Welding Equipment Guide

Overview Of Welding Equipment

Welding without the right welding equipment can be a highly demanding hobby and career, fraught with dangers health risks and requires a great deal of careful consideration as to your needs and requirements, so that you will make the best choice as to what equipment you will use.

This cannot be stressed enough: welding is an incredibly dangerous pastime, with a wide range of dangers awaiting the careless welder. One of the most basic pieces of welding equipment is a welding mask/helmet which is used to protect the eyes as well as face and neck. The eyes are the feature most at risk during the welding process due to the incredibly high volumes of intense light that are generated such intense light can burn the retinas of the eyes leading to blurred vision and eventual blindness, this arises not only with direct exposure, but also indirect exposure over a prolonged period of time as well.

The light also carries with it another major risk in the form of UV radiation, a material that has a causal link to skin cancer, and so every part of the body must be fully protected, this will also prevent and limit the possibility of skin burns caused by pieces of molten metal landing on the exposed flesh.

There are also different types of welding processes as well as different types of equipment, the equipment you use will be directly influenced by the type of welding you want to make use of. TIG welding (tungsten inert gas) makes use of an electrode created from tungsten (a material with the highest melting point) in order to produce the weld. The TIG welding equipment is typified by the use of a shielding gas as well, which is a completely inert gas intended to prevent and limit contamination of the finalized product. The shielding gas also prevents any combustion or harmful interference with the weld.

There are a number of drawbacks to TIG welding, for example high costs and steep learning curves make for a very unattractive combination for the amateur hobbyist, and TIG welding is best reserved for commercial enterprises instead. Should you choose to use TIG welding the only major difference it has to typical forms of welding is that it utilizes a continual power supply, as well as a shielding gas. The choice of shielding gas will depend on a number of factors, the materials that are to be welded, the joint design among others, although typically argon is used as an industry default.

Welding equipment, like torches for TIG welding come in two forms, manual and automatic. There is not a huge difference between the two, save for the fact that manual torches utilize a handle at the back of the torch to alter the angle of the head of the torch as required by the welder. Automatic torches on the other hand, typically use a mounted rack instead of a handle in order to better manage the angle.

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