Mig Welding Gun

The mig welding gun or torch is what makes a MIG welder a MIG.

It serves these specific essential purposes.

1. It feeds the wire to the weld.
2. It delivers the electrical current to the weld.
3. It delivers the gas to the weld.
4. It insulates the operator from the electrical arc.

The biggest benefit is that it lets you weld continuously, compared to arc or stick where you have to stop and replace electrodes all the time.

There is nothing worse than having to stop to change rods all the time, especially when you're in an awkward position.

These four main brands of welding torches are the industry standard. Any fabrication shop that you walk into will be using one of these four major brands, or cheaper copys of these designs. A lot of the smaller machines like the home hanydman hobby type will be fitted with welding torches that are proprietary to that particular machine. This means you will have a much harder time finding parts when they break.

 The below picture shows one of these smaller MIG guns that are found on the cheap mig welders.

The quality of these "no name" welding torches are usually less than to be desired for. But like most things these days they are built to a price.If you only need to weld every so often, then these will be fine. But If you need to weld more often, you are wasting your time buying a cheap mig welding gun.

Welding Gun Consumables

There are consumables that are used on a welding gun. Over time certain parts will wear out from either use or abuse :)

The parts that wear out the most are the contact tips and welding nozzle. These item are the one's that you will be buying the most. After that the tip holders, diffusers, insulators and liners will be replace less frequently.

Then depending on how much abuse your gun gets, you will find yourself replacing the "goose neck" or "swan neck" of the torch.Often the trigger, the plastic handle of the torch and the cable itself gets damaged from abuse as well.

For more detailed information about specific mig welding guns check these links out.

Tweco mig gun
Binzel mig gun