Manual Wire Feeder for TIG Welding Thin Metal

[chy_farm]

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

Good morning Denny, glad to know it can be of some help to you. Seems you are at around my age Denny, I will be 64 this July. Let's enjoy some more welding!
Chy

[ibdennyak]

Good morning Denny, glad to know it can be of some help to you. Seems you are at around my age Denny, I will be 64 this July. Let's enjoy some more welding!
Chy

You are a mere youngster. I will be 69 July 1

[chy_farm]

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

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.

Good morning gents, thanks, for nice words!
This feeder and a 'Halogen Welding Light with Sensor' are a couple on my welding table, will post this Halogen Light later.
Chy

[chy_farm]

You are a mere youngster. I will be 69 July 1

Good to know this Denny, you are running before me. I should keep running after you!!
Chy

[tonyfoale]

Chy,

I like that but I must have missed your posting at the time. Yes I shall make one but for 1 mm and up straight wire not curly. I still have dexterity in my thumb and fingers but I find that having to climb back up the rod as you feed it in to cause a jerky feed. I do have a rod feeder which at one time were available from a well known US welding supplier, whose name I cannot recall. However, I never managed to get on with it. I think that a copy of yours might just be the ticket.
BTW you and ibdennyak are following way behind, I am coming up to 81 and I have no intention of slowing down. There are many more races to run.

PS. Funny story about teflon to smooth out wire feed, but on a MIG not TIG machine. You can buy teflon wire guide tube to replace the steel wound liners to reduce friction when using aluminium wire. I thought "why not for steel wire also" so I fitted one and it worked very smoothly, for a while. After some use, I do not recall how much, the welding became erratic and difficult. What happened was that the wire would coat itself with a very thin layer of teflon and deposit it inside the nozzle. On MIG machines the copper nozzle is used to pass the welding current to the wire, so with the nozzle orifice coated in a thin layer of insulating material it is no surprise that it was a failure. I have never used MIG for Aluminium so I have no idea how that works. Those welders who routinely MIG weld aluminium use a spool gun which has a much shorter wire path and so greatly reduced friction anyway.