Well, I'll take your comments and question as a promise to attend to your
H1N1 vaccination needs.....................
And, since you've promised to take care of the above: In a nutshell, TIG,
like MIG, is another form of gas-shielded arc welding. Unlike MIG, which
employs a consumable electrode (the wire fed from the "gun"), TIG employs a
durable electrode, made of tungsten (the T in TIG). This allows the user to
perform straight "fusion" welding (where two pieces of metal are fused
together by melting their adjacent edges together, without adding a filler
metal), or ad filler metal (rod) as needed. It's a bit more difficult to
master than MIG (unless you have already learned to weld with an
oxy-acetylene torch) but can produce some beautiful welding work. The
draw-back, for autobody work, is that you need to get your other hand in
there to feed in the filler rod, in most applications, and, given some of
the weird positions you will find yourself trying to weld in, it just
doesn't give you the all-around capability and convenience of a MIG welder.
So, for autobody restoration & repair work, MIG is the weapon of choice.
For precise welding work, on pieces which can be held in a convenient
position and moved easily to maintain a convenient position: TIG is
supreme. However, I would never bet against a highly experienced TIG expert
in any position on an auto body. You could say that TIG is more of an art
form than MIG. But for those of us doing autobody restoration as a hobby,
or even as a vocation, MIG is generally going to be the answer.
As far as welding aluminum, MIG technology is widely used (along with TIG,
depending on the application) and your MIG welder can be set up to weld
aluminum by adding a spool of aluminum wire. However, since the aluminum
wire typically won't feed all the way through from the machine to the gun,
you will need a special gun on which the aluminum wire spool is mounted, to
be fed into the nozzle.......all of which ads weight to the gun and makes it
less suitable for the fine movements and precise control needed for the
aluminum pieces typically found in automotive applications. In short, MIG
is great for aluminum stuff like dump truck/grain truck bodies, but TIG is
supreme for automotive aluminum work.
Hope this helps anyone sitting on the fence out there.
Bud Osbourne
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