New TIG welder--WOW!

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

DC tig welders have become cheap and are usable. Good ac tig welders for AL are still expensive. I would love to have a ac tig for our team but, it's not in the budget. Will have to make due with a mig and spool gun again this year.

I would beg to differ: http://www.everlastgenerators.com/Po...DX-351-pd.html
I know I have suggested these welders before on this forum, but I've heard nothing but good things about them. For $1100 it's hard to go wrong.

[Gdeaver]

I was refering to the 3000 - 500$ dc tig units. They are actually usable. Have you welded AL with this unit? I tried a import 900$ ac dc unit and it was unusable on AL.

[JamesCH95]

No, I have not used it, but I believe that it would work well enough. I have used a Miller Diversion 165, which worked well enough for a $1600 unit, but was wildly over-simplified for my taste. I understand your skepticism about anything not Miller or Lincoln, but check out this review of the PowerPro 256 and another video series going over TIG welder settings with the same welder.

Jody, the guy who runs this site, is brutally honest and very knowledgeable. You can see that the welder works just fine on aluminum. It appears that all of the inverter controls let you get a very nice arc. Perhaps Miller or Lincoln would last longer, but for an FRC team you don't need the 100% reliability for the next 30 years that you'd get with Miller or Lincoln.

[DarkFlame145]

TIG is the hardest type of welding there is, but it's the most precise and you can pin point your heat and filler really well. Heck if your gap is small enough you dont even need filler, you can fuse weld.