Thread: What material for learning TIG

I have just bought an ac/dc tig and am going to start learning the art. I plan to weld mild, stainless and alloy eventually.
I plan on heading down to the local metal shop and rummaging through their offcut bin and just wondering what type of metal I should start practicing on and what sort of thickness? or should I just grab what I can and start laying beads?

Cheers
James

Hi,

Ally fabricators such as Capral Aluminium normally have offcut bins of the various grades of ally available for purchase. Scrap metal yards have great selections also and allow you to rummage around. be careful not to get anodised ally by mistake.

John

Like you said in your post, grab what you can and flick the switch.

Is it going to be easier to learn on thicker mild steel or much of a muchness. I have a bunch of flat 3mm mild, also got a stack of 1.6mm 304 stainless sheet offcuts. Might still go and see if I can get some scraps of fresh/clean aluminium to burn holes in as well.

Hi bimbo, start off with the mild steel but make sure you remove any surface rust and mill scale with a grinder or wire brush. Dont even bother adding filler wire just get the feel of the torch and slowly create a molten pool and slowly move forward retaining that pool moving the torch slowly backwards and forwards leaving a ripple pattern behind you.
Crawl before you walk and learn about the machine by playing with the settings. There are many threads on learning to tig with great advise and pics. Do a search and see how you go.

Ally is good to learn on, it is just so clean and nice to work with. Mild Steels would be my next suggestion and then tackle some SS which can be a bit more difficult but rewarding when you get it right. Try it all out, TIG is useful for many metals and hours on the torch is the only way to get with it all.
All the best..

Mate, try and pick up the clean pieces (not oily, not rusty) and get multiples of the same thickness so that you can practice a few butt welds etc. easily. If you can get some aluminium as well as stainless steel you're laughing, but you'll find the mild steel easier to come by. Cheers - Mick

I started to clean up my garage yesterday and moved my welding table out from under a pile of junk and I can now walk around in there without tripping over (well at least half of the garage anyway) and I have some filler rods etc which turned up at work today. I also found an old white board in anoungst the mess which I have setup next to the welding bench so I can write down some settings, comments etc.
I will see if I can pick up a few more bits of offcuts and hopefully get to melting some holes and accidently welding things to my bench this weekend . I wil post some pictures of my sucesses or dismal failures.

Cheers
James

Originally Posted by bimbo

I started to clean up my garage yesterday and moved my welding table out from under a pile of junk and I can now walk around in there without tripping over (well at least half of the garage anyway) and I have some filler rods etc which turned up at work today. I also found an old white board in anoungst the mess which I have setup next to the welding bench so I can write down some settings, comments etc.
I will see if I can pick up a few more bits of offcuts and hopefully get to melting some holes and accidently welding things to my bench this weekend . I wil post some pictures of my sucesses or dismal failures.

Cheers
James

Yeah James don't be afraid to attack the Ally, I found it to be fairly forgiving and not as hard as i first thought it would be