TIG Welding

You should check into either a spool gun or, a push/pull gun. You may be able to plug one of those into your mig machine, depending on what machine you have. They are a lot more versatile and, easier to use.That is my suggestion.

I have never used any of the china tigs. A friend bought a cheap plasma cutter years ago and worked ok until he needed consumables and he was out of luck.

I've never TIG welded, I'd like to get into it but paying for college and buying a TIG welder do not mix, but I have some aluminum and stainless steel stick electrodes that I've used a couple times. Not sure I would trust either for structure, but they make a pretty nice looking joint. Not sure if they would work for your shop but it's a heck of a lot cheaper than a TIG welder, especially since you already have the stick welder. Hobart sells both on their Amazon store

That being said TIG welding can be used for far more than aluminum and stainless, basically anything but zinc.

you can weld zinc sheets on AC with the tig actually.

Yair . . .

Not much you can't weld with TIG . . . it's a whole different ball game

Using 2% silver solder (known here as "brown tip")as a filler rod we used to weld 316 stainless mounting brackets direct to the bodies of brass 3/4" gate valves . . . it saved a lot of hassles on one particular application.

Cheers.

I've never had the guts to try an aluminum stick welding rods, but stick welding works great for stainless. If you're used to welding regular steels then stainless will seem like welding butter because of the way it flows and sticks. Stainless is less reactive and conductive than steel, aluminum is much more reactive and conductive so harder all around.

Of course a stick welded stainless joint isn't the same as TIG, but if at my skill level I can't do any better with TIG than stick.

Delmer said:

I've never had the guts to try an aluminum stick welding rods, but stick welding works great for stainless. If you're used to welding regular steels then stainless will seem like welding butter because of the way it flows and sticks. Stainless is less reactive and conductive than steel, aluminum is much more reactive and conductive so harder all around.

Of course a stick welded stainless joint isn't the same as TIG, but if at my skill level I can't do any better with TIG than stick.

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It's not that bad, just a couple things: Pre-heat; clean the joint thoroughly, aluminum likes to make aluminum oxide, which you may know as sand paper; and clean the slag off immediately, it's actually corrosive to aluminum (or at least the electrodes the shop near me had, maybe there are some that aren't).