Thread: Chinese TIG welder Comparison

Gday Brendan

Just my experience with these machines, I bought one about two years back (they were piranha then) and it worked well for about 14months until I was showing a friend how good it was - - yeah.
anyway I let the smoke out of it.
as per one of the previous posts getting any info is very hard so I set about learning how it worked and this may help you down the track.
I started giving a lengthy explanation of how it worked in this post but then the risk of someone being electrocuted is high, anyway you will find these welders are generally quite repairable and components available at Farnellinone or similar I still use my unit although DC only as the price of component repair was too high (in my opinion) I needed about 8 FET's for my machine to work on AC again so I did a little re wiring
One major complaint I have with mine is the design of the gas port in the hand piece means you have to have the flow rate right up in comparison to the more expensive ones hand pieces to give adequite shielding.
well done on your report though!!

also on your spread sheet if you do one up in excel or something then take a screen snap shot and use paint to save it as a picture you will be able to post it as a picture.
-- -- obviously I want to see the spreadsheet!

Nice one mutton. Thanks for the tips re the spreadsheet. I might have a go at adding one later!

Brendan
any pics of the welds yet?
I'm kinda in the same boat as you were 12 months ago.....
Did you happen to have a look at the "tradetools direct" brand renegade ? do you have that store down there in canberra....

Cheers

Ive got a couple of shots on my camera taken at night. Its actually quite hard to take a decnet shot of a new weld as the metal is so shiny under the flash. Im doing more welding this weekend and will take more photos then.

I still dont have any aluminium to play with though. Ive got some 1mm stainless, 1mm mild and heaps more heavier mild steel.

I havent heard of the renegade brand, ask if it has pulse capabilities and AC frequency adjustments. If yes to both of those its comparabale to the Token and Weldsmart machines. If not it will fall somewhere in with the other machines listed.

its a DC only machine, at 698 bucks, with HF start and i dont know what else, its on their website at http://www.tradetoolsdirect.com/Cata...uctCode=WS-200
It's fromt a known retailer not ebay is the only plus I can give it, and its a bit cheaper than all other cheaper brands from known retailers that I can find. what do you think

Oh and taking pics at night, dont use flash, use a tripod ideally but if not, set the camera up on some books and dont touch it, and set the shutter speed to a bit longer, or if it doesn't have adjustable shutter speed just hope for the best and try to hold as still as possible while resting on books etc. the flash will always muck up the weld even in daylight.

Man I have no idea, I havent looked at the DC only TIG machines at all. There is a CIG one that is popular, but its only 140amps and has a p!ss poor duty cycle. What do you want it for mainly?

sorry to steal your thread.
s/steel and mild, thin stuff, nto structural and not ally, but just checking out cheap tigs at the moment. i wont use it enough to justify spending much more than a cheap one at this stage, maybe later on but not now.

Hi Gents

My name is Bruce and after a lot of consideration on all the 4 in 1 AC/DC Tig machines on the market today I chose the Tokentools TC205.
As I only intend to use it for home use I could not justify 4-6 thousand dollar machines.
I made the trip down to Wyong and spoke in length with Peter the owner and Gordon and found them both to be very knowledgable on all facets of their machines as Peter is an Electrician by trade and designs the machines himself.
There was no pressure to buy, infact Peter did suggest to me to go and gain some more knowledge to enable me to make a choice based on my knowledge.
I felt very comfortable after spending over an hour with these guy's in purchasing the TC205,I have already used the Plasma cutter and it works great and should be trying out Aluminium this weekend.
PLEASE if anyone is in the market for one of these 4 in 1 Chinese machines do what I did ring the numbers on ebay that the other sellers have listed and you will find no one answers the phone or if someone does they can't explain anything about their machines, one even told me go to my local sheetmetal shop and ask them to explain how to use their machine if I bought it.(no brands mentioned but they begin with "M")
It just feels reassuring to me that at Tokentools you can go to a shop and see real people or ring up and get an answer not a message saying "this mailbox is unattended"

Thats just my opinion !

Thanks for chiming in Chips. I agree with you, there is a different feel to the Token tools operation than the others on ebay. I love my machine, I was welding 1.xmm stainless on the weekend, the unit performed admirably. The arc struck very easily and was incredibly stable at a paltry 40amps. I ended up doing the welds at 55 amps and they came out well.

Just waiting on some alloy to practice on and i'll post my results.

Hi

What do you think of your Ac/Dc tig machines today?

How have the 4 in 1 machines with the plasma cutter gone have they been reliable ?.

Looking to buy one soon.

wafarmer

Originally Posted by chips63

I made the trip down to Wyong and spoke in length with Peter the owner and Gordon and found them both to be very knowledgable on all facets of their machines as Peter is an Electrician by trade and designs the machines himself.

Generally speaking companies in Australia simply buy from Chinese factories that pump these things out by the squillion, and there is absolutely no local design involved. I'm more than a little interested if TT are claiming they design them themselves given they would be selling bugger all (on a world scale). Unremarkably if you google the model and/or specs you come up with identical looking units elsewhere in the world. They do look like nice units though and I particularly liked the hand piece so I'll be interested in seeing it in person. Their current selling price of $2350 with no foot control does, however, seem very poor value for money in the current market so I hope they can do a heck of a lot better in person.

Have you read this thread?

https://www.woodworkforums.com/f160/chinese-tigs-63807/

The guy from Token explains how the machines work in detail on page two. Regardless of whether he designs them or not, he knows a sh!tload about welders.

Thanks mate, no I hadn't seen that thread. I don't know much about welders but my background is electronics and can certainly confirm everything he said regarding the description is 100% accurate. As far as "our factory" and designing it themselves I'm afraid I'm a bit more sceptical. Look I'm not going to say it's BS, but I know that dealing with a Chinese factory, they just want to know how many thousands of units you want. You certainly can have stuff made specifically to order, but the order better have lots of zeros in it. I'm just surprised that a miniscule (on world scale) Australian on-line retailer sells enough volume to have their own factory in China that produces according to their own specific design. More often it's a case of finding a factory that produces according to requirements.

For info, my current welder is from Token Tools so not bagging them at all, just a bit sceptical when people start getting "generous" with their implications.

Pete

Its pretty techo stuff hey. Well written though if a layman like me can understand it.

Do you know how the pulse units fuction on these things?