Welding Tips and Tricks

Here's the TIG. Thumb switch on the torch appears to be strictly on/off.

Would a foot pedal be of benefit? If so, what capabilities should it have?

A foot pedal works great, IMO. A momentary on/off switch can be made to work, it's just more work for you. It's not like oxy-acetylene where you can whip the flame away to help cool the weld pool; it just doesn't work like that for TIG. That is where the foot-pedal comes in. It is the parallel of having that heat control of whipping the oxy-acet flame away from the joint to manipulate heat. The problem is that your machine does not seem to have an input for a foot-pedal. You'd have to open up the machine and measure the potentiometer values so you can then build a build/find a pedal that you can wire into the machine if you are comfortable doing that.

i doubt its a foot pedal capable machine.
its a basic machine. switch can work ok. at least it has that. i'm assuming its HF.
unfortunately it doesn't have down slope. you can use down slope and hand switch to control heat to a degree.

tweake wrote:i doubt its a foot pedal capable machine.
its a basic machine. switch can work ok. at least it has that. i'm assuming its HF.
unfortunately it doesn't have down slope. you can use down slope and hand switch to control heat to a degree.

Does lack of downslope mean it’s scratch start?

Gunhappy wrote:

tweake wrote:i doubt its a foot pedal capable machine.
its a basic machine. switch can work ok. at least it has that. i'm assuming its HF.
unfortunately it doesn't have down slope. you can use down slope and hand switch to control heat to a degree.

Does lack of downslope mean it’s scratch start?

no.
they usually don't have the switches if its scratch start.

tweake wrote:

Gunhappy wrote:

tweake wrote:i doubt its a foot pedal capable machine.
its a basic machine. switch can work ok. at least it has that. i'm assuming its HF.
unfortunately it doesn't have down slope. you can use down slope and hand switch to control heat to a degree.

Does lack of downslope mean it’s scratch start?

no.
they usually don't have the switches if its scratch start.

Thanks for the help.