Welding newbie here! What list of stuff would I need?

[dwalker]

I am not a fan of cheap welding equipment from HF, especially safety kit. My eyes are worth far more then what you might save on cheap welding mask, I tend to shy away from cut rate saftey equipment. It might totally be possible that I am being fleeced by Miller or the name brand welding equipment outfits but cost savings does not justify the risk. That aside I have used import welding equipment and it seems to be ok sometimes, however I would return that particular welder to the store. If you want to tig weld save the money and get a nice full featured machine otherwise consider oxy-acetylene torch, they are very useful tool in the shop. plenty of post around this site about equipment, just search around.

I love my Meco midget torch you might want to check it out.

I welded every day and spent a lot of money on hoods, MIller, Lincoln, Snap-on, etc. At one point a new employee had brought in this HF hood and naturally, we all made fun of him. Until we tried it. It was as fast as anything else, the adjustment worked and stayed adjusted, and it was I think like $50. Not long after that my favorite Snap-On helmet went down with a bad lens, the Snap-On guy did not have one, so I went down and bought a HF hood and used it for the rest of the year. I gave it away when I retired and sod most of the shop equipment, and just bought another a few months ago when the Lincoln hood I kept stopped working.

As to the welders-
I have no personal experience with HF TIG outfits but I have a buddy who recently bought one and loves it. He is a former AF repairman, but we should not hold that against him. The machine does seem to turn out decent welds, but it was not thier cheapest nor the smallest etc. All I know is it is green and shiny and seems to work on the steel tubing he has burned together.

I personally use an older Lincoln welder I have owned since about 2005, and I bought it from a shop that had owned it probably 5 or 10 years without using it. That welder ran almost daily from 2005-2016. The amount of stainless, 4130, and aluminum that machine has welded over the years has paid for it 1000 times over, and then some. Never had a single service call, never had to take it to the welding supply to have it looked at, it just works. My experience with other brands, including blue, has not been as good. Just my experience. IF you are planning to do ANY aluminum welding buy a much more powerful machine than you think you need. It is easy to say "I am just going to stick steel tubes together" but at some point you will want/need to weld some aluminum and it can be very tough on a less powerful machine.

Now, I know you are saying, well I am only building one plane, and thats fine. Just realize there are a LOT of welds in that one plane to be done, and a machine that fights you or is less capable will make life tough and, in some cases, lead to poor quality welds that may fail at bad times.

Just my .02 over morning coffee.


EDIT- Just realized the orignal post was from back in 2015! OOPS!

 

[subnoize1]

Oops., somebody responding to an old got my canned message


tooo funny!