"Gys" welders

No. Gotta url?

- Steve Taylor - spluttered in news:4200f8ba$0$4088$ snipped-for-privacy@news.zen.co.uk:

complete

Gys is widely distributed in France and has rather good reputation there, although they seem more geared towards the "amateur" than the "pro" market. I don't have this particular machine, I have a smaller inverter (Gysmi 125) and it works as advertised. Their web site is on

It looks like what I want, its only 1/3 rd dearer than the cheapo unit I was looking at, but it does have simple European service.

Thanks

Steve

Cheaper than a Miller Maxstar 150?

Hi Ernie, The Maxstars in the US are around 1000 USD ? Can't find it in the UK in a quick search, but it might exist. The Gys unit is 395 GBP, which is a shade over 800 USD. Typically, an item priced in USD just has the units of currency changed when its sold in the UK - so 1000 USD = 1000 GBP !!

Steve

No the basic Maxstar 150S is around $600 USD, and it runs stick electrode better than any comparable inverter in the world.

More like USD 741.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

But trimmed up to the TIG I wanted, on-line prices look more like 1000 USD. Miller's indicative price off their site is ~$996.

Have you a good source over there that would ship to England ?

Oh dear, now I have really started looking at Miller stuff.

Miller EconoTig instead ?

Thanks for your comments.

Steve

I seem to recall that you said that the Miller was the only machine to actually work on 110V, but would the difference with other inverters be noticeable on 220V? Because in the UK, everything is 220V, so that particular feature of the Miller is not needed.

What is the input frequency in the UK? If it is not 60cycles per second the American inverter will not work properly. Since your are in the European market take a good hard look at the Italian inverters such as Stel , they were making inverters long before Miller came on the scene.You will not be disappointed at the machine quality, options or pricing.

Pete

We use 50 Hz, but I can't see why that would affect an inverter based welder ? Surely the first thing that happens is that the incoming power is rectifed to DC, before being chopped up at high frequency into the output transformer ?

Steve

The Miller inverters will all work just fine at 50 Hz.

Actually it is. Miller is the only company that quarantees 6010 on a small inverter.

6010 makes most inverters barf, and it is the standard of the industry for pipe welding.

Right now Miller's inverters are the best. The only ones I can think of that are close is Fronius, but those are not cheap either. There are a pile of low cost inverter makes in Europe. I am sure a lot of them would work fine for you.

Check my links list for other makers.

I have links for maybe 6 more that I haven't added yet.

Depends if the circuitry uses the 60 cycle as a reference.I would suggest you check with the manufacturer to see if performance is compromised by using a 60 hertz machine on 50 hertz..

Do you have any idea what is the electrical property of 6010 that makes it difficult to power?

I am not the person who wants to buy a machine, I have one and it is way overkill for my needs, but I am very pleased with it.

I agree that fronius has a very good reputation. Here in Germany, the following brands are easy to find:

-lorch (very well distributed amongst car mechanics, have fancy stick machines, and basic tig machines)

-merckle (very good reputation, very fancy machines which can be integrated in automatic lines)

-ewm (sells on price).

-elektra-bekum (elektra makes woodworking machines, air tools and welders, it's a bit strange)

Less easy to find, but with still excellent reputation are brands like fronius or Rehm (the one I have).

All the above brands cater for the professional market. You will find links on

under "Geräte".

For the amateur market, one finds in home centers brands like einhell (cheap chinese stuff) or Güde (slightly better) and, recently, some small inverters of unknown origin. And of course buzzboxes (most of Italian origin apparently).

In France, gys caters for the second type of market, but apparently is also used by car mechanics (they know the brand, which also makes battery chargers). An educated guess would be that their machines use a sound electronics design, but lack the toughness of real professional machines. For example, professionnal welders have their electronics encased in resin, to protect it from dust and shocks (and make it impossible to repair). Lower end machines (including gys) don't have that. It is not necessarily a problem for an amateur, though.

High end features which appear to be actually usefull include a power compensation (corrects the cos phi to allow to draw more amps from the same line) and fancy pulser adjustments. Merckle even has a service to set the machine by alloy type, including the possibility to download new modes to the welder memory. But I suppose that this is only really used by people doing automatic welding. Personally, I am puzzled enough by all the adjustments on my machine, but I appreciate the possibility to use high pulse frequency on thin steel and high AC frequency on aluminium.

(and I have found that these modes where desirable by reading your posts before I bought my welder...)

6010 requires a very high open-circuit voltage. Miller, so far, is the only inverter maker who has figured out how to squeeze that voltage out of a 200 amp or smaller inverter. Most of the inverter makers actually include the warning in their manuals, DO NOT USE 6010.

Most of the 300 amp or larger inverters can handle 6010.

Most of the smaller transformers also don't like 6010.