3 replies to this topic

[VELOCUAZ]

Hi,

Anybody tried one of those small ac-dc tig welders off ebay ? want to weld thin alloy just not sure if they are any good, any info would be great.

Cheers

[JonnyBMX]

not tried the ones of ebay, i have an Rtech 201 and its the bllks to be honest! ive always gone with "you get what you pay for" should probably be okay for thin stuff though?

[tiger99]

Make sure it is HF start, not scratch start, otherwise it is fairly useless as the tungstens become contaiminated very quickly, which ruins the welds. A good AC/DC TIG with HF start tends to be quite expensive, although the prices are coming down. Most of them are Chinese, and in some cases the complex electronics are poorly designed and fail depressingly quickly. There are some good ones. You might try asking on the TIG section of the mig welding forum, where there is very much more expertise, and possible first-hand knowledge of the one you are looking at.

http://www.mig-weldi...isplay.php?f=22

You probably know this already, but for the benefit of others it is worth stating that the only gas you can use is pure argon, helium or argon-helium mix. Realistically in the UK that means pure argon. Balloon gas is poor quality helium with many impurities, useless for TIG welding.

[VELOCUAZ]

Hi,

Thanks for the advise, I did do some tig welding a few years ago but that was with a proper machine so I agree with you about the start up, and needs a pedal to back off the power, guess I will give one of the Chinese machines a go.

Thanks again