TIG Welding

Tig welding is a much cleaner welding process compared to something like arc or mig welding.

It is often used for very small delicate welds, on thin steel.

This is a primary advantage of using a TIG welder as you can make really small welds.

The picture is showing the weld bead on stainless steel. The thickness of the stainless steel sheet is only a mere 1.2mm (0.045") thick. So the actual weld bead shown here would be about 2-3mm wide. Pretty small huh!

So for things like welding car panels, custom motorbike frames, handrails, etc can be made easily with less rework time cleaning and grinding off excess welds.

 The photo to the right shows what a tig torch looks like.

It is pretty much shaped like the letter "T", with the exception that one
part of the "T" is shorter than the other.

The tig welding torch creates an electric arc that is consantly burning. People often say that if you can weld with an oxy acetylene set you will find it very easy to use a tig welding machine.

This is because when you are tig welding you are essentially using the heat generated from the electrical arc to melt the base metal. When the metal becomes molten, it can all melt together forming a weld.

This is called fusing it together. So for small welds you would simply just fuse the metal together.

If you are required to make a larger weld you would use what is called a filler rod. A filler rod is just a thin piece of metal that you slowly feed into the welding arc. They are round and about 900-1000mm long.

Common sizes for tig filler rods are 0.9 mm, 1.6mm, 2.4 mm. These are probably the most frequently used sizes of filler rod for tig welding.

This is a picture of a pack of some stainless steel 316-L tig filler rods.

Tig welding is technicaly called GTAW - Gas Tungsten Arc Welding. It was originaly called "heliarc" welding back in the day.

Here's some quick info on tig welding:

1. Very small and delicate welds can be performed.

2. Cleaner welds can be made.

3. With TIG welding you can weld a large range of metals and alloys.

4. Uses mainly argon gas for most applications.

5. Is a welding process that is very slow.

I have a tig welding video here showing the "fusing" of the stainless steel in the above pictures.