Manual Wire Feeder for TIG Welding Thin Metal

[chy_farm]

Things I mostly enjoy TIG welding are small engine parts like power pipes, carburetor attachments and etc. made from mostly 0.5mm thick steel sheet. The parent material of this thickness needs small wire, 0.6mm in diameter as far as my welding skill concern but this wire mostly come to us wraped on a round plastic reel so that they get curly or curved when released from the reel. This causes me trouble in trying to give the part some precision work, so I had to hold the wire as close as possible to the aiming melting pool with the other hand.

This manual wire feeder helps me a lot in this sort of precision works.






The only one mechanism came from a used disposable cigarette lighter, using the round file that makes small sparks to light the gas. Remove the lighting stone out but use the spring inside. Add a small plate, cut in a right shape to fit in, so as the spring pushes this plate upward to press the wire on to the round file above.


One tip for smoother movement is that you should better use a Teflon tube for the lead part between this reservoir box and the feeder. I tried another material but was not very good though.


Chy

[Tuomas]

That looks to be actually very handy. Using seems to be similar with feeding with bare hand. Good idea!

[chy_farm]

That looks to be actually very handy. Using seems to be similar with feeding with bare hand. Good idea!

Thanks Tuomas, yep that is what I payed some amount of attention to it, lol. Feeding wire bare handed most often requires me to move my fingers, in my case I use thumb and index, from the left to the right. This movement somewhat gives the end of the filler wire some swinging motion around the melting pool. I do this right with bigger rods like 1.2mm rods or more but as far this small curly wire concern I need more stability to the motion.
In this aspect this tool helps me a lot since I can do fill the wire with my thumb pushing downward, which is less movement than the another way.
Chy

[DIYer]

Thanks chy_farm! We've added your TIG Wire Feeder to our Welding category,
as well as to your builder page: chy_farm's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

TIG Wire Feeder by chy_farm

tags: TIG

[chy_farm]

Thanks chy_farm! We've added your TIG Wire Feeder to our Welding category,
as well as to your builder page: chy_farm's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Thank you for this add, glad you like this!

[thehomeengineer]

Very useful when wearing gloves, it can be difficult to feed the rod. Another item added to the list to have a go at.
Thank you for posting
The Home Engineer

[chy_farm]

Very useful when wearing gloves, it can be difficult to feed the rod. Another item added to the list to have a go at.
Thank you for posting
The Home Engineer

Good morning Thehomeengineer, glad you like this!
Chy

[ibdennyak]

Things I mostly enjoy TIG welding are small engine parts like power pipes, carburetor attachments and etc. made from mostly 0.5mm thick steel sheet. The parent material of this thickness needs small wire, 0.6mm in diameter as far as my welding skill concern but this wire mostly come to us wraped on a round plastic reel so that they get curly or curved when released from the reel. This causes me trouble in trying to give the part some precision work, so I had to hold the wire as close as possible to the aiming melting pool with the other hand.

This manual wire feeder helps me a lot in this sort of precision works.






The only one mechanism came from a used disposable cigarette lighter, using the round file that makes small sparks to light the gas. Remove the lighting stone out but use the spring inside. Add a small plate, cut in a right shape to fit in, so as the spring pushes this plate upward to press the wire on to the round file above.


One tip for smoother movement is that you should better use a Teflon tube for the lead part between this reservoir box and the feeder. I tried another material but was not very good though.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]23103[ATTACH]

Chy

Thank you for.......helping me get my head screwed on straight. As I .......enter the senior stage of life, I find that my manual dexterity suffers. I was thinking of making a small wire feeder for TIG wire, but as usual I over complicated it with using a feeder from an old Mig machine with another foot pedal to advance the wire etc. Your idea got me back on track as far as the KISS principal. Even I can still move my thumb, so I don't need the *feel* as much. This is the perfect solution.

Denny

[Jon]

The only one mechanism came from a used disposable cigarette lighter

Clever, free, and we don't see this very often.

[ibdennyak]

Exactly Jon. Probably because of the tremendous advances in technology, I tend to over engineer sometimes. This is the perfect example of not needing space shuttle technology to solve a toilet paper holder problem.