State-of-the-art welding machines aren’t cheap, and for good reason: pushing around that much current in a controlled way and doing it over an entire workday takes some heavy-duty parts. There are bargains to be found, though, especially in the most basic of machines: AC stick welders. The familiar and aptly named “tombstone” welders can do the business, and they’re a great tool to learn how to lay a bead.

Tombstones are not without their drawbacks, though, and while others might buy a different welder when bumping up against those limits, [Greg Hildstrom] decided to hack his AC stick welder into an AC/DC welder with TIG. He details the panoply of mods he made to the welder, from a new 50 A cordset made from three extension cords where all three 12 gauge wires in each cord are connected together to make much larger effective conductors, to adding rectifiers and a choke made from the frame of a microwave oven transformer to produce DC output at the full 225 A rating. By the end of the project the tombstone was chock full of hacks, including a homemade foot pedal for voltage control, new industry-standard connectors for everything, and with the help of a vintage Lincoln “Hi-Freq” controller, support for TIG, or tungsten inert gas welding. His blog post shows some of the many test beads he’s put down with the machine, and the video playlist linked below shows highlights of the build.

This isn’t [Greg]’s first foray into the world of hot metal. A few years back we covered his electric arc furnace build, powered by another, more capable welder.

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