I can't say anything from personal experience, but the man that owns this company can answer your questions.

http://atwnc.com/expertise.htm

You might be better off with a plasma torch. No hi freq. start to blow craters, especially on thin edge work and no high amps tung. pre heat needed. I see on E-bay a Linde needle arc plasma very reasonable. I don't know anything about this machine or if there is support available. Might be worth playing with. There are many pro's and con's to both processes.

Hiya' Dirk,

I don't know a great deal about micro-tigging, but have seen it done and played around with it some. Being able to literally place beads on the head of a pin or the edge of a razor blade is certainly impressive and, if you have need of it, repair time and costs can be significantly lowered if excessively large welds can be eliminated. A person proficient in micro welding is both hard to find and very valuable in my book. I was hoping you'd get some responses from someone more knowledgable than I am, but here is what I know.

Micro welding is done with tungsten sizes down to .020" diameter. Most is done with .040" and .060" tungsten though. Sharpening the tungsten angle (more pointed in a smaller length) will give you a smaller molten pool to add filler, resulting in a narrower weld and a more controlled arc on a smaller part. Likewise, filler metal is .020"-.040" dia. There may be some rods and tungsten out there that are smaller, but I haven't seen 'em. Most of what I have seen of micro welding is approx .030" wide welds which are done without the use of a microscope. A lot of the welding in the tool-making industry where I am is done this way because the parts are too large to place under a microscope made for micro welding. Parts for the tig torch (cups, collets, tungsten) are readily available from most welding supply distributors. Getting tig wires small enough is sometimes harder. Current settings are usually around 5-20 amps, but there are applications which are much less than that. You can mount a small vise on a microcope to hold the part that needs welding. It kinda' looks like something you would tie fishing flies with. Microscopes don't need to be modified as there are some made for micro welding. Here is a link I found while surfing the www.

http://www.pro-fusiononline.com/products/workstation.htm

There is a link on the page for a power supply that can do both tig and plasma micro welding. I hadn't ever thought of using plasma for micro welding, but it seems to be another good option. I haven't used either of these pieces of equipment, so I can't say they are a good way to go or not. I have used the pro-fusion home site for a reference many times, though.

Hope this helps.

We have been looking into purchasing a Mirco TIG/Plasma system for a month or so now. Although I have yet to use such a system, I can share my experience, so far, in researching the processes, equipment, and manufacturers.

I found the Pro-Fusion web site to be very informative and the staff extremely knowledgeable. They offered the necessary information to help solve our welding issues, then they made recommendations on equipment and encouraged a comparison of all competitive equipment before making a decision.

In contrast, Liburdi Dimetrics didn’t bother to send a quote (made two requests) nor were they receptive to the numerous questions about the Micro processes and equipment.