Thread: Chinese TIG welder Comparison

Gday Alun,

Have you seen this thread?

https://www.woodworkforums.com/f160/a...amples-109998/

This is a good visual representation of AC frequency adjustment. As you can see from these photos, cranking up the AC frequency really helps me lay down a nice bead on aluminium. In this test (and this is the only test I have done) welding at 100hz produced a nicer bead at all amperages. However, 60hz was pretty close in some instances.

I notice some of the other welders let you adjust AC frequency up to 200hz. Id love to have a crack with one of these machines to see how they perform.

As you correctly point out, you pay a fair premium for this feature. Is it worth it? Well god knows. To be honest I only use the AC function about 10% as much as I use DC. So I guess the benefit is dubious unless your looking to build a boat or something.

My next road test will be to play with the pulse unit.

For me, that means paying 1175 without the AC freq, to perhaps 1675 for the AC freq control.

Thats a premium of 50% for the single feature.

Any way, that what i'm after, learned opinions on the necessity of that piece of functionality.

Not a necessity IMHO. You can manage to weld with 60Hz. It's one of of those "nice to haves".

Almost 2 years on from the original post have you had any reliability issues from your welder?, has anyone else had any reliability issues with them?

I need to buy a tig now and am contemplating one of these units as the functions you get for the price is amazing, I love quality tools but in this case budget just wont stretch that far.

Thanks for your original post, it was very helpful.

None whatsoever. I love my welder and I use it a lot.

I recently had the chance to look at a really cheap DC only Tig welder and it was garbage. The torch was rubbish, the performance rubbish and in the end the guy who bought it sent it back. It was one of those whole sale ones that are on ebay now for around the $500 mark which is 200amp, DC only with pulse.

Incidentally, the guy who bought this sh!tter ended up replacing it with an AC/DC 4 in one unit (includes plasma cutter) and he loves it. Im not sure on the brand but it was around the $1200 mark. I havent had a go at using it yet though.

G'day Brendan, good to hear your machine is still going strong.

Framed - I've had my tokentools ac/dc tig for over a year now and believe they are great value. I reckon I've done about 30 hours of TIG on it (based on the number of gas bottles I've gone through - be prepared to fork out a fair bit for gas!) and heaps of stick welding.

I had one small issue recently - see https://www.woodworkforums.com/f160/e...welder-135141/ All fixed without any hassle at all.

If you're branching into TIG, I definitely think it worth getting the AC capability. At least half of my welding is aluminium - a great material to work with.

Cheers

- Mick

Been using my Powertig 250EX, AC/DC pulse machine for about 6 months now. Plenty of little jobs for it and very happy so far. Very good for the $$, and without these MIC machines I doubt whether I would have justified the cost of a big brand machine.