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thoriated electrodes



Original poster: "Mr Gregory Peters by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <s371034-at-student.uq.edu.au>

Sorry guys,

After reading my post again, I realised that it may not have been
obvious what I was actually asking, so here goes: 

I have noticed that most coilers use thoriated tungsten electrodes. I
would have thought that this actually would be bad for TC use, as you
want to keep the quench time down, and I would imagine that the extra
arc stability provided by the thorium would be detrimental to this
cause. Or is it more important to have a stable, reliably firing spark
gap? I don't know. 

So I was basically asking if anyone has noticed any real difference in
performance with thoriated vs non-thoriated electrodes. I would imagine
that for our purposes, little, if any, difference would be observed.

As my coil eats thoriated tungsten for breakfast, I would rather use
plain tungsten electrodes if possible, negating any radiation hazards.
However, if arc stability is more important than quench time, I would
imagine that zirconiated tungsten electrodes would work better than
thoriated, as these are used for AC tig welding, whereas thoriated
electrodes are used for DC tig welding. 


Greg Peters
Department of Earth Sciences,
University of Queensland, Australia
Phone: 0402 841 677
http://www.geocities-dot-com/gregjpeters