Its just an old beater Century DC/AC welder a friend gave me broken... I fixed the amp selector thingy and scrounged up a tig torch for it, bought a bottle of argon and a regulator and used it a bit. Couple months ago I finally decided I wanted to do something with aluminum so I figured out how to wire the high frequency stabilizer and set it up for AC...
I don't think its going to work for this thin stuff. I've been practicing a fair bit and I can get some decent beads but not having the foot control to vary the amps while welding means welding a teensy bit and then waiting for the metal to cool down... My welder only goes down to 30 amps. Seems like thats okay to start, but when I get going it needs to drop down to more like 15. I'll probably tack it all together for now and see if I can figure out how to get my hands on a newer ($$$) machine, or see if I can borrow one at the high school. Thinking I might try to sell this one and maybe a bike or two to fund the purchase of a nice one later this summer.
This plate started out at 1/8" thick.. It's well over an inch thick now.
