Aluminum is a popular metal because of its light, silvery color and the fact that it is light weight and resists corrosion– a factor which makes it very popular in marine fabrication applications. In fact, Arc-Zone.com® has several yacht tower and wake board manufacturers that we work with on a regular basis.

Welding aluminum can be challenging even for a master fabricator, check out the newest publication from the American Welding Society (AWS), Welding Aluminum – Questions and Answers a practical guide for troubleshooting aluminum welding problems. Read the press release from the AWS, or go to www.aws.org/catalogs to order your Aluminum Welding Guide (only $93 for members of the American Welding Society).

Other resources for welding aluminum:

Lincoln Electric’s Guide to Aluminum Welding

Aluminum Welding– Using Oxy-Fuel Welding on Aircraft Aluminum Sheet from Experimenter Magazine

Alcotec’s Knowledge Center (Alcotec is an aluminum welding wire producer)

Two Tips from Joe Welder for welding aluminum:

–Clean your base metal (you may want to try the EZ Wipes, cleaning wipes or check out the TIG Weld Prep Kit in the Tools and Accessories section of Arc-Zone.com); and

–Use ArcTime™ Hybrid All Purpose Tungsten

A lot of times companies don’t add new vendors to their line up because there’s a lot of work involved in getting set up to do business. The vendor requires paperwork, the customer requires paperwork, sales staff needs to be trained… and of course in the case of Arc-Zone.com® we need to add products to our website. Then there’s the “getting to know you” period when the vendor and the customer adapt to each other’s way of doing business.

Arc-Zone.com® just hooked up with Revco Industries to carry their line of high-quality safety apparel. From quality leather safety apparel and BSX Xteme protective wear with style and welding gloves galore, we’re adding to our webstore daily.

One of the most exciting lines is the Women’s Welding Wear, offering protective gear that is tailored for a woman’s body.

In addition to offering great quality welding safety products, and information about Leather Quality and finding your Glove size, Revco is easy to do business with!

When we placed our first order, within minutes we received a confirmation indicating availability and ship date. And the best part is, they delivered!

We hope our customers are as excited as we are about this new line of welding safety gear. Not only will you stay protected, you’ll look good.

We got one of the New Weldcraft® Triad™ tungsten sharpeners when they first came out and looked it over to determine if we wanted to add it to our line of tungsten grinders. It’s a nice machine well engineered and produces a true precision ground tungsten electrode ideal for orbital and other demanding TIG/GTAW applications. The pricing is restrictive for the hobbyist, but if you have some coin to spend on fine electrode grinding tools — this is one!

Weldcraft® has added a new double decker kit to the options available for the grinder — and it’s a well made precision machined set-up. Check it out (at the left) and read the press release from Weldcraft here…

And by the way if you want to try any of our tungsten electrode grinders — we offer a 7-Day trial — to make sure you get the best machine for your welding application. Restrictions apply — Purchase order or credit card at time of order!

Legacy is Weldcraft’s “economy series line” which is going after all the reverse engineered knock-off torches that are sold on price. You can read the official Weldcraft press release about the Legacy TIG Torch here.

This unit is a basic WP-17 torch body with the new Red rubber molding and features a very nicely made and well designed amperage control built into the handle!

We checked one out recently and had an opportunity to play with it — the handle features a comfortable design with built in amperage control and cable strain relief on the back end to improve flexibility and torch control.

It’s another example of how good design engineering and manufacturing practices add value to the market and continue to establish Weldcraft as the market leader in TIG welding torches!

I got a call from a customer TIG welding high-end aerospace parts. He bought a complete setup from us a few years ago that featured the Weldcraft® WP-20-25-R TIG torch customized to a WP-20-25-Pro™ package by Arc-Zone.com® with all the goods needed for his new TIG machine.

The reason for the call was that the customer has now spec’d out a TIG torch with vinyl plastic gas hose.

I was a little perplexed. We generally recommend the rubber leads as opposed to vinyl. They are more flexible and easier to handle. The plastic hoses are stiff and are susceptible to damage from heat– like when a hot TIG Torch gets placed on top of a hose inadvertently.

The WP-20-25-Pro™ package that he received features the rubber lead set. And that can be problematic — it seems that the rubber hose, in certain conditions, can absorb moisture from the atmosphere and it can cause impurities in the weld. This may show up when welding reactive metals such as titanium, molybdenum, nickel-based and aluminum based alloys as well as non-reactive metals like stainless steel.

I would be interested to know what your thoughts are — do you have an experience with this issue –let me know by commenting below — first commenter get a free Arc-Zone.com® T-Shirt!

We have several large industrial corporations that we supply Plasma Arc Welding (PAW) torches and replacement parts to. One of them came to us for some help resolving inconsistent welds on a Thermal Arc® Ultima 150 Plasma Arc Welding machine with a 4A PAW torch and lead assembly. They were frustrated and had tried many different solutions from a variety of sources. I went through our basic PAW check list (which you can find in the Arc-Zone.com Welding Library– “Optimize Your Plasma Arc Welding Torch”). We did find two areas to improve, but the issue was still there. That’s when I asked “when was the last time you changed your lead set?”

“We just changed torches, we do that pretty often,” he said. “Why would we need to change the leads?”

With Plasma Arc Welding there are two important things to consider:

1. Plasma Arc Welding Torch Lifespan.
PAW torches have a life span of about three months. Now anybody that is familiar with automated TIG applications can’t understand why Plasma Arc Torches fail so often. There is no easy answer, but it is a characteristic of Plasma Physics. There are many more things going on inside that PAW torch than in a TIG torch — two power circuits, two gas distribution and flow paths, two water channels, tungsten electrode insulators etc. Bottom line is you should always have a spare Plasma Arc Welding torch on hand because when they fail they are junk. You’ll have no warning, and you’ll be down until you get it replaced.

2. The Lead Set
I call them leads because they consist of multiple hoses and cables inside a jacketed cover. And they wear out. Operators often don’t think to add the leads to their preventative maintenance schedules but they should.

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I got a call from Brad in North Carolina who was in a jam and needed a torch body right away. “I’ve been waiting for it for two weeks from our local supplier and now the job is way behind schedule,” he said.

A lot of local suppliers carry only the basics and not a full range of TIG torches. After all, they make most of their money selling gas.

Sometimes a fabricator needs something special like a Weldcraft® WP-18SP– a water-cooled TIG torch with a 180 degree head to reach a tight spot, the torch Brad was looking for.

“Depending on your budget you may just want to purchase a torch body,” I said. I recommended he just buy the torch body and add it to his existing Weldcraft® WP-18-25-R.

“You can do that?” he asked.

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I spoke with Carlos, a long time customer today. We’ve done business for so long that we just updated his address for the third time!

Carlos, a professional Certified Welder specializing in Steel Piping projects, takes his torches and accessories with him to most jobs. He called Arc-Zone.com to get a TIG torch for an upcoming project.

He was interested in a 200 amp capacity Flexible head TIG torch with a built-in gas control valve, specifically the Weldcraft® WP-26FV-25-R. The WP-26 is a rugged torch, and is fairly common out in the field. However, when you’re on a jobsite there are a couple of things to keep in mind.

You need a tough torch, with a flexible head, to get to those hard-to-reach spots. I suggested that he get the interchangeable (200CE) coil as an option, with a (1726P, 180 pencil head). That way he could carry the different heads in his pocket and swap them out as needed.

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Getting the right TIG Torch is important, but all too often TIG welders either stick with the package that came with their machine –often a general purpose WP-17 TIG torch, or a heavy duty WP-26 torch– which may or may not be the right torch. Or, a TIG welder may be relying on information from their local gas supplier….

This morning I got a call from Aubrey, a small business owner in Virginia. He was looking for a torch to weld roll cages in sport import cars. He told me the local supplier was not helpful, and expensive. “We drove over to the AirGas and they showed us a [picture of a] torch,” he said. He arranged to buy the torch, but by the time he and his welder got back to the shop “they called and changed the part, then the price, so I said ‘forget it’ then I went to Google.”

Aubrey found us online and called. “We need to talk to someone who understands what we are doing, and make a suggestion,” he said.

This is just the kind of customer we like–a great opportunity to get someone the right torch.

The first thing I suggested was either the WP-24-25-Pro or the WP-24F-25-PRO. (note: the WP-24FV is pictured here)

The WP-24 TIG torch body has a low profile and is easy to maneuver. Rated at 80 Amps, this air-cooled front loading torch has a 60* degree head. As an Arc-Zone.com PRO package, it comes with the teflon nozzle gasket, a Number 6 (3/8″) gas nozzle, 1/16″ Collet and Collet Body, Pre-Ground 1/16″ ArcTime Hyperformance Rare Earth Non-Radioactive Tungsten Electrode and 25′ (7.6m) One Piece FeatherLite(tm) Flexible Rubber Power Cable.

Bottom line, it’s Ready-to-Weld™

Aubrey was even more excited when I told him he could go with a water cooled TIG torch. “I thought I had to buy a new machine, and I can’t afford that right now,” he said.

There are a few options for upgrading, the least expensive being to hook right up to city water– with about thirty bucks worth of the the right hoses and fittings. Next option would be to purchase a water cooler (or build your own). You can also buy a ready-made welding water cooler, like one of the ones we have at Arc-Zone.com , or go with the Cool Kit™ (pictured here). Finally, your expensive option would be to purchase a new machine with an integrated water cooler.

“I thought [water cooled TIG torches] were big and heavy,” he said.

Because of the technology of water cooling, the torches are actually more powerful, can run more amperage, and they’re smaller.

“Hook me up!” he said.

If you want Arc-Zone.com to hook you up with the right TIG torch for your job, give us a call: 800-944-2243 (US) 760-931-1500 (worldwide) or check out our selection of TIG torches, IN STOCK and ready to go!

Is it me or are there more and more internet crooks out there? I’m not talking about phishing schemes to steal your personal information, or the technically savvy computer hackers, but I am talking specifically about companies — people — stealing copyrighted material from our website. And it’s frustrating.

In the last year we’ve had several companies grip pictures and copy — words written by our technicians — and claim the content as their own. It has cost us several thousand dollars, not to mention hours of our time, to have the stolen material removed from competitors’ websites.

The first time we found our copyrighted information on another company’s website (brwelder.com) I contacted the company president directly by letter. When I got no response, I called him up and asked him, as a fellow small business owner, to remove the copyrighted material. First he told me everything on the internet was free for the taking and when I informed him it was actually a violation of copyright laws, he said, “So what. Sue me.”

Suing, and paying hefty legal fees was not the route we wanted to go, so instead we filed a DMCA Copyright Infringement Claim with the major search engines and with his web host company. The result was his websites were banned. When he received the notifications from Google and Yahoo, he called me crying about how tough business is.

So tough apparently he couldn’t take the time to write his own copy or take photos of the products he sells.

Not too long ago we noticed that Weldingsupply.com gripped some pictures and copy. They didn’t even remove our custom logo from the part! Then they posted it on their own website with a prominent copyright disclaimer. Of course it’s listed for less than our selling price… but we actually had the part to shoot the picture in the first place!

Our most recent find was at the aglevtech.net website. You may be familiar with Aglevtech as a low cost eBay seller. The site features two pages of content written by our technical experts, including a list of links to professional welding associations and manufacturers around the world in addition to a list of links to online welding articles. Now I’m not saying they couldn’t have found that information, however, what they did was replicate, word for word, the descriptions and the links. They didn’t even try to hide it because they obviously don’t think they did anything wrong.

Companies like those listed above are not really competitors, more like followers that can’t think for themselves. I would not buy from any of those companies.

When you’re looking for a company to do business with, be sure to consider: is there a phone number on their website? An address? Will you know who to contact if you have questions before you make a purchase? How about if you ordered the wrong part? Or it’s defective? Are the warranty and exchange terms clearly stated? How do they handle shipping? Do they know anything about the parts they are selling? Do they even stock the parts they are selling?

Conducting business with integrity is part of the culture that we encourage at Arc-Zone.com. We may not always be perfect, but we are honest and we don’t steal. Arc-Zone.com®, has a prominent Contact Us form and our contact information is on EVERY page of our website, including a toll free number. And, our return policy and shipping terms can be easily found as well. To me the key to business is to have repeat customers — people that would refer their friends and co-workers.

Hopefully you won’t have the same problems we have had, but in case you do, here are some links to resources so you can protect yourself:

United States Copyright Office.
Copyright Law of the European Union
World Intellectual Property Organization
Filing a DMCA Copyright Infringement Claim with Google
Filing a DMCA Copyright Infringement Claim with Yahoo
Chilling Effects Clearinghouse