![]() HELIUM ELECTRIC ARC PROFESSIONALIt takes a while to become a professional TIG welder. To achieve perfect TIG welds, you need to manipulate the TIG torch in one hand, a filler metal rod in the other hand, and efficiently use a TIG foot pedal for amperage output control. Compared to MIG or stick welding, the GTAW is slow and requires significantly more time and effort to master. Like all welding techniques, TIG welding is not without cons. Modern inverter-based TIG power sources offer pulse technology and different waveforms, which maximize your control of the heat input and arc shape. Additionally, it can weld almost every metal, especially those commonly used in manufacturing, including all types of steel, irons, aluminum, magnesium, copper, brass, silver, and gold.Īlso, GTAW offers users the highest arc and heat input control of all arc welding processes. It’s the least likely arc welding process to experience impurities or weld inclusions. TIG welding produces strong, clean, beautiful welds. HELIUM ELECTRIC ARC MANUALImage of SpaceX’s welding engineer using a modified manual TIG welding process to join special stainless steel alloys for the Starship rocket designed for the crewed Mars mission. For example, the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first humans on the Moon used the Saturn V SA-506 rocket, which was hand welded using the GTAW process. This advancement echoed throughout the economy because airplanes and ships could not be built at a scale never before seen.įurthermore, some of the critical moments in the world’s history would have never been possible without the TIG welding process. A non-consumable tungsten electrode conducted electricity and created an arc with the metal while protected by an inert gas. The heliarc process was simple at first glance. It isn’t easy to comprehend the manufacturing and economic leap that heliarc made possible. He even bragged about the heliarc innovation in a letter to Winston Churchill. The Importance of Heliarc (TIG) WeldingĪt the time, the invention of heliarc was so crucial that the 32nd U.S. That would be groundbreaking, and at the time, heliarc moved all known boundaries. Imagine if today, a new welding process was invented that enhances productivity by 300%. Image source: Canadian Metals and Metallurgical Industries, January 1947.Īs the print above suggests, heliarc welding improved fabrication left and right at an unprecedented scale. But air-cooled torches were also employed for low amperage welding. Most of the original heliarc welding setups used water-cooled torches. So, TIG (tungsten inert gas) and GTAW (gas tungsten arc welding) became the norm as these names are more inclusive. But the process doesn’t have to use helium. Meredith named the process heliarc welding because it relied on a tungsten electrode for arc and inert helium gas to shield the weld pool from atmospheric contamination. Russell Meredith of Northrop Aircraft perfected the first attempts of a gas shielded welding process developed for welding magnesium and created an efficient, repeatable welding technique called heliarc. They simply referred to TIG welding as heliarc welding. If the shielding gas is otherwise specified, there is no reason to ask about the matter. If your employer, a client, or an engineer’s welding procedure specification (“WPS”) specifies heliarc welding, ask if they want you to use 100% helium as the shielding gas. However, some may refer to TIG welding as heliarc because they want to emphasize that the TIG welding process should use helium as the shielding gas. But most younger welders won’t even hear the word heliarc welding until an older welder brings it up. Older welders mainly use the heliarc term because this was the original name used for the TIG welding process. But heliarc, TIG, and GTAW are just different names for the same welding process. The American Welding Society (“AWS”) officially uses the GTAW term for TIG welding. Today, there is no difference between TIG and heliarc welding, and they are the same. Wrapping It Is Heliarc Welding Different Than TIG? ![]()
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