auto darkening helmets

I am in the UK. I have no idea how good or not good they are. You can have a surprise either way.

I work commercially and use what many rate as the best. Because you can have it on for 8 to 12 hours a day.

Rich Smith

I bought the best I could afford ... just because I'm a "hobbyist" doesn't mean I need to skimp where my sight is concerned .

Apologies for the unintended potential interpretation. Those air-feds are very expensive. But when you are sliding around on your back in a tiny space welding overhead in the near-darkness you realise the finer points of the design.

I got from Aldi or Lidl a bench drilling machine for GBP30 (less than an "electric drill") and you could feel play in the quill - but for what my friend was doing it was fantastic and a blessing. She could drill in less than two seconds what had always been a bit of work with a hand-held drill. That was what I was thinking of...

I didn't mean anything but that I too value quality equipment ... were I a professional weldor , I would have spent a lot more than a hundred fifty bucks for a helmet . But for the 4 or 5 times a month I use it it's just fine .

and on a related note, I noticed in a different branch of Lidl that they are selling a Parkside "inverter" and on the side of the (disturbingly small) box it says that theres a TIG torch included.

I dont work for Lidl and I am not recommending it, but once again it costs nothing to look ....

On Tue, 30 Aug 2022 13:11:42 +0100, Abandoned_Trolley snipped-for-privacy@fred-smith.co.uk> wrote as underneath :

Snip

Can't see any reference to that inverter/welder on the current Lidl UK website..

saw those yesterday - autodarkener and inverter. Think there were a couple of inverter models. One inverter is 80A (85A?) so up to 2.5mm rods only. Presumably output is DC (inverters are, after rectifying back from something like 100kHz internally), so that could be 7018 which is penetrative and there's nothing like "stick" (SMAW) for sound fusion on thick sections with otherwise infeasibly small currents.

I can assure you they were there.

I was in the store yesterday and noticed that there is also a smaller inverter model without the TIG torch which only goes up to 80 amps.

Next time I am in there I will see if I can remember to take a note of the product numbers - and get the price of the smaller one.

In the meantime you could amuse yourself by looking at :

would be very surprised if not - offering AC appears to double the cost of TIG welders

Yup, I'll second that - in the wire stillages in the centre isle of Lidl stores.

If you "miss" something when on offer in stores, can sometimes get them mail-order from the Lidl website / warehouse (also think of Aldi).

A neighbour of mine has a Lidl Parkside plasma cutter with built in compressor and the first time he went to use it it went bang or pop and the compressor kept running but the cutter wouldn't work. He had some trouble initially getting in touch with the product support but got a badly translated email and eventually a replacement plasma cutter but no idea whether he has to send the faulty one back, he has the original packaging just in case. Having the replacement which I think he hasn't checked yet he opened up the original unit and the fault was obvious, the 8mm push in connector to the compressor had failed, basically the internals of the connector had failed under pressure like they hadn't been swaged in and the hose, release ring,  barb ring and seal had been ejected from the connector. Looks like a standard part and he's going to try and remove the failed part and replace it, I may have a suitable replacement if the original is 1/4" BSP or the equivalent G fitting. All else internally looks well made but it should be interesting to get a replacement connector and see if and how well it functions.

--------------------- Aldi Süd (it's German) does business as Aldi's and Trader Joe's in the USA. AFAIK they sell only groceries here.

The local Dollar Tree discount store has many items dual labeled in French for the Canadien market, so my vocabulary is slowly improving.

Yesterdays visit to the "other" Lidl in town revealed it as the Parkside PTMI-180A1 retailing at £149.99 - Lidl stock number 389213.

I should have mentioned in the original post that its fitted with one of those 16A round pin plugs and not the normal 13A variety.

The customer service link which I quoted above doesn't seem to be working properly this morning, but there might be some opinions on the beast on the forum at