Welding Tips and Tricks

I have a ck17 flex head. I have been practicing on aluminum but it seems like i can perhaps run 10 four inch beads on coupons, maybe less, and my torch feel hot .

Normal? Abby-normal?

what amps are you running?

tweake wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 12:39 am what amps are you running?

If he’s running a 17-style torch on ally, you can bet he’s over 120 amps easily.

A 17 torch is air-cooled and has a max rating of 150 amps. That is not its “duty range”. It will get hot, not just from the amperage but from the ambient heat from the ally welding. You can upgrade to a water cooler and 20- style torch, or live with the heat range, or do as I have done, keep a bucket of clean water nearby and plop the torch in occasionally. Run some gas with the pedal to blow it out, and keep getting it.

The longer you weld (years) the less the heat bothers you. But you still have an equipment limit.

You (or anyone else) will produce heat from any form of welding, brazing or soldering. How much heat is determined by the length of time and amperage used to make that happen. The aluminum will transfer the heat throughout the coupon or material itself and will also radiate the heat back. That is normal. As Cj stated, as you progress in the welding, you will get used to the heat and it won't bother so much. Your 17 style torch will get the job done BUT does have its limits. A water cooled torch is considerably beneficial should you want to run longer beads without a break. When I was much, much MUCH younger, Mom used to call me asbestos fingers ... I couldn't hold a cup of hot chocolate. Have fun with your welding experience and all the best.

vdotmatrix wrote: ↑Tue Feb 15, 2022 11:21 pm I have a ck17 flex head. I have been practicing on aluminum but it seems like i can perhaps run 10 four inch beads on coupons, maybe less, and my torch feel hot .

Normal? Abby-normal?

Its normal for an air cooled torch to get to hot to comfortably handle.

Thanks to everyone! I am dealing with issues with my setup and just ruling out issues that could contribute to the big picture. I am liking ally welding and keep it under 150amps more like 125-140 3/32”… on 1/8” material.

My torch starts to get hot but Seems like I am not really welding dozens of beads on dozens of coupons for it to get uncomfortably hot.

I am dealing with a leaky regulator on another forum and trying to nail down general concerns.

So from what you guys say here, i think i am seeing normal heat for what i am doing, afterall it is aluminum. Thanks everyone!

Used to run a 17 on a Lincoln 185. That torch would be near intolerable to hold at the end tail where the hose comes in at times for me at least.

My hands got used to holding it but anyone else is the shop said they couldn't do it. Mind you I was redlining my 185 on nearly every job since it was under powered for what I was doing.

Wasn't too hard to retrofit a water cooler onto my machine though of your interested in going down that route it's actually quite simple with a couple adaptor dinse blocks and what not.

Will try and dig up a flir picture I took of the old torch

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

Finally found the pic and did the tech battle to get it here. Should be attached

Too hot to stay comfortable on long sessions. Water cooled setup will be here next week.

Looking at this thread brought up a question I have. Been running Lincoln gear for a long time and I haven’t had a need or a desire to stray away from equipment that has served me well. That being said, I am purchasing an MT200 and wanted to add a water cooler. What brands do you all like and why? Thanks in advance.

This is also dependant on brands.
I have a 26fx parker "torchology" that melted last weekend after 2 hrs on a 200 amp acdc with a pedal so cant be sure actual amps and the backcap binded hard into torch and rubber behind insulator started melting off.
I just changed the head out with a tigmaster hd one and no problemo since.
Id like to say you get what you pay for but the parker is about 500 to 700 depending where shop so not cheap.

BJames wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 11:35 pm Looking at this thread brought up a question I have. Been running Lincoln gear for a long time and I haven’t had a need or a desire to stray away from equipment that has served me well. That being said, I am purchasing an MT200 and wanted to add a water cooler. What brands do you all like and why? Thanks in advance.

I have 2 - CK 250 flex loc 25' torches 1 for each welding machine and I have 4 - series 3 and 2 heads I have different setups on, unscrew the head and pop on the one you need in seconds. Series 3 is an 18 head, and the series 2 is a 20 head. They have small bodies and 360-degree range of motion to get to those hard-to-reach places without having to get your torch body where it's not in the way. Yours is max 160 amps connected to 220v so a 250-amp torch (they have a 230 but why go down?) will last forever, and you would need an adapter (they sell it) for a water cooled torch to connect to the MT200.

To be honest I'm pretty sure all water coolers are pretty well built the same more or less.

All the ones I've seen run a procon pump and a copper tube/alum fin heat exchanger. (my older unit has a cellular style core like a 60's car heater core)

My frist was a lincoln brand that quite literally fell off the back of a truck and needed some repairs. Think I had it up and going for $500ish. Worked great for a couple years before the machine it's strapped to was retired.

Not I got a miller brand under the dynasty, does the job it's meant to as well.

So long and short I personally think for water coolers it's whatever one you can get your hands on/hooked up for the cheapest.

You will love having a water cooled torch! Only issue I have is the cooler is loud! (Miller Coolmate 3).

What I found funny was I weld with a Miller Syncrowave 350LX which I got used and it was cheaper for me to buy a brand new cooler from Miller than it was to buy a second hand refurbished one.

Being that my shop has been pretty much Lincoln, other than my Miller MIG, all my coolers are Lincoln and all have worked perfectly. That being said, they’re stupid expensive and looking to explore other options. Been looking to the Tweco as it seems from what I can see they seem to be pretty similar to the Weldtec C25 which I liked a lot. Regardless of brand, I want to find a good one that will last for quite a while.

Could always just buy/make the components and stick one together yourself.

Really all they are is 1 tank 1pump 1fan(could even be a pump/fan combo with a dual shaft motor) 1 heat exchanger and some fittings and hose shoved into a fancy shell.

Bet one could easily be built for under 500 as a simple on or off type with a switch. Not too sure about fan on demand features and all that jazz

Toggatug wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 7:33 pm Could always just buy/make the components and stick one together yourself.

Really all they are is 1 tank 1pump 1fan(could even be a pump/fan combo with a dual shaft motor) 1 heat exchanger and some fittings and hose shoved into a fancy shell.

Bet one could easily be built for under 500 as a simple on or off type with a switch. Not too sure about fan on demand features and all that jazz

yes.
they are seriously overpriced for what they are.
i have thought about making one myself as to buy even a cheap brand one is double the price of my acdc tig machine.

The pump/motor combo is often the biggest cost when building one as it has to be one that can work at fairly high pressure/resistance and many of those are more expensive than a common impeller style garden pump which does a lot of flow but usually doesn't like too much backpressure.

The flow through a watercooled torch is not very high as the channels are quite small, so a pump needs to be able to work against a fairly high resistance which translates to higher line pressures. Common part for this is to re-use a pump used in discarded espresso machines and the like.

The rest can be really cheap. Reservoir can be just a plastic camping water jug and for a radiator/heat exchanger you can get small ones for watercooled moped engines (50cc or so) quite cheap. Add an electric cooling fan with a small circuit to trigger it above a certain temp (or go fancy with a PWM module to ramp up the speed as needed for a more quiet setup), a simple powersupply and you're pretty much set.

Hose/pipe fittings can also be surprisingly costly, but the pluming department of a DIY store usually throws up some cheaper alternatives

If you only need watercooling very incidentally then just hooking up a torch to a normal faucet with some adapters and hoses and putting the return in a drain works fine too. Gets expensive on water (and is wasteful) if you need it more often and tap water is not the greatest for this as far as corrosion and deposits in the head goes, but it's still a quick and easy option.

Bye, Arno.

Pretty sure I seen the procon pumps available through arc zone.com.

Don't remember the price but I rember thinking 'huh that's it? Why is a cooler so much then!?'

Dont think I'd ever buy a new water cooler again, think I'd rather take a crack at making one since I build heat exchangers/reservoirs for a living a anyways

i you want to get fancy you can also add a flow meter and relay so the welder is wired through the cooler and if there is no water flow it kills the power to the welder.

I upgraded from a ck17 air cooled to a ck18 liquid cooled, and man what a difference in comfort! Well worth it. After long welding sessions at 150A, it never gets more than barely warm.
I would have gone with a smaller torch but didn’t want to have to invest in more consumables.

Ohh, and I converted a backpack battery powered lawn sprayer to use as my cooler. Works perfect.

If I feel the heat through my glove enough for it to start to feel comfortable with a 17 torch I usually just take it as a sign that it's time to stop, let the machine cool, let the torch cool, and perhaps most importantly let the part cool while I hydrate for a few minutes, I know that's not always an option, if I'm welding balls out at 225 amps, that torch gets toasty sometimes way before I'm ready for it, but in my opinion it's either burning you because you've got your fingers way too close to the cup, trust me, it took me MONTHS to figure that one out, as obvious as it might sound and if it's the actual torch body itself that's getting uncomfortably hot through tig gloves on even a semi regular basis, you have a serious torch and or machine mismatch for the work you are doing.

To be more clear and to the point, if you're constantly cooking your air cooled 17 torch to death while using a 200 amp machine, you're also cooking the poor machine as well and just getting a watercooled torch will only fix one half of the issue by hiding the other. If you have a 250-300+ amp machine, then it really has no business using a 17 torch to begin with and by all means get it watercooled asap.