A welder for dummies

At the Fabtech show in Chicago last week there were 525 welding exhibits. It's hard to believe how many little companies (many from China) are building little scratch-start TIG/stick boxes these days, but the big guys aren't dropping prices. Instead, they're building in some pretty amazing technology.

One that caught a lot of attention is the new Rebel from ESAB. It's so adaptive that it's amazing. They grabbed students off the floor and had them weld with it; it made the kids look pretty good. It only has a few controls. You don't even have to adjust gases for MIG (although it has regular controls for the experts).

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It's worth a look. The price for being a welding dummy is pretty high these days -- this one is introduced at $1,700 -- but it's nice to know what it is you'd like to have if you could justify it. It's not a hobby machine but it's perfect for well-heeled hobbyists.

Reply to
Ed Huntress
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Did you happen to see/meet Jody? He put up a 25 min video that covered some of the stuff he liked:

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Interesting stuff for people with $$$ ;-)

Reply to
Leon Fisk

No, I'm sorry to say I didn't have time. I spent a lot of time with Miller and Lincoln Electric. There were 525 exhibits in the welding section and I was like a one-armed paper hanger. d8-)

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Oh well, there is always next year...

You'll have to watch his video then and see what you missed ;-)

One thing that caught my eye was a self feeding TIG welder. Kinda like your ESAB MIG machine.

There aren't many celebrities I would care to meet, but Jody is one of them. Problem is there was likely people like me waiting in line for the same opportunity...

Reply to
Leon Fisk

Yeah, I saw it. He picked up on a lot of little things, fixturing and so on, that will be significant for certain users, but which would escape someone who doesn't weld all the time or who doesn't do a variety of work. That's why we need a few submitted articles by people like Jody who are really into it. We try to keep a mix like that; around 40% of our articles are either assigned out to other writers, or submitted over the transom.

Yeah, I saw that, too. I think our sister publication (Welding Productivity) picked up on it, and may report on it some time next year.

He certainly has a great presentation style and a broad range of knowledge. Specializing like that has its advantages.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

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