Air cooled tig torch

[Steved]

Hi there.

Quick question:

I have an air cooled tig torch and if I use it quite a bit it gets really hot by the 'T' section of the handle.

I know this is nomal and is caused by the high resistance of the tungsten. When this occurs I just let it cool down for a while.

If I hold the torch closer to the cable it is not as hot and I can weld longer. My question is: How hot can the torch handle get before I wreck the torch?

Perhaps I should be looking into a water cooled system as it is no fun waiting for the handle to cool down.

[dyn88]

water cooled is definately the way to go

[Paul Seaman]

I have used the Dynasty 300dx tigrunner, it uses a coolmate3 and a wellcraft watercooled torch and it awesome. You'll love it,

Peace,

[fun4now]

watter cooled great, but

it seems we skiped his ???? how hot befor destroyed

i think that HAWK once said that it will make you let go befor you can hurt it
keep in mind that i'm shoure that he ment with TIG gloves on, i would think if you through on your heavy stick gloves you could cook that bad boy up but not shoure i would want to try that.

also it would depend on the duty cycle of the torch if you have a 120A torch on a 200A tig you might consider going to a higher Amp torch as it would be less $$$ than converting everything over to a cooler setup.

by all means if you have the extra $$$$$ go for the cooler setup and dont look back.if you are using somthing portable like a max., or dyn. you should keep the air cooled torch for thouse quick out of shop job's


good luck