Re: tungsten electrodes

[Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>]

Hi John M.,

	I just use brass acorn nuts from the hardware store.  My gaps use 1/4 inch
and the next size down.  They last for a reasonable length of time and then
you replace them for a dollar in about 10 minutes...

Tunsten last far longer but you have to mess with mounting, cutting, and
adjusting them which is far more of a chore then with simple machine nuts.
If you go with tungsten, "i" would get ther "pure" kind.  Those heavy
metals do not help the gap IMHO but the cutting dust, and the tiny bit
burned off, is slightly radioactive which never gave me a "warm fuzzy"...
Most people use the very available 1/8th inch size.  The price goes up
dramatically with diameter.  You can go to just about any welding supply
place and pick them up without having to worry about ordering, shipping
costs, waiting, etc.  I usually put washers behind the gap electrodes to
act as cooling fins.  This works very well and is easy to do if you use
brass machine nuts and bolts.  Temperature should not be a problem at less
than 1kVA sinch the airflow is so high.

Cheers,

	Terry

At 10:47 AM 8/16/00 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>
>Hey Terry and John,
>
>I don't remember asking either of you what the material of your RSG
>electrodes is.  Do you use tungsten?  if you take a peek at this site;
>www.arcsmith-dot-com/wni/products/tungsten/tungsten.htm     they give some
>interesting descriptions/characteristics of some of the different types
>of tungsten.  Have you ever tried any of these or know which is most
>sought after for use in RSG's?  Also, what diameter would you recomend
>if running 450 - 900VA through them and would you recomend a larger
>diameter on the stationary electrodes to dissapate heat better since
>each of the stationaries arcs X times more than any single electrode on
>a disk with X number of disk electrodes.
>
>
>Thanks much,
>John M.
>
>
>