welding gas choice

[dave61824]

Hi,

I am an occational hobby welder. I might use my tig welder maybe every couple of months at the most at the moment. Sometimes welding steel and sometimes welding aluminium. So my question is am I best sticking with pure argon for all my welding even though the price of pure argon refills are much more expensive right? cougar5 for example I think is less than half the price of pure argon refill.
I guess this just comes down to how much you weld right? People making a living out of welding have more than 1 type of gas in thier shop I imagine.
But if you don't weld much and make no money really from it then would you use the pure argon on everything? What do you other hobby welders do?
I do have a couple of bottles 1 mid size bottle and a smaller 10L bottle which are kinda a waste of money for the amount of gas they hold imo.
I have only used pure argon, is it possible to weld aluminium with argon mix?

 

[Hitch]

Is it just a TIG set.
you have?
If that's a yes, stick with the pure Argon, coogar is no use with a Tig set.

 

[dave61824]

Yes its ac/dc tig. I did think to just use argon but the guy did say thats going to be enpensive or something when I said I wanted pure argon.

 

[hotrodder]

As Hitch said coogar (or other MIG mixes) are of NO use with TIG. Any gas containing O2 or CO2 will instantly trash the tungsten
Pure argon won't work well for welding mild or stainless with MIG in that you'll get arc stability issues and tall/lumpy, ugly welds

 

[backpurge]

Dave
Make sure the guy didn't mistake what you said and thought you meant high purity argon