Welding Tips and Tricks

Just wondering what you guys do to clean and maintain your tig machines? Reason I am asking is the tig at work is sitting on the floor beside the welding booth. I have a welding table built into an air extraction booth. The exhaust from the extractor comes out right beside the tig. Then behind me there is a plastic welding shield but its only for blocking the arc flashes. Behind that there is a stroke sander. There isn't a lot of dust from the stroke sander but there is enough metal dust off the sander that it piles up a little bit. With the cooling fan on the welder running it could draw some of this stuff into the welder. Has anyone had problems with this? Any ideas on if its a worry or if it is how often the machine should be cleaned out?

Hi,

At work the sparkies blow the older machines out with compressed air every so often, not sure if would be be alright on a newer machine, ie less than 10 years old.
Mick

You definately want to take the cover off and blow the machine out regularly if you are in very dusty environments. Be careful though to not use full air pressure directly on the machine when blowing it out. Just enought to blow the dust build-up away. Also, make sure the machine is not on when you do this, don't laugh i have seen it done and it was not a pretty sight. This goes for old and new machines.

Ok thanks for the info. Ya I can imagine what would happen lol. Blow metal dust into it ouch can you say barbeque?