG, Oxy, TIG, and stick welding. TIG was the hardest for me. That shit takes a mass amount of skill to do it right, let alone looking as pretty as Josh does it. Nice work.
 
Pure84GTT said:
very cool man, cool that you made it work for ya?

what did you end up doing to make it work ?
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The biggest thing I did was make a permanent ground for the machine instead of relying on what came out of the breaker. There's a horseshoe shaped piece of metal sunk in the cement in my garage that was used to tie shit down to floor I guess, I welded a bolt to it and ran 0 ga. cable to the welder's frame. I couldn't believe the difference when I was doing steel. Then I cleaned the contacts in the high frequency unit and it started working better for aluminum.

For anyone looking for a used tig welder, these can be had super cheap, and they're stupid simple inside. I picked this one up not working for 200 bucks and fixed it. The only downside is they're huge and weigh 1000 lbs

Thanks for the compliments everyone
 
yeahhhhh buddy!


And you bring up a good point. If you have the cash, new inverters are da bomb. But I would never suggest buying an inverter used. It's all techno mumbo jumbo inside, and the boards are NOT cheap to replace. Not to mention inverters are typically still pricey even used. Old Miller and Lincoln transformers usually have all kinds of parts available for them. And honestly, I'd say they are more robust.
 
jdustu said:
yeahhhhh buddy!


And you bring up a good point. If you have the cash, new inverters are da bomb. But I would never suggest buying an inverter used. It's all techno mumbo jumbo inside, and the boards are NOT cheap to replace. Not to mention inverters are typically still pricey even used. Old Miller and Lincoln transformers usually have all kinds of parts available for them. And honestly, I'd say they are more robust.
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Do syncrowaves use an inverter? I thought they didn't. My buudy has a new 200 and I can weld aluminum way nicer than mine, that's why I was looking at one of those. I've been doing some reading on these,

http://www.usaweld.com/TIG-WELDER-Invertig-221-Welder-p/70221-12.5.htm

They're made in Italy, and everything I've read on them has been good. Any thoughts, Josh?

What do you use at home?
 
HTP makes awesome machines.

This will tell you what I use though(and a bit about why I dig the inverters) :D

Although they did cut out where I said guys get hung up on all the bells and whistles sometimes...gotta sell the bells and whistles!


I learned on a Syncrowave 350. They are pretty bad ass. Still transformer based, not an inverter. Ran some beads with my buddies Lincoln precision tig 225(transformer) earlier today, that welds really nice too.
 
Thanks Josh. I've heard nothing but good about the inverter welders, didn't know you had a Dynasty. Nice stuff. If I wind up buying a new tig it'll be the htp 221. I'm gonna keep practicing with my dinosaur for now. I'm gonna need to do some aluminum soon, and hopefully I'll be able to do it myself. If I'm not comfortable doing yet I'll send it your way.
 
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