SIP TIG Welder

I purchased the SIP 160 TIG about 5 years ago. I'm surprised they are still selling it. Their design had a major problem at that time which I tried, unsuccessfully, to bring to their attention. The high frequency was designed such that if the work ground was truly earth grounded the high frequency would not work. In order to use the high frequency start function of the machine, the work ground had to be floated. Then you had to be very careful about a shock hazard on the output of the machine from the high frequency itself. I was continually getting 'bit' from it. I spoke long distance with their technical support several times, but they couldn't understand what I was trying to tell them even though we both had the schematic in front of us. They eventually sent me a replacement high frequency module - they insisted it could not be a design problem - but it didn't fix the problem. Their contracted local customer service was also worthless. They had never seen the TIG machine and could only troubleshoot from the flowcharts they had in their service manuals. They verified the high frequency problem but could do nothing about it. I used it for a few months on a welding table which I electrically isolated. The duty cycle was so low, I could do very little real work with it. I put it up on a shelf for a few years and purchased a Miller Synchrowave 250 that I've been using ever since. One day I needed a fan for some project I was working on and so I cannibalized the one from the SIP machine. Later I hauled the remains out to the curb for the garbage collector. I learned an expensive lesson about buying welding equipment with no local support.

"John Smith" wrote in message news:40b779a2$0$1044$ snipped-for-privacy@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net...