I already have a wig welder and am looking to buy a tig welder. I have found that wig welders are only good for small things like mufflers and such. My question is what is the difference between a tig welder and an arc welder. I am asking because I want to know which welder to go with. Tig welders seem to be more expensive which is why I want to know if its worth spending more money on a tig welder when an arc welder will do the same thing.

 

All welders are arc welders, but a TIG (Tungsten Innert Gas) gets it's name for it's ability to weld softer metals like alluminum, copper, magnesium...etc...And you probably have a MIG (Metal Innert Gas) welder, not a WIG (?).

 

I first read it and said MIG in my head and then went back puzzled when I saw WIG.

Anyways, MIG is all I have. What are you trying to do that your MIG won't handle?

 

Yea I dont know why I said Wig. I meant to say Mig. Well from what I am aware of, there are Arc welders, Mig welders and Tig welders. So the only advantage I would get from buying a Tig welder over a Arc welder would be that I could welder softer metals?

 

arc(or stick)welding is definatly easier. like said before with tig'in you gotta mess around with gas cylinders and whatnot.

 

I am welding filter bins which restuarants use to filter their fryers with. Its the bin that holds the hot oil while the pump pumps the oil through a filter and back into the fryer. The seems on the bin started cracking so I offered to bring them home and weld them. Well when I first took a shot at it, the wire on the Mig went right through the stainless steel sides of the bin and just made a hole. The setting of the Mig welder was on low too.

 

Wig...? Is that a brand?

There are 3 basic garage type welders. Arc, Mig, & Tig. They all have their advantages.

Arc welding (SMAW - sheilded metal arc welding) uses a consumable electrode (welding rod) clamped into the welding handle. With the ground secured to the workpeice, an arc will be struck as soon as the rod gets close enough to the grounded metal. Advantages to this type of welding include the ability to weld in windy or otherwise adverse conditions due to the variety of sheilding compounds on the outside of the welding rod. The disadvantages include the level of skill required to lay a nice bead with this type of welder as well as the slag left behind on the weld. This slag must be removed before additional passes can be made over a previous weld.

MIG (metal inert gas) welding or GMAW - gas-metal arc welding uses a wire fed through the handle. The consumable wire carries the charge to sustain the charge. The weld is protected by a sheilding gas also transferred through the handle. This is the most popular form of welding for most shops and garages. I find a MIG welder to be the easiest in welding like metals (both material and thickness).

TIG (tungsten inert gas) is much like MIG, however a tungsten electrode is used. This electrode is non-consumable, using a filler rod to add weld-metal to the joint. The same sheilding gas method is used here. The nice thing about TIG welders is their versatility in changing the materials to be welded. With a MIG welder, one must remove the roll of wire and replace it with a suitable composition for the new materials. With TIG, all one has to do is select a different filler rod and make the appropriate changes to the welder itself. TIG welders typically have a current control for fine tuning of the amperage being applied, precisely controlling the heat being applied to the weld area. One down side is that the tungsten must be kept clean and to a sharp tip to keep the arc from scattering. This really requires proper electrode sharpening tools.

Now there are quite a few other types of welding, but I don't think that the other types pertain to the topic at hand.

As with anything, the capabilities of these various types of welding really center around the size/amperage of the machine you are using. My father has a relatively large MIG welder as well as a few, relatively large Arc welders that are older than I am. I will say that when I purchase my first personal welder, I will probably be purchasing a TIG welder. The versatility and precision is what I am interested in. But they are generally more costly to operate than a comparable MIG.

With any welder, you really have to test your settings on similar scrap pieces before attempting the actual joining. That is until it becomes second nature like my father is. I can weld with the best of them, but I don't know the settings for various material thicknesses or materials themselves like my father does. But it only takes me a few test welds to get the settings right where they need to be for a beautiful weld.

It almost sounds like your MIG welder is too small for the material thicknesses that you are working with...

 

well, i dunno about body work, but when im working with a welder, using stick, he has to be outta the wind, for 1, it blows your puddle around, and 2, it causes perosity.....

 

Like I said, that all depends on the type of welding rod you are using. I have used our GMA welder in the wind successfully many times. It is MUCH less susceptible to weld contamination than a MIG or TIG simply due to the semi-solid shielding zone.

And I would have to say that I have never even thought of using a GMAW on sheetmetal... But then again, my dad's GMAW welders do not have settings that would allow it to be used on such thin material. We're usually welding 1/4" up to 1" material together.

I'll also add that the strength of your weld can really depend on the edge preparation you use. A nice bevelled edge at the joint with a wider gap towards you will be stronger (generally speaking) than a squared off butt weld.

 

Well what I thought was that my Mig welder could only do small applications such as mufflers and not frames and such. That is why I was interested in a Tig welder. However all my Mig welder has on it for settings is high and low and the speed the wire if fed at.

From what I just read, Kyle said Arc welding is hard and Blazin said it was easy. Arc welders are also very cheap too. I am still not sure which one I should go with. It seems tig and arc welders are for bigger applications such as frames and Migs are for smaller things such as mufflers.