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  1. #1
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    Default Considering Buying Another AC/DC TIG Welder

    Ok guys now i have done a few jobs with my DC Repco TIG and absolutely love it to bits and i have played with the LOTOS MIG im really disliking the MIG but love the aluminium spool gun but its kind of spray welding kind of like gluing two pieces together more ideal for live bait tanks, rod holders, fast jobs etc.. and add on accessories for my boat

    Im seriously thinking about buying another AC/DC TIG welder now i feel very confident and at home TIG welding although i still dont have the hang of amperage and cleaning i think im most at home TIG welding

    Now that last AC/DC TIG machine was an absolute nightmare being my first TIG welder all those dials and settings was way over whelming, im looking to go less dials, less settings, but still be able to use AC TIG for welding jobs like pictured below

    I run a small business from home and im in the marine industry so i quiet often come across jobs that need welding, below is a cylinder head off a outboard motor you can see one of the water galleries has built up salt and what not plus a fair amount of corrosion

    I would ideally like to take care of this my self i just dropped off a cylinder head with the same problem and the machine shop charged me $140 big one's that's money out of my profit so a buck saved is a buck earnt

    Im very confident i will be able to weld a job like this i may need some assistance later on about amperage and AC cleaning settings etc...

    So now looking for welders i would ideally like a model with less settings if possible but that narrows it down to the most basic model the Everlast PowerTig 185 TS it is the most basic AC/DC TIG Machine i can find pretty much anywhere online in Australia

    From what i can see it has 4 dials, how hard can it be to use? the last one i had i think had 8,9 or 10 dials plus switch settings that was a nightmare, only down side to this Everlast welder is the price it is the most expensive of the models im looking at but does come with 5 years warranty

    Now i have looked at the Boswell,BOC,LOTOS, and a couple others on ebay, BOC Smootharc AC/DC TIG is a second runner they are local to me so i can pick up the machine and possible have any questions i have on hand asked in person plus repairs are local if ever needed but it only comes with 18 months warranty

    Im not entirly happy with my LOTOS MIG in standard MIG mode the gun is very notchy and seems very cheap as mentioned in my trailer building thread but i wonder if the LOTOS AC/DC TIG is any good? their is one video on youtube showing a faulty machine, these LOTOS TIG welders sell for under $600 on ebay that cost half the price of the Everlast worth the gamble?

    Im pondering at the moment,some of the machines like my last AC/DC was huge and needed two hands to carry the unit i really dislike that and would like something light and portable possibly one handed to carry

    Anyway here is the job its a Honda Outboard aluminium cylinder head, i think at $140 to repair i could recoupe my investment in one summer although the welder might just be a tax right off anyway

    Forgot to add i would like to try variable foot control too something i have been welding without it hasall been set the amps and forget

    Any advice isgood advice guys and much appreciated
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  2. #2
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    I wouldn't get too hung up on the number of buttons, knobs etc on the TIG welders. The reality is that for 90% of the time you'll really only need to adjust a couple of settings and the remainder can be ignored. As you get more experience with the TIG and start expanding the types of work you want to do with it you may well be thankful if you get a machine that can be tweaked as required.

    I have the BOC Smootharc 230 AC/DC which is a re-badged EWM machine and it is adjustable to the n'th degree but most of the time it's just a matter of adjusting the amperage and welding. But when the more challenging work comes in then ability to play with AC wave-forms and frequency, DCEN/DCEP balance and pulsing are there to use.

    I'd recommend the machine any day of the week but at over $5k it may or may not fit your intended budget. The pedal is nice to have and I use it most of the time but if it hadn't been thrown in with the welder as a special deal I doubt whether I would have shelled out the extra $500 for it.

  3. #3
    BobL is online now Member: Blue and white apron brigade
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    Default

    I'm still well on the bottom of the TIG learning curve but one way around the plethora of knobs and dials seems to be the units with a range of memory settings.

    I'm recently purchased a Token tools 210 AC/DC TIG (https://weldingstore.tokentools.com....er-210pro.html) and am finding the 8 built in memories pretty useful. I had a mate who was a welding inspector come around and set up several memory settings for me to practice with and I can just swap between them without worrying about setting them up from scratch all over again.

  4. #4
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    Default

    Thanks for the replies guys, i dont have a 5K budget or someone to set up a machine for me so im less fortunate

    my budget will be around the $900-$1000 mark, the LOTOS TIG does keep popping up after i made this thread i asked the seller a question about the foot peddle if it was a preset on/off switch or if it was actually variable amperage the seller replied and wants my number to explain it

    my first AC/DC TIG the foot peddle was a basic on/off switch and wasnt variable amperage which didn't help and was pretty much useless i want to make sure i dont venture down the same path again

    love the little Everlast 185 TIG it looks tiny and very portable with only a few settings just its over budget

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Torqued-Nut View Post
    the seller replied and wants my number to explain it
    Well that's a plus. A lot of places wouldn't bother even trying.
    I'll also put in a general plug for the tokentools gear - worth considering.
    Regarding lots of knobs and foot pedals. All you need to do is work out which knobs equate to what features. If you don't use some features (say pulsing), put some tape over those particular knobs/switches and you don't have to touch them again. Foot pedals are good, but not necessarily set and forget, which hopefully the guy on the phone will explain.
    Last edited by WelderMick; 4th Feb 2016 at 07:53 PM. Reason: added more info

  6. #6
    BobL is online now Member: Blue and white apron brigade
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    I have the pedal with the variable amps but I'm wondering if it would be better to have the variable current on the torch?

  7. #7
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    Default

    Tokentools is pretty much a local to me i do a fair amount of driving north and southso driving an hour up to them is a casual drive but there machines are too advanced for me, i checked there whole range

    these are my options

    PowerTIG 185-TS TIG Welders

    a bit weiry of this one no actually manufacturers web site
    Boswell 200Amp AC DC Inverter TIG ARC Aluminum Welder | eBay

    BOC Smootharc 185 AC/DC TIG Welder | BOC Australia

    TIG200 200Amp AC DC Square Wave Inverter Aluminum TIG Stick Welder With | eBay

    this one looks like the Eastwood model sold in the USA and is all over youtube
    Professional TIG 200 AC DC Welder Cutting Edge Technology Check IT OUT | eBay

    because this will be a business purchase i dont want to rush in and buy something i dont understand and have no clue how to use it, some of you may remember my frustrating post on the woodworking forum with my first AC/DC TIGwhich i ended up selling is defeat

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Torqued-Nut View Post
    I run a small business from home and im in the marine industry so i quiet often come across jobs that need welding, below is a cylinder head off a outboard motor you can see one of the water galleries has built up salt and what not plus a fair amount of corrosion

    I would ideally like to take care of this my self i just dropped off a cylinder head with the same problem and the machine shop charged me $140 big one's that's money out of my profit so a buck saved is a buck earnt

    Im very confident i will be able to weld a job like this i may need some assistance later on about amperage and AC cleaning settings etc...
    I'm going to come across as an a-hole here, but I think you might be getting way ahead of yourself with the head.

    Welding cast aluminium in itself is a whole different ball game, and once you throw in corrosion, salt, and any coolant/oil residues into the mix, you can be in for a world of pain real fast. You never actually know how its going to weld until you light up on it, and the way it welds can completely change in the space of an inch. Any zinc content will boil out of the casting way outside your weld pool, leaving behind all kinds of porosity, and it will also boil up through your weld pool from underneath. Some filler rods just won't play nice with some castings. I've welded a few fair castings of various ages and origin for people, and I always say first up I can't guarantee you won't get it back with a great big messy hole blown into it, because I just don't know whats in it until I start.

    Getting more specific with that head, I can't tell how big it is, I'll guess at maybe 350mm long? Come back to that in a minute, but first you'll spend a lot of time cleaning the weld area. Die grinding out the corroded area is just part of it, you need to get as much of whatever has soaked into that casting over its lifetime out as you possibly can before you start, and you still won't get it all. The first pass is almost always guaranteed to drag up more crap from within the casting, that you'll then need to grind out again - and you probably haven't even used filler yet (on that, I'd definitely do a pass over the area with just enough heat to start a tiny pool going, solely for the purpose of dragging up the impurities. The next issue, coming back to the size of the head, is going to be power. I have serious doubts that a 185A machine is even going to go close, I'd be pretty confident in saying my big old transformer based 250A Kemppi may very well struggle with it, even if preheated. A head is a pretty solid casting, and has an incredible ability to soak up heat. There are tricks to get a bit more 'oomph', such as running helium as the shielding gas at the same time as running straight DCEN, but even then I wouldn't at all be surprised to find I didn't have the grunt for it. Especially with a head, you really can't afford to sit there waiting for the puddle to build up - you need to get in, and get out. The longer you spend, the more chance you have of warping the head.

    Which brings me to my next point - if you build the weld up too far, have porosities open up on the head surface that you need to fill, or worst case warp the head, do you have the gear required to machine the head surface?

    Just be very, very aware of what you're getting yourself into if you take on a job welding a head - personally I'd think very carefully about doing one for myself, and I think I'd almost certainly say no to anyone who asked me to do one for them. I'm pretty certain my machine hasn't got the grunt to do it without running helium and preheat, and I just couldn't be bothered with the hassle of setting up a head on the mill to skim it afterwards. Personally I think $140 is pretty reasonable for the work I know is potentially involved in that job...

    On a more helpful note, if you want to play with any castings (not just heads), or even aluminium plate thicker than 4mm, I'd go straight for a 250A machine. When welding ally on my machine, I use 40amps per mm as a ballpark starting figure for the amperage setting, and its usually pretty close. I've run mine at 170+ many many times, and you wouldn't want to do that on a 185A machine, the duty cycle would kill you.

    My Kemppi has settings for pregas, upslope, downslope, and post gas, and has a pulse pack (optional at the time mine was made!). It also has AC balance (but no frequency adjustment). No footpedal. I very rarely use pulse, and when I do it's normally to do autogenous welds on various smallish tanks made from 1.6mm aluminium while still retaining the 'stack of dimes' look, or for passing over stuff my mates have welded up for themselves (I use it to tidy up their beads, so it looks more consistent). I've never touched the pregas knob, but upslope, downslope and postgas I do use - mostly postgas, but there are occasions when I'll want to change the other two a little for the job I'm doing. The AC balance is usually set at 70% electrode negative, but for very crappy aluminium I might drop back to 60%, or if it's welding really cleanly, I might push a little more EN to reduce the amount of frosting around the weld.

    The only thing I would perhaps like to try out that I don't have on this machine, is a footpedal, but I suspect I'd just throw it on the shelf after the first few times. I usually just compensate for heat soak by increasing travel speed a little, or feeding filler a little faster - depends on how the puddle is looking. All the other settings and crap the new machines come with, I'm sure they're nice if you know how to set them up, but I couldn't care less - took me long enough to learn how to tweak the 4 knobs on my pulse unit to get it to run nicely, and even then if welding with filler I usually weld better without it anyway.

  9. #9
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    Oh, and one more thing, although its probably outside your budget. I think its worth considering though, and that is 200+ amps on AC makes an aircooled torch real hot to hang onto real fast. And the physical size of the aircooled lead makes it like wrestling an anaconda for smaller stuff. I converted my machine over to use a CK Worldwide CK20 torch, with their Superflex silicon hoses in a leather sheath, which makes the torch so much easier to handle with precision, and not at all painful to hang onto. I built the water cooler unit myself, there are different ways to go about this.

  10. #10
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    jekyll u make some good points, ive considered i will need to prep the are really well, it has only had salt water running thru that one port but once welding it will open up into the oil port also

    u may say $140 for the job to be welded is ok but when i sell the whole head for $250 plus repair cost u see where i stand, so u have your $250 add $140 for welding, than machining cost and skimming than tear down clean and reassemble it all adds up and a Outboard Wreckers will cut u off at the knees on price

    if it takes me an hour to clean and weld thats a saving of $100 at lease all these jobs add up and could make or break a small home ran business like mine

    otherwise its about $15 in scrap aluminium, on the plus side these cylinder heads are very highly sort after the good ones are gone in a week or two of arrival, this cylinder head has been sitting around for 2 years because of the work needed to be done

    worse case i blow a nice hole in it than i just rip out the spool gun crank the amps and fill her in

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by BobL View Post
    I'm wondering if it would be better to have the variable current on the torch?
    I seem to remember t-nut saying he was really shakey in the hands - so another thing to control by hand could be an issue.
    A foot pedal would be a pretty useful add on if you've got shakey hands particularly when you have HF start as well - so I'd reckon their worth the money.

    As for welding up the outboard heads - if you're pushing a few through the door anyway, why not outsource a few of the welds but ask them if you can watch them do it - that'll give you an idea of amps used, speed, heat input etc.

  12. #12
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    WelderMick im not sure how they would react? the machine shop usually takes a couple of days to do my orders, im not even sure if the welding is being done in house or if they are sending it off

    the shop i use is a engineering company for automotives because these motors i strip in particular are four strokes just like your car motors

    i have never seen welding equipment in the factory but i havent walked throughout the place either

    i was just getting idea's from youtube and found a video of a thrown conrod in a aluminium block its much bigger than my cylinder head but the guy in the video did show the amperage

    he used 300A to weld in a section so Jekyll's point is coming clear here if i am really looking at capable machines

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gbOBMqAaS0

  13. #13
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    Jekyll and Hyde has given you some brilliant advice in his posts.
    Head repair is not to be taken lightly, particularly if you are repairing these heads to sell. Your good name will be attached to these heads and failures will be costly.
    I like your "have a go" attitude, but I would probably suggest that it has bo you in trouble a couple of times too. Overconfidence can be a bad thing.
    I have done quite a bit or repair work over the years on castings, both iron and aluminium, hydraulic oil coolers, radiators and intercoolers. All had their challenges, but the ones that were the worst were any that had salt water corrosion.
    Let's start at the beginning. Not all castings are created equal, different alloying elements, casting methods and impurities vastly alter weldability and the way they react to salt water corrosion. Perceived quality of the manufacturer is often a poor guide too. Previous repair attempts complicate life. Every type of epoxy, glue, sealer and snot gets tried to fix the hole and every one lingers just enough to complicate the welder's life when trying to fix the job properly. Assuming you get a decent sealing weld, you now need to cool the complete casting down evenly to prevent cracking in your weld, or worse still, in an area previously untouched. Having achieved all this, you must then finish the repair through die grinding, filing, machining or sanding. If you are lucky, you will have sound weld metal, but sometimes you will uncover gas pores, pockets of crap or worse still, an internal crack, rendering your hard work null and void. Finally, you need to test your repair using either vacuum or pressure ideally.
    I can readily see why your machine shop charges $140. That's only 2 hours at $70/Hr and as you will find out should you go ahead, 2 hours will go really fast if you do the job properly. Some repairs may only take 15 mins, but others could blow out to all day or be total losses.
    In a pinch, a 200A machine with an air cooled 26 torch could do the job in most cases, but a water cooled 18 size torch would be the first upgrade ($500), you can run these direct from your tap, but a water cooler unit is a much better bet ($0-$1500).
    I know you love your spool gun mig welder, but head and casting repair is not really an application for it.
    As far as machine choice goes, lot's of flowery features wont help you much as you aren't trying to weld aluminium foil, but you will need a machine that can punch out upwards of 125A for long periods and has the ability to punch out 150-170A for 5-10 minutes. This is the bare minimum I would consider and as such, you may find yourself welding, keeping the casting warm with a large LP gas burner while your machine rests and then hitting it again.
    Do not buy on price for this machine, you must purchase upon specifications and performance.

  14. #14
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    Do a few heads, mainly chamber mods and repairs after dropped valves, I wouldn't bother with 200A machines or less. Even using 25% He, and a gas ring for preheat, you mightn't get a puddle going in winter if the head has much mass.

    Water gallery repairs might be ok for an air cooled torch. Torches I use are water cooled, 9 based for light weight, prefer ones made with silicone rubber, seem to kill the usual black rubber ones on heavy casting welding....but possibly they're all using a Chinese rubber source now.

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hunch View Post
    Do a few heads, mainly chamber mods and repairs after dropped valves, I wouldn't bother with 200A machines or less. Even using 25% He, and a gas ring for preheat, you mightn't get a puddle going in winter if the head has much mass.

    Water gallery repairs might be ok for an air cooled torch. Torches I use are water cooled, 9 based for light weight, prefer ones made with silicone rubber, seem to kill the usual black rubber ones on heavy casting welding....but possibly they're all using a Chinese rubber source now.
    You've lost me. Did you say you run a water cooled wp9 torch? As far as I knew, wp9 were air cooled and only 125A rated. Just curious.

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