decisions decisions... help me spend my money!

[scott kozub]

I'm not a welder but have always loved welding since I was a kid and I always wanted a tig as I really liked the control of fusion welding. I can't say how it stacks up to other welders but I was also welding pop cans together thec first week having never tight welded before. The tig only gets down to 20amp in ac though. That ESAB may go to 5 amp in ac. The plasma is great. Its 50amp. It's supposed to cut up to 3/4" I believe. I haven't done 3/4 but I did cut a 1" mild steel bar in half. It wasn't clean by any stretch but did give me 3 bars I was able to clean up in the grinder. I just get consumables off amazon. When I bought it it was still new. There were a bunch of reviews on youtube but no long term stuff. Now there's a couple long term review where some quirks are discussed.

How is the plasma function on it? Can you get consumables for it easy enough?

Those little inverters have really reduced the cost of a lot of functions although they can be a little fragile. I have a esab caddytig that is probably 10 years old now. I may be having issues with the aluminum functions on it but since you have to use hidden proprietary menus I always forget how to set it up since I don't weld all that often now. It's a little 38lb machine and it would do 1/4" aluminum on 100% duty cycle (with old school machines it would have had to be a 350 amp machine and would have e weighed over 300 lbs) and it welded 1" round bar to 1" plate with no pre heat on 6061 aluminum. That still blows my mind. I used a 250 amp esab heli-arc that was about 3 years new that esab demoed at the school I taught at. It made welding pop cans together easy and would weld 3/8" 6061 aluminum plate with a 1/16" pointed tungsten. You actually had to start weaving the bead like you do when you walk the cup because the puddle was so small. You didn't walk the cup because its would have scratched the bead up badly and maybe stuck as well. When welding 6061 that lower heat input give a much stronger weld since the T6 temper can loose up to 50% strength from heat and still be acceptable. I'm sure the newer inverters have progressed a kit since then as well as getting cheaper.

 

[Storm W]

I'm not a welder but have always loved welding since I was a kid and I always wanted a tig as I really liked the control of fusion welding. I can't say how it stacks up to other welders but I was also welding pop cans together thec first week having never tight welded before. The tig only gets down to 20amp in ac though. That ESAB may go to 5 amp in ac. The plasma is great. Its 50amp. It's supposed to cut up to 3/4" I believe. I haven't done 3/4 but I did cut a 1" mild steel bar in half. It wasn't clean by any stretch but did give me 3 bars I was able to clean up in the grinder. I just get consumables off amazon. When I bought it it was still new. There were a bunch of reviews on youtube but no long term stuff. Now there's a couple long term review where some quirks are discussed.

You probably already know this but those little inverters don't like 2% thoriated tungsten very much. One of the ways they get away with things like welding aluminum with a pointed tungsten. They high cycling rate can split thoriated tungsten. For general use the tri mix known as E3 is probably your best bet. If you are going to be doing heavy duty aluminum zirconium tungsten can handle more power than any thing else but it is a AC only tungsten and from what I understand it wouldn't stabilize the arc on DC-EN