The welder puts out a lot of juice. The most interesting part of it is probably the pressurized tank of Argon attached to the body of the machine. The Argon travels out along a hose to the welding tip, and hisses out in an expanding ring around the point of the arc. The purpose of this is to drive away oxygen, replacing it with a non-combustible gas, in order to prevent the electic plasma and the surface being welded from actually burning. It doesn't work perfectly, but it works very well.