Tungsten Inert Gas welding or TIG welding is an advance form of welding that takes a real professional and skilled welder to accomplish. If you have been welding for a couple of years now and you feel confident that you are ready for the next level of challenge, then you should try out TIG welding. That is one sure way of measuring if your welding skill has made any progress. Now to make it even more interesting why not build your own homemade TIG welder? That would surely be the most interesting project that you could ever attempt. For those interested in this kind of project here are a few simple steps that you can try to build your own TIG welder. Remember that the steps given here should only serve as a general guide. If you want more detailed instructions on how you can build a home made TIG welder then you better do some additional research to keep things safe.
What you can do is you can attach a Ford 130 amp alternator or something similar to it on top of your air compressor. You need the belt drive of the compressor to drive the alternator. A battery jumpstart box should be able to provide the field with the current and a headlight dimmer switch could act to regulate the current. You can then hook the TIG torch to alternator case and connect the clamp to the stud of the output.
The compressor’s motor should be able to drive the alternator fast enough to generate enough power that you need. You might have to make some modifications in the set up in order to create enough tension but it should be nothing that you can not handle. At the full 130 amp rating that you have you could perform welding on 3/16 inch metal sheets or maybe even ΒΌ inches but nothing more than that. If you want to get more power then there are some additional modifications that you can do.
That’s all that you would need to create homemade TIG welder. You would just have to buy a TIG welding kit and a bottle filled with argon. Remember that the instructions that I have given here may be a little incomplete. You need to be very careful when dealing with TIG welding. You might have to do some more research before you could start building your welder. This is a great project to keep yourself busy but if you will be using your TIG welder for some professional work and you will be using it quite a lot then it would be better if you just purchase a new machine. It would be the same if you are unsure whether you can follow the steps that we have given here.
It’s a lot better t be safe than to be sorry in the end. A commercially built TIG would have a lot more power and would be made with a lot better quality standards than anything that you can create on your own.