I’ve been coming in to practice my TIG skills, and find that the foot pedal moves all over the place. Me and my steel toed boots have a lot of trouble keeping track of where the pedal is most of the time (compounded by my having to get up every 30 seconds to re-sharpen the TIG point… howEVER, this is getting better, I promise. I went 5 minutes today without changing out the tip!).
Would it be okay to construct a rubber ‘sole’ for the pedal, to keep it from moving around so much? (I was thinking hot melt glue would keep the rubber affixed to the bottom of the pedal).
This would electrically isolate the pedal from the concrete, but I believe the pedal has a ground wire which grounds it to the TIG/MIG machine, so the isolation from the concrete shouldn’t be an issue.
Welcome! I’m glad you’re able to get your practice in.
I don’t Tig weld myself, I need to take Savanna’s class sometime, though it sounds like a fair ask! @SavHarvey is there anything we should consider about making the pedal a bit more nonslip?
Hey David, happy to hear you’ve been getting practice in!
I definitely understand taking a second to find the foot peddle if it shifted, but there’s a lot of times where it’s actually really helpful to be able to scoot the foot peddle across the floor with your foot instead of picking it up to move it every time. Someone TIG welding on a larger project where you jump around the piece with your welds to prevent warpage would be scooting the foot peddle around the table with them without needing to pick it up, I think that may even be why they don’t make it with a non-slip bottom. If you could find some non- slip stickers that don’t leave a sticky residue on the foot peddle you could put one or two on the bottom just for your session and remove them when you’re done. Hope this helped!
Thanks, Savannah. Turns out it is an experience thing… My welding has improved over the week, and I no longer am searching for the pedal. I even spent an entire hour of welding without having to sharpen the tip!