Why are TIG foot pedals so expensive?

[skotl]

£178 from R-Tech.
£55* from ebay (delivered from US, Germany, China)

I googled terms like "TIG pedal wiring" and was surprised that nobody seems to discuss making home made ones.

Surely it's just a variable resistor, some metal on a hinge and some bits of wire? My R-Tech even came with a spare pedal plug to wire onto whichever pedal you happen to acquire.

Has anyone ever tried to retrofit the gubbins to a guitar foot pedal?

(*£55 is a lot less than £178 but it still seems OTT for what's involved)

 

[gordon stephenson]

This question has been asked a few times in the past and i am like you skoti,at a total loss to understand why, When all they have is a linear potentiometer and a micro swithch and some hinged method of moving the pot. I have in the past had two made in the USA by SSC, They are excellent units, The Lorch pedal i have now is truly built like a battle ship, you could drive a truck over it and it wouldn't flinch. With a bit of thought and ingenuity I'm sure a DIY pedal would only cost a few quid,

 

[Wedg1e]

I made mine from a guitarist's volume pedal... total cost 12 quid Granted it's plastic rather than battleship iron but I don't work in a fab shop.

I have a block of foam at the 'heel' end: set the welder to 'trigger latch' and press your heel down, this compresses the foam until the pedal hits a microswitch and initiates the set. Now as you rock your foot forward the weld current goes up and when you want to stop, rock back until you compress the foam and hit the microswitch again and it unlatches the welder. The idea of the foam is that it's easy to rock back to minimum current without inadvertently switching off.
I have no idea how 'proper' pedals work but this was the best I could come up with.

 

[carbon]

I did make one for myself out of a guitar pedal. I think it's a Dunlop cry baby, all metal construction so fairly solid. I did find a thread on another site for the idea but made some changes. I have a thermal arc 250 amp set and in the handbook it doesn't show a wiring diagram but details plug pin connections and the resistance value so was easy to work out

 

[KemppiFrog]

The pedal for the DC Tig I am eyeing from Germany is listed at 39 euro.

 

[skotl]

Thanks for the input guys - pretty much as I thought.

If/when I ever get round to trying TIG then I'll seriously consider DIY first. Does anyone know what max resistance the pot should be? Are they all standard or is it manufacturer-specific?

The pedal for the DC Tig I am eyeing from Germany is listed at 39 euro.

Yep - I saw pedals around that price, too. Is it still circa £50 delivered?
Much cheaper than £190 but still seems OTT for the price of the components.

 

[HughF]

ssc controls pedals are the way to go, forget about the r-tech one, they're total junk, so are the tec-arc ones.

 

[langy]

I order from SSC a lot and all the units they have sent are top quality, good people

 

[Maker]

Thanks for the input guys - pretty much as I thought.

If/when I ever get round to trying TIG then I'll seriously consider DIY first. Does anyone know what max resistance the pot should be? Are they all standard or is it manufacturer-specific?

It will depend on the machine and how it's wired. If the machine uses all three wires on the pot then it's probably working as a voltage divider and the value wouldn't matter*, if it uses 2 wires from the pot then it will matter.

*Someone had trouble with a homemade pedal for a Miller on here a while back because it used the resistance between the 2 outer pins to check there was a pedal connected.

You can probably find the resistance you need in an instruction booklet/PDF for your welder.

 

[Richard.]

My pedal cost me more than a Chinese tig machine and your right inside them there is not a lot going on. There is a difference though as Hugh said between the good and the bad. I had a tec arc pedal before I forked out for the fronius one and it was total junk. The cable was stiff the material was thin the pedal travel was notchy and for some reason would not go up to the 200 amps I had on tap. Inside it was even worse. Plastic gear and single shaft bodged up with self tappers. It came with the first machine free so I just chucked it and bought a fronius. Now this thing (like the lorch) was built to take a battering.

 

[MrFluffy]

The pedal for my weibach tig is just a volume pot with a latching switch at the max travel, and you could use a cry baby or similar to build one from if you had the right value pot in it, but the one on my old boc adr was a completely different beast inside, massive wirewound variable power resistor, nuclear bomb proof construction, but on that machine it routed the machine welding power via the foot pedal.
The boc one I could really see why it would be so expensive, the weibach one not so much but the seller threw it in for 70 quid as part of a deal, normally theyre 120 quid or so...

 

[gordon stephenson]

Even saw a DIY mechanical pedal on the computer somewhere, Home made pedal connected to a long bike brake cable that had a piece of strong nylon etc wrapped around the tig panel control knob with a spring return pulling in the opposite direction, Seemed to work quite well, don't know what they used for the micro switch.

 

[Maker]

Even saw a DIY mechanical pedal on the computer somewhere, Home made pedal connected to a long bike brake cable that had a piece of strong nylon etc wrapped around the tig panel control knob with a spring return pulling in the opposite direction, Seemed to work quite well, don't know what they used for the micro switch.

I've seen that too, I assumed they used the machine in 4 touch mode and used the torch switch.

 

[KemppiFrog]

Thanks for the input guys - pretty much as I thought.

If/when I ever get round to trying TIG then I'll seriously consider DIY first. Does anyone know what max resistance the pot should be? Are they all standard or is it manufacturer-specific?



Yep - I saw pedals around that price, too. Is it still circa £50 delivered?
Much cheaper than £190 but still seems OTT for the price of the components.

See here. http://www.stahlwerk-schweissgeraete.de/en/wig-200-s.html I think if you order it with the machine, the delivery is included. I know the stuff is Chinese, but Stahlwork give a decent guarentee. Norlander got his plasma from them and is happy. My usage is not essential or frequent, so worth a try. Interesting they have two versions, 5 & 7 pole. I will have to ask what the difference is.

 

[Appyasme]

I can understand your point skotl.We have quite a few foot switches and boy when they go wrong they go wrong.Much of the problem is in the foot switches internal spring.You need to be able to feel the tension in the spring,when you push it with your foot.This opens the micro switch and,when you release the pressure the spring has to be able to turn back and switch off the microswitch.Without these functions the foot switch is usless.Setting upthe spring tension is critical,that`s probably why this type of remote is hard to copy

 

[KemppiFrog]

Even saw a DIY mechanical pedal on the computer somewhere, Home made pedal connected to a long bike brake cable that had a piece of strong nylon etc wrapped around the tig panel control knob with a spring return pulling in the opposite direction, Seemed to work quite well, don't know what they used for the micro switch.

Would you need the micro switch? Use the torch button to fire up and very the amps on the pedal? Or am I missing something?

 

[Appyasme]

Yes you could use a 950B microswitch to initiate the arc,but you will still need to have a function to increase and decrease the power,hence a spring

 

[carbon]

When making my pedal I added a toggle switch to allow three models of operation.

1. basic switch, no current control
2. Low to high current control
3. High to low current control

Ive not had any issues with it so far but don't have any thing to compare it with

 

[Benson]

How about adapting a Singer sewing machine pedal, must be plenty of those kicking around

 

[Tigman]

I wont tell you what I just paid for mine , but its worth every penny Ive got some stainless to weld and I will be putting my foot down as they say LOL