Thread: 4 in 1 tig or 4 in 1 mig?

Pulpo - my experience has been primarily with stick welders - from ages ago and I am just catching up on the range of gear available to the average punter now. I also was considering TIG vs MIG. My new welder will be TIG/Stick which I figure will give a lot of flexibility for a wide range of projects. If I was doing a lot of welding and time was an issue then that would probably swing me towards MIG. Having said that, others on this forum are much more likely than me to actually know what they're talking about - Mick

Originally Posted by Pulpo

My knowledge in welding is rather limited compared to most on this forum and my ability in this subject is even less so.

I have only welded low carbon steel with stick and mig.

If its horizontal and thick steel not too difficult.

I learnt some welding some time ago and inverters were not mentioned.

I have a small hobby farm and do steel welding mainly but it would be very advantangeous to have the option of stainless and ally.

I was looking at the cheaper chinese end as it was only for weekend use.

Can anyone shed light on the advantages of the tig to the mig machines?
Tig.electric arc Gas shielded-Manually held filler wire -slow not suited to outdoors welding Mig Electric -Gas shielded- filler wire driven by electric motor- not suitable for outddors welding.

Both seem to have similiar end results that is weld steel ally and stainless? A small inverter will be capable of welding both Aluminium (with special electrodes) and stainless steel. both Mig and tig incur substantial cylinder rental costs even if an arc is not struck

One can buy and inverter that is AC (aluminium capable )and DC+ /DC-but they are substaintially more expensive than the basic inverter machine.

As always your thoughts are appreciated.

Cheers

Pulpo.

For a hobby farm-weekend work I would go for a small cheap inverter - research this forum for everyone's comments about them - There are plenty there.

Cheers
Grahame

If you are just after a stick welder, I highly recommend the BOC Smootharc 170. I bought one just over a year ago for just under $400 from memory. It has a really good duty cycle* and nice non-stick starting. It's little brother, the Smootharc 130 is about $300, with a lower duty cycle and max current. (The Smootharc 130 can actually do 138 amps max and the Smootharc 170 can do 199 amps max.)

*The manual is on the BOC website and reports a 100% duty cycle at 118A and 35% at 199A. Compare that to a $99 welder, such as GMC, which has something like 25% duty cycle at 45A! IMO it's worth at least $300 to get something that won't give you headaches or constantly cut out mid-weld.

As for the multi-purpose welders (like Chinese ebay machines), I've heard plenty of people say to avoid them like the plague, and plenty of others saying they haven't had problems. I'd just be careful and avoid buying something that seems to cheap to be true. It's probably at least $2500 for a decent AC/DC TIG/Stick machine, $1000 for a good standalone MIG (without spray arc), and $1000 for a plasma cutter. Any 4in1 would have to be able to act as a constant voltage supply (for MIG), as well as a constant current supply for TIG/Stick/Plasma. You'd expect anything to do all those processes properly to be several thousand dollars, and there's always the issue that if the thing fails, you have all 4 tools fail.

Many thanks

I shall look at the small inverter stick machines.

I do like mig or I can weld with mig but my welds with stick on 3mm and under are just avg.

Cheers

Dave