Thanks for the advice everyone, though it turns out I'm an idiot and I mis-transcribed the motor plate! It actually says 400/440. I'm not clear if this changes anything? Here's a (bad) picture:
My Dad has had a Boxford Model A(UD) lathe that has been sitting in his basement for probably 20 years or so, gathering dust. I've occasionally pestered him to get it running so that he might get a bit of enjoyment out of it, but he's never quite got around to it. It's a 3 phase motor obviously...
Giving the work to someone else sort of misses the point; I want to learn the skill and have the capability for the future. It does sound like a multi-process machine is a bad idea for what I want though. Thanks for the input.
I may be demonstrating my ignorance here, but I had led myself to believe that you wouldn't really want to weld aluminium with DC TIG? In that aluminium welding (I'm thinking bicycle frames, FWIW) would be the main reason I wanted to do TIG at all, I wouldn't want to compromise myself from the...
Does such a thing exist? I've got a cheap Clarke MIG welder that has served me pretty well for many years, but it's fairly agricultural and I fancy a bit of an upgrade. I'd quite like to have the ability to learn TIG on Aluminium, but space is at a premium so I don't really want to have two...
Yeah; tacks every ~20mm, grind the tacks down, then weld 20mm at a time going over the tack, allowing for cooling and avoid concentrating the welding in the same area.
In hindsight I would have plug welded some other bits of the patch to the car some more before I did the long weld as I think...
How I got on...
Fully welded up:
Ground down:
It will still need a skim of filler, but its not all that bad really. It did require a bit of creativity with a slide hammer around this area to pull it back into shape though:
I had my crack team of welding advisers on hand...
Related query; what should I be painting the repaired inner panel with, before I weld the outer panel on? I've seen "weld-thru" primer in shops, is that what I should use?
Thanks.
Unfortunately you can't get all the body panels for this car any more (it's a 16 year old VW Corrado), so I've got a section off one from a scrappy. Even if I could, judging by prices for other parts it would likely cost in the high hundreds; this car just isn't worth that much. I agree ideally...
I've spent the past wee while learning how to weld by borrowing a Clarke 100E mig welder off my dad. I think I've got it mostly figured out and have successfully repaired a section of inner panel on my car.
It's now come to the time where I need to replace the outer panel, but I'm having...