Thermal Arc 185?

For the umpteenth time the Thermal 185 is a better bargain.

Ernie,

I've come to respect your opinion on a wide range of welding issues, and I notice you did not give an opinion on the link you cited.

Do you think this would make a nice little home/shop unit? Or would the lack of a high freq unit cause many problems?

Thanks,

del

It would work... ...for DC only TIG welding. Which means DCEN for Steel, SS, bronze, copper. For aluminum or magnesium you would have to run DCEP with a huge tungsten. Which does work, it just gets the torch really hot.

The cost of the kit is around $260, which when added to the cost of a stick welder of around $200 - $500 is still well below that of even a simple TIG welder. So for cost it does win. I could use it to TIG weld most anything, but then I TIG a lot with a lot of different machines. I have run scratch start TIG from simple stick welders, and that is still how most pipeline welding is done in the field.

It works, but you don't get pretty starts and stops like a real TIG machine can give you, because you have no amperage control or a way to end a weld without just yanking the torch away from the metal. That is why I graduated to better machines.

I have not used that precise kit, but the kit is very simple and TIG Depot doesn't sell crap.

So if you really have no other option it beats the hell out of no TIG at all.