TIG welder info

It seems to come with an air-cooled torch, if you are doing anything substantial, you will probably want to get a water-cooled torch and cooler.

It is only rated at 20% duty cycle at 200 A, so you have to stop every

You will want to get gas lenses instead of the cheap ceramic cups to reduce Argon usage, gas is now the most expensive part of TIG welding.

As for reliability and maintainability of the brand, I have no idea.

Jon

Thanks Jon, It probably is ok for duty cycle and air cooled torch, I'm mostly interested in doing tubing and sheet metal welding. Appreciate the tip re. gas lens, had not gone that far in considering what matters to my usage. Alternate would be a ThermalArc for about the same price, a little less max current and no foot pedal included.

Bill

What duty cycle details do the US mandate, in Europe the standard is 10 minutes IIRC so a 20% duty cycle would give 2 minutes welding time.

My expectation is for this welder to die soon after the warranty expires, and the "vendor" to renege on warranty terms. These welders are sold to various resellers and are private labeled by them. The factory, apparently, does not want to put its own name on them, for obvious reasons. This if a fly by night welder made by a fly by night factory and sold by a fly by night private label reseller.

How can they 'renege' on an expired warranty?

I phrased my thought poorly because someone distracted me. What I wanted to say, was that I expect the machine to die as soon as it goes out of warranty, or even before, and then I would expect the vendor to renege on the warranty.

ide quoted text -

Don't know that there's an "officially mandated" duty cycle here. Hobby stuff can go from 5% on up, industrial quality welders vary with how much cash you fork out, some of the engine driven and mongo transformer welders will run 100% duty cycle and cost accordingly. The duty cycle is in the specs, it's up to the buyer to trade off cost with duty cycle. Usually prep and setup time are longer than the actual welding time, so lower duty cycles aren't really that constraining for a lot of projects. Structural steel and heavy pipe joining are exceptions.

Stan

Eastwood is a pretty "stand up" vendor and they sell quality stuff. My guess is that Eastwood will stand behind the product, but ultimately it comes down to how much support the manufacturer will provide.

The price is certainly attractive with compared to comparable products from Miller or Lincoln

Eastwood is not what I would call "fly-by-night". They are well know for hight end stuff in the motorsports world. It does concern me that I can't tell who actually makes the machine though.

bill