Time for a modern TIG machine. What do you like?

[Aaron_W]

The big difference is that the Primeweld machines are made in China, where the others are U.S. (Miller), Mexico (Lincoln) and Italy (HTP) for the most part. One thing that often gets missed is that the bigger companies have service centers, trained techs, tech services, and also warehouses with smart parts going back decades in many cases. That isn't going to be the case with a company like Primeweld. The reality is, if a Primweld breaks in five years you're just going to buy a replacement rather than be able to fix it. With the bigger names you have a better chance of being able to get parts and support over time, and that can't be cheap for the companies to maintain.

I've done a lot of reading about plasma cutters over the past year, and read every review and post I could find about the Primeweld machines. Much like the TIG, I have yet to see anything bad written about them. I'm planning to get the CUT60 as it will handle anything I'm likely to run into regularly...still have a big oxy/acetylene setup for anything really thick.

With the price difference between the name brands and many imports it is easy to treat the imports as disposable machines. $869 for the Primeweld 225 vs $2500 for a Lincoln Square Wave 200 or $2800 for a Miller Diversion 180.

 

[FOMOGO]

I'm still running my old miller, and union carbide stuff, and really can't see any reason to upgrade, but then again I am a cheapskate, and so far have enough room that it's not an issue. Mike

 

[Toro5xi]

I looked hard at all the "affordable" AC/DC tig machines. Basically anything less expensive than a Dynasty.

Some notes on what led me to the HTP:

One thing I knew I wanted was good low end amperage control. Any of these boxes will weld great at the high end. Having the current spike and blow a hole in a tiny part or thin material when you arc up will really ruin your day.

The HTP will weld down to 4A, and it fires very nicely even at this tiny current level. The Everlast boxes will weld down at this range but there are some anecdotal reports that it light off higher and then settles down to this level. I haven't welded with one. The Primeweld's minimum is 20A, and again I don't know how hard it actually lights off. The AHP claims 5A DC/ 20A AC.

This may not be an important spec to you. It's fun to mess around welding razor blades, shim stock and beer cans, but most people won't be doing this day-to-day. You can also light up on a piece of scrap material and move the arc over to your workpiece.

With regard to all the knobs on the Primeweld, Everlast, etc., my take on it is that encoders tend to outlast potentiometers. All those pots on the front panels look like the ultimate in convenience, until one craps out on you. I'm reasonably certain that at this price point, they're not using high-end components here. And if one does start to get flaky, there's no good way to know. If that function isn't linked to a displayed number, it's hard to chase down that sort of issue. It's also much harder to have precise repeatability of settings. This is really more important in an industrial setting. Some industries and applications require extremely close tracking to a WPS. Anyway, there's a reason Miller, Lincoln, ESAB, Fronius, etc. don't have a wall of knobs on the front of their machines, and it isn't cost-cutting.

There's a YT video where a guy did a tear-down of the HTP Invertig, and the build quality is very, very good. It's built in Italy, not China, if that's important to you.

I'm not trying to bash any welder out there. Just throwing out some of the things that I considered when choosing my tig rig.

All that said, the Primeweld is an exceptional value, especially considering that it comes with a flex head CK torch.

I think you have a very good point in relation to the consistency that the higher dollar machines should be able to maintain especially in the case of robotic welding or where multiple welders are being told to use the same machine settings.

 

[great white]

The big difference is that the Primeweld machines are made in China, where the others are U.S. (Miller), Mexico (Lincoln) and Italy (HTP) for the most part. One thing that often gets missed is that the bigger companies have service centers, trained techs, tech services, and also warehouses with smart parts going back decades in many cases. That isn't going to be the case with a company like Primeweld. The reality is, if a Primweld breaks in five years you're just going to buy a replacement rather than be able to fix it. With the bigger names you have a better chance of being able to get parts and support over time, and that can't be cheap for the companies to maintain.

I've done a lot of reading about plasma cutters over the past year, and read every review and post I could find about the Primeweld machines. Much like the TIG, I have yet to see anything bad written about them. I'm planning to get the CUT60 as it will handle anything I'm likely to run into regularly...still have a big oxy/acetylene setup for anything really thick.

I’ve got a cut 50 pilot arc machine out in the garage. Super handy thing. It will cut up to 1/2“ 1018, but thats really its upper limit and the cuts get pretty “ragged” at that point.

Cheap little china unit, but works well enough in a home shop environment and the price was low enough that it wasn’t a big risk if it was crap.

One thing I will recommend is to open the thing up when you get it. Since its a chinese made thing, QA is pretty lacking. I tidied up a few things inside that weren’t quite right (ie: wires hard up against sharp edges, board not secured, etc) and then pulled the short, cheap power cord off and bough a good length quality piece to replace it.

The biggest thing I found that I didn’t like is there was no ground wire attached inside the case. Not a good thing with a metal body case on a 220v rig….

 

[ericc]

If you want to do aluminum, there's nothing like the flexible wave balance in the more modern inverters. You trade cleaning for penetration and focus. The Synchrowave can do a slightly unbalanced wave, but nothing like the inverters. You can go almost all the way to DC (90% DCEN) and the arc is a lot hotter and more focussed, but you will have to scrub, scrub, scrub.

 

[koenbro]

The HTP cooler is made in China, but it's not constructed like the cheaper coolers that are out there. The fan and the pump are on the same motor shaft. There's also a flow sensor with an audible and visible alarm.

I thought the pump in the HTP cooler is made in Italy, but I might remember it wrong.

 

[pontiac428]

I can't bring myself to pull the trigger on the Invertig yet, but I'm getting closer. I have a few sticking points, and they all have to do with owning and heavily using blue welders from the beginning. I read an interesting thread on the AWS official forum, where a user asked about HTP stuff. An old welder technician who seems to have seen everything wasn't convinced it is a European machine, judging by the components. Said the French, German, and Czech welders are more representative. Okay, so maybe the parts are sourced in China. Just like your Chevy. The other is the cooling system, the sales literature says something about the cooling unit's fans blowing on heat sinks should not be blocked. Wha? Heat sinks instead of a radiator? And finally, they now offer a newer, more costly radiator with sensors that link back to the welder and cut power if flow stops. It was all much simpler, and more heavy duty, with the old Miller Radiator-2 on the aging Dialarc.

Low power arc stability is a big deal. Even my first tig (Miller Econotig, DC-only) would pop an arc at first tilt of the pedal. I don't think it took 30A worth to goose it. Arc start is a little tougher with the Dialarc HF. The HF is only a kicker for AC arc starting. The big transformer is buttery and smooth once you establish an arc, but you have to pull the chain a bit to get it started. I am hoping this will be covered with whatever I choose thanks to electronics.

Service. I've owned five Millers, and only one ever needed parts. The dealer provided me with all the schematics and documentation I needed to troubleshoot the faulty components. Easily cross-referenced with the BOM in the manual, and I had part numbers. With part numbers, I was able to get parts in a matter of days and at a very reasonable price. I only plan to spend $6k-10k one time. I do not want to find myself cussing and spitting in ten years time because I can't get jack from a defunct company (or one still in business but with a business model like cordless tools-use once and throw away). I'd love to save thousands, but I do not know if HTP will service a discontinued model, provide documentation, and supply replacement parts. I read the Invertig manual last night, and while I like the features and specs, I still cannot determine what kind of company HTP is. The back of the manual is not even close to the level of detail Miller can provide, so that's what I'm hung up on. I'm not putting myself out thousands so that I can be stuck at square zero ten years from now, when I am retired and can't afford a throwaway/replacement over what might be a $5 burned transistor or something. See, now I'm talking myself back into Miller.

Why not Lincoln? I grew up in the industry because of my dad. I've heard a lot about Lincoln over the years. My favorite is a college economics professor that I had that whined and moaned that he didn't invest in Google early enough, because he did not know what exactly google made. As in, he didn't understand a product that you can't buy, take home, and hold in your hands. Waah, prof. He said his favorite stock was Lincoln Electric. He said it was because the president's office was inside the old factory, had wood-paneled walls, and nothing in the room but a battleship desk and a row of file cabinets. All of the profit goes to the shareholders, he said, as if it were a divine trait. Now look at Miller's website. They have a marketing machine that is going non-stop, and part of that is teaching people how to weld. They provide tons of resources to build their base, but you don't need to be a customer to take advantage of it. They are giving some of their profit back in doing this, as far as I see it. And that's all I've got to say about that.

Next, I'll tell the saga of the plasma cutter...stay tuned.

 

[C-Bag]

I can't bring myself to pull the trigger on the Invertig yet, but I'm getting closer. I have a few sticking points, and they all have to do with owning and heavily using blue welders from the beginning. I read an interesting thread on the AWS official forum, where a user asked about HTP stuff. An old welder technician who seems to have seen everything wasn't convinced it is a European machine, judging by the components. Said the French, German, and Czech welders are more representative. Okay, so maybe the parts are sourced in China. Just like your Chevy. The other is the cooling system, the sales literature says something about the cooling unit's fans blowing on heat sinks should not be blocked. Wha? Heat sinks instead of a radiator? And finally, they now offer a newer, more costly radiator with sensors that link back to the welder and cut power if flow stops. It was all much simpler, and more heavy duty, with the old Miller Radiator-2 on the aging Dialarc.

Low power arc stability is a big deal. Even my first tig (Miller Econotig, DC-only) would pop an arc at first tilt of the pedal. I don't think it took 30A worth to goose it. Arc start is a little tougher with the Dialarc HF. The HF is only a kicker for AC arc starting. The big transformer is buttery and smooth once you establish an arc, but you have to pull the chain a bit to get it started. I am hoping this will be covered with whatever I choose thanks to electronics.

Service. I've owned five Millers, and only one ever needed parts. The dealer provided me with all the schematics and documentation I needed to troubleshoot the faulty components. Easily cross-referenced with the BOM in the manual, and I had part numbers. With part numbers, I was able to get parts in a matter of days and at a very reasonable price. I only plan to spend $6k-10k one time. I do not want to find myself cussing and spitting in ten years time because I can't get jack from a defunct company (or one still in business but with a business model like cordless tools-use once and throw away). I'd love to save thousands, but I do not know if HTP will service a discontinued model, provide documentation, and supply replacement parts. I read the Invertig manual last night, and while I like the features and specs, I still cannot determine what kind of company HTP is. The back of the manual is not even close to the level of detail Miller can provide, so that's what I'm hung up on. I'm not putting myself out thousands so that I can be stuck at square zero ten years from now, when I am retired and can't afford a throwaway/replacement over what might be a $5 burned transistor or something. See, now I'm talking myself back into Miller.

Why not Lincoln? I grew up in the industry because of my dad. I've heard a lot about Lincoln over the years. My favorite is a college economics professor that I had that whined and moaned that he didn't invest in Google early enough, because he did not know what exactly google made. As in, he didn't understand a product that you can't buy, take home, and hold in your hands. Waah, prof. He said his favorite stock was Lincoln Electric. He said it was because the president's office was inside the old factory, had wood-paneled walls, and nothing in the room but a battleship desk and a row of file cabinets. All of the profit goes to the shareholders, he said, as if it were a divine trait. Now look at Miller's website. They have a marketing machine that is going non-stop, and part of that is teaching people how to weld. They provide tons of resources to build their base, but you don't need to be a customer to take advantage of it. They are giving some of their profit back in doing this, as far as I see it. And that's all I've got to say about that.

Next, I'll tell the saga of the plasma cutter...stay tuned.

Wow, you sound as conflicted as I am and I’ve not even got enough experience to be a noob You are coming from the other end of the spectrum where you might know too much. Me, I’ve never been a Miller guy. Mostly Lincoln and my home mig is a Lincoln 175T. Millers always worked, but you had to mess with ‘em. Where I could always just pull the trigger on my 175 and off I’d go. For some reason I don’t hear anybody trying to sell a Lincoln inverter tig, why is that?

 

[pontiac428]

Wow, you sound as conflicted as I am and I’ve not even got enough experience to be a noob You are coming from the other end of the spectrum where you might know too much. Me, I’ve never been a Miller guy. Mostly Lincoln and my home mig is a Lincoln 175T. Millers always worked, but you had to mess with ‘em. Where I could always just pull the trigger on my 175 and off I’d go.

Yes, I am indeed conflicted! I just navigated over to Lincoln Electric. Their Aspect 230, as a water-cooled setup similarly featured to what I'd like, has one big, huge, ugly problem- the 100% duty cycle rating tops out at... <ahem> 110 amps. We're talking about an $8,000 package here. Those Lincoln guys brought a nice, shiny ride to the drag races, but it's stuffed with a 2-bbl small block! In plain English, this welder can only handle 1/8" aluminum at 100% duty cycle. In that price/feature range, I expect 1/4" capacity. I already sold one tig machine for being too small (Miller Econotig, 160A max, 60A@100% duty).

For some reason I don’t hear anybody trying to sell a Lincoln inverter tig, why is that?

I am using all of my available restraint not to crack wise. I'm holding back... Need to be good on the forum... Don't want to alienate anyone... C-Bag is one of the nice guys... But when they gotta change the advert from "bring a trailer" to "bring a plunger", one should give that consideration!

 

[epanzella]

I have a miller 250 ac/dc stick that's been doing yoman duty for 40 years and a Millermatic 35 MIG so I lean Miller. When I needed a TIG the Miller prices were just to much to bear so I got an AHP Alpha 200 for $850. I was nervous at first expecting it to quit any second but it's been a few years now and the machine has welded carbon steel, Stainless steel and aluminum with nary a complaint. I would buy one again (but I hope I won't have to)