[TheForge] Choosing a tig welder

[Ries Niemi]

I have two tig welders- both millers- a syncrowave 250, which I bought 
in about 1988, and 304XMT inverter. I have a lot of miller welders, 
going back to the early 80's, which is only 25 years, so I guess they 
dont really count as old, but I have never had a problem getting parts 
for any of them- not that they have needed much. But usually common 
parts are in stock at my welding supply place, and once a big main 
power switch went out on the syncrowave, and that came in about 3 days. 
So I dont think parts availabilty is a big problem with Miller.

As far as Tig in general goes, first you gotta decide if you need AC or 
not- are you gonna weld aluminum?
If so, that helps decide which welder to buy. And if you really are 
going to weld aluminum, then you are gonna want a water cooled torch 
and a radiator, which costs another 800 bucks or so. Because aluminum 
gets real hot real fast, and so does the torch, because aluminum also 
wants lots and lots of amps. The syncrowave really goes a bit higher 
than 250 amps, but thick aluminum takes every one its got. In fact, 
thats one reason we use the 300amp inverter.

Inverter power supplies are great- expensive, but great. My 304 will 
run Mig, Tig, or stick. And do all 3 better than my other dedicated 
tig, mig or stick welders. When we have much mig to do, we switch the 
wire feeder over to the inverter, because it is a better weld, quite 
noticeably. And it will also do lift arc tig welding, without a high 
freq starter.
But if you get a dynasty, the big miller inverter, it will do tig with 
high freq, ac or dc. Lincoln makes a similar machine.
If you are just gonna do steel, stainless, bronze, and copper, you can 
get by with DC only. And save some money.

ries