TIG Welding Tungsten Sharpener Build

hey welcome to the shop today i'm going to show you how i built this awesome little tungsten sharpener with materials that only cost me about 25 bucks so why do you want one of these why do you want to diamond grind your tungsten and get a really nice uh consistent point on it instead of just using a bench grinder well let me show you right here i set my machine to 25 amps i'm just going to strike an arc right here and light up and i'm going about half pedal so i'm about 13 amps look how crisp it just starts up and i'm able to run that right there and that's what you get when you get a nice uh diamond ground tungsten that's uh you know got a really fine finish and then on top of that the other thing that's really nice with the tungsten sharpener is that you get a really consistent point so you know let's say you're welding along and you know you foul up your tungsten well when you go to grab the next one it's really nice if it's just the same because if you were already in your groove then everything's gonna keep running just how it was you don't introduce another variable okay so i got online and i found this diamond wheel with 400 grit and from what i researched 400 grit is about right and then i went to harbor freight and used a 11 coupon to pick up this four and a half inch angle grinder to put it on and i'll put a link to all of the supplies that i use down below but you can see this doesn't fit on quite right because it's too thin and so the nut won't hold it and furthermore if it sits down below it won't be centered because there's that relief below the pilot diameter so i got this machine bushing just the hardware store and it's basically just a washer with a little bit more precise diameter and that spaces it up so it sits on the pilot bushing there the pilot diameter and i can tighten the nut right on there to hold it in place and i'll just cinch that up with the spanner wrench here and then let's turn it on and make sure everything looks like it's running true and running well and it does so i think we have a good diamond wheel on a motor that'll work pretty well for a tungsten grinder the main thing that we're going to have to make here today is a guide to guide the tungsten electrodes in and this guide needs to be attached somewhere that doesn't rotate and it also i would like it to be adjustable so i'm going to go ahead and attach it with a single fastener to the shroud right here that i've removed and i'll grind a little bit of paint off here and clamp on a screw now i ground most of the zinc coating off of the head of this screw so that wouldn't be down in our weld to make things go a little better and be a little safer so i'm just gonna tig weld this i'll throw a few tacks on here in three places to hold it in place and then weld all the way around and you can see as i tack here even though i cleared the paint off on the inside we're getting a little bit of smoke just because that's that's what happens when you work with painted things to make the angled guide itself i'm using this angle iron it's um one and a half inch by a quarter inch thick so it's about 4 40 millimeter leg and six millimeters thick and i'm gonna cut a half inch long piece of this off hey well let me interrupt this build for just a second to introduce myself if you haven't tuned in before my name is tim i'm a welding engineer with the side hustle shop in my garage where i make these videos where i teach welding and fabrication and show some of the projects that i make now if you're just getting started with tig welding i'll link in the description a full tutorial that i put together where i go over everything from machines electrodes torches welding technique everything you need to know when you get started tig welding so check that out after this video is over and if you want to learn more and up your game with welding and fabrication be sure to click that subscribe below let's get back to the build so here's that half inch long piece of the angled steel that i'm going to use and it came out pretty good off of that saw there i'm going to center punch a spot to drill a quarter inch hole to fit right over that bolt that i'd welded on to the angle grinder so i'll go ahead and come down here and clamp it in and drill it with my drill press you could drill it by hand just as well though if you don't have a drill press that would be just fine you can see as i drill i'm relieving the pressure from time to time to break those chips off and i'm getting a nice chip so that means i'm running around about the right speed now let's take a test fit of this piece here you can see i put those two center punches to indicate where the two holes will be to guide the tungsten electrodes they sat down a little low so i'm going to drill another hole and i'll try that see if that works a little better and i like where that's sitting much better however i'd like the holes for the electrodes to be down a little lower now i'm doing two because i use one sixteenth inch and three thirty seconds inch tungsten usually i just use three thirty seconds of an inch uh or i believe that's two point four millimeter tungsten electrodes so i went ahead and punched two more holes down a little lower to drill those holes and here i'll go ahead and drill the three thirty seconds inch hole to guide my tungsten electrode you'll notice i'm drilling them a little bit off to the side there so that i can get a little bit steeper angle and you'll see better what i'm talking about when the whole whole thing goes together now drill a 1 16 inch hole and i'll have those too so here's my basic guide it's starting to take shape i'm going to go ahead and do a test fit here and i'll set it on and you can see i can pivot it around there so i can adjust the angle that i'm putting on the tungsten electrodes as i slide it through there and i'll just rotate them by hand however in order to get even a steeper angle on it i'm going to go ahead and put a chamfer right here that goes right up to the edge of those holes so that i can get the arm to swing around even further and so i'm just using a 120 grit flap disc to do that and you can see now that i put it on i can swing it way far around flat and have that adjustability that i'm hoping for so that seems to be working pretty well so i'm going to cut off that first hole that i made right here and then clean it up with a grinder just to give a nice clean look on this tool that i'm making so now that it's uh made i'm gonna go ahead and assemble with this star washer on the bottom and that's gonna help keep it from rotating around as i tighten it down and then i'm gonna put one on the top that will help keep my nut tight now i'm gonna use this thumb nut here and i just picked all these things up at the hardware store and i'm going to use this so that i can easily change the angle without having to look around for a special tool and so that seems to hold it onto the guard right there pretty well now the guard wasn't screwed on that's why you saw it moving around but i'm testing it out here with a 1 16 inch electrode and now with a brand new 3 32 of an inch you can see that point is taking shape in no time let's zoom in and take a close-up look of those points and the way that i got it all the way around is just by rotating it with your with my fingers and the more consistent i am the better it'll come out now it's a little cumbersome just sitting on the bench like that though you could use it that way i'm going to build a stand for it and i'm just using this three quarter inch square tubing and then i'm going to also use some two inch angle iron here so that's about uh what what is that about 50 millimeter uh leg on the angle iron and about 20 millimeters on the square tubing and i'm going to line it up like this so that i can set the angle grinder on top of there and just hold it down with a u-bolt and so i've reached for my mig welder because it's getting pretty late and there's mill scale on this angle iron i don't think it's a great use of my time to clean it off for this so i'm welding out with the mig and i'm just welding downhill here because this tubing is so thin that'll be a pretty good technique to get a good weld on there now i've dropped the the tubing down about a quarter inch from the top so that i can put a nice fillet weld in there and still have a flush surface on top and that's going pretty well for me here now that it's uh welded all the way around i'll go ahead and drill two holes for those u-bolts and then i'll be ready to take it over and shoot on some 99-cent black paint so i'll spray some of this on here and get everything ready to go now that it's painted we can just take a look here at these basic components that that i made and they they turned out pretty well so it's time to assemble the whole thing together and i'll put some of these rubber pads here on the bottom that'll keep it a little more sturdy as i'm using it because there there may be a little bit of vibration so i want that there just to keep everything sitting nice and still next i've put the guard back on the angle grinder just like we did before and then i'll set it here and put this u bolt through from the top and then i'm just using two nylon locking nuts on the bottom to keep them from falling off so we'll take a look at the finished product here and i'm really happy with how it turned out i think it's it's nice and sturdy and i'll grind one more electrode here and you can see just how fast i get that point on it it's great okay well i think this is going to be a really useful tool for us here in the shop and hopefully this is something that you'll be able to to make some version of and adapt to use in your shop and i think you'll you'll really enjoy it thanks again for tuning in today and we'll see you next time

Channel: TimWelds

Views: 21,227

Rating: 4.9172416 out of 5

Keywords: TIG Welding, Gas Tungsten Arc Welding, GTAW, TIG Welding for Beginners, How to Sharpen Tungsten, Tungsten Angle, TIG Welding Basics, DIY Tungsten Grinder, Tungsten Grinder, Tungsten Sharpener, Electrode Sharpener

Id: 0kr_evSFsNA

Length: 9min 44sec (584 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2020