I've had this thing a week now, but haven't used it much due to needing a power cord, and bigger breakers for my main and sub panels - and being busy enough to not make it over to the store to get them till this week.

The machine had a whole 1hr 46mins of spark time on it when I got it. Came with all the tigrunner stuff, the pulser module, and a cover (which I practically gave away), plus some s2 and 4043 filler rod and blue filler tubes. It also came with a titled 124cf tank which has about 1200psi of argon left in it. It's a 2005, with a bit over half the warranty remaining. Grand total: $3200

Best part was the guy was only about 55 miles away. Rented a little drop deck trailer from HD for $9.50 (4hrs) and spend about $10 in gas getting it home.

I picked up the sequencer board for it yesterday and installed it last night. I got a sweet deal on the machine, so I'm not too upset, but for what that board is, they sure do GOUGE the customer for the options. Lincoln includes these features in their square wave machines. I'm pretty sure Parker even includes them in their chink inverter machines (which cost about twice what that sequencer cost me).

I like transformer machines, so this is a good unit for me. I'm also very pleased with how the integrated cooler and fan on demand work on this thing. It's quieter than my tigmate was when the fan is running - that it shuts off 20 seconds after the weld is very nice. There's a thermo sensor on the coolant return line, so the machine will keep the pump running till the torch has cooled off, and it will also shut the arc down if the torch gets too hot, or flow has stopped.

The running gear is pretty lame. The handles are nice, but the plastic back wheels were flat spotted from sitting a year. I have no real complaints about the front casters, however the tank bracket and tray will be going away. I'm not sure what I'll be replacing them with at this point. Making the tank bracket for the mig was a whole lot easier since I had set bottle sizes for that machine. The tig will be using 336's, 152's, and 124's. Something a bit more versatile is in order - I have some ideas, but haven't committed to anything just yet.

$260 for a circuit board, some rotary encoders, leds, and a cable. I know copper is on the rise, but damn... :rolleyes:

There's not much more than a giant transformer inside this beast. Personally, I wish they would've made it a little narrower. Looks like they had plenty of space to do so.

Then this is the top view of the cooler core and thermo sensor. They use a similar grade core to what I used on my cooler I built - mines over twice as big though. :D

The top of this shot also shows the integrated consumables tray. They did well by enclosing the tray's pocket so that you can't dump collets and such down onto the transformer if you knock them over the edge. That feature alone probably adds $30 to their manufacturing costs (I wonder what it saves them in warranty repairs? lol).

Have fun with your new machine, that was an awsome deal!

I'm definitely loving this puppies power. I went from not being able to make a full size puddle on 1/4" fillets to being able to burn through.

The HF arc starts are pretty wicked as well. This machine will jump a spark a couple inches (found out by trying to purge the line and seeing the lightning coming from the torch). :)

I'm not seeing how the diamond back torches got their following though. The head is too thick to get a good grip on the collets when using standard gas lenses. I'm not sure if I want to sell it off, or keep it as a spare at this point. I do know I like my weldcraft 20 better though.

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Wheeee !......That's pretty K.B. !........Nice Job !

I'm wondering if there's someone out there who can sit down and (SIMPLY) explain
to me all these different Heliarc machines ?

Inverters......Transformers.......Square waves.......

I'm not real understanding of these modern machines......I've got a Lincoln Precisiontig 185 (which I love, but of course, have never had anything to compare it with).

I know it's a "square-wave" machine (because it say's so in the owners manual), and I suspect it's got a transformer in it, though I couldn't swear to it because it doesn't "hum" when I'm welding (like for instance, my Miller Thunderbolt).

Marko.

Yes, you have a transformer machine Marko.

Inverters use a different technique to get the amperage at the weld puddle. Look at the volt/amp curves on some different machines and you'll notice that inverters have weaker arc's (lower voltages) for the same weld current. What that equates to is lower wattage in the arc and not as much heat for a given current rating. The trade off for this is that you can modify the waveform in AC because you're actually generating your AC from a DC power supply (like automotive AC adapters do). With AL, you get better performance with higher frequencies, so the inverter is advantageous. Transformers are more robust, bigger, and will likely outlive their owners if protected from the elements.

Thanks JT !...........

I was wondering about them inverters.......

My Precisiontig is a pretty beefy machine.......I'm thinking, around 200 lbs......
(I'd say that's pretty good for a 185 amp machine) ?

I was just wondering about "arc quality"........

I think I read on some boards, that weldors really PRAISE the quality of inverters ?

I'm wondering if it's just not a situation of "Good, Better....or Best" ?

For instance:

GOOD = Lincoln or Miller buzz-box.
BETTER = Lincoln Ranger or Miller Trailblazer
BEST = Lincoln SA200

Well younguns, back when Heliarc® first got invented, them lab boys in the white coats really didn't have much of an idea what the hell was goin on with it. They also had a big problem with the quality & performance of available rectifiers, either giant vacuum tubes, or sylenium stacks. Both of those rectifiers generated a lot of heat, and wasted a considerable amount of power. That's why older machines have truck fans for cooling too, and spend a lot of power turning those fans. It wasn't till well into the 60s that improved rectifiers appeared.

Back in the days when Heliacr® came into the field, it was called Heliarc® because it used a DC arc, and helium as a shielding gas. Somebody in a shop someplace probably got the idea there had to be a better way, and reconnected the machine without the rectifier in the circuit, and developed an AC arc, which turned out to be far better for aluminum. It was still a 60hz arc, but it beat the living crap out of DC on aluminum.

The lab boys got word of the AC arc, and went to looking at how it was working. They sort of figured out AC worked better on aluminum because on the upslope of the 60hz arc, the arc actually provided cleaning action on top of the molten pool. They decided this was some slick snott, and went to seeing how they could mess with the wave form by adding capacitors to the weld side of the transformer, and developed a couple controls called phase angel and something else that I don't feel like walkin to the shop to read.

Machines were produced with a new switch that allowed selection of AC, DC or DCRP without changing cables around, and a couple knobs to control the special effects. Things stayed that way for quite a while.

In the late 70s or early 80s, a new bunch of guys in white coats used some fancy instruments, and some of them newfangled solid state devices, and reinvented Heliarc®. They even went to callin it by a new name, TIG, probably cause company lawyers told them they didn't want to pay licensing for using the Heliarc® nomenclature.

One thing the lab guys figured out was they could use a solid state switch to turn DC on and off pretty damn fast, as well as switch polarity. They built this onto a DC machine, and called it square wave, and reported to the advertising guys that it was so slick it made snott on a doorknob look abrasive. The advertising boys went to work, claiming productivity gains and everything else short of granny bein knocked up, and square wave machines came out of Red & Blue factorys as fast as they could.

Well, you know what happened next, the white coats went back to their playrooms, and reinvented square wave. Now, they called it sawtooth, and pronounced that even better. Their story was that the longer upslope gave more cleaning action.

Of course, the machine still had a fan from a Mack cooling it, and even with all that air moving across all those solid state devices, they cooked. Rumor, among the guys paying the bills, was that the manufacturers had now included a timer that made the machine shyt the bed 3 days after warranty expired.

The long & short of the story is that for the most part, these big heavy machines pretty much had a limited market, and it wasn't Joe Homeowner, or a hobby weldor. Hell, they didn't even have a service in their houses big enough to support one of these machines.

Now, I'll skip over the invention of the hobby weldor phase here, don't really add much to our story.

By 1995, pretty much everything that could be done to a transformer machine had been done. AlGore hadn't yet repealed the law of gravity, so they were still monsters, and still mostly 3Ø. Coincidentally, utilitys across the nation began following the Montana Power model, and using it to run electric rates up. Power conservation became the new battle cry.

Some bright boy in Product Developement, asked the lab boys if they had any ideas, and being wetnosed college matriculated pissants, they all looked at the celinig, and asked what a welder was. Some old fart who didn't know shyt from shinola sat there, and said, well, now that we got all these high speed switches, why don't we try them out using World War II vintage aircraft electrics. The Wunderkinds either laughed themselves silly, or asked what the hell was World War II.

The PC, EEOC Quota Filler GhynoAmerican leading the discussion group, felt it her duty to ask the old fart, who probably despised her, what he was talking about.
He explained that by kicking the power line frequency up to 400 hz rather than 60hz, it had been possible to eliminate 90% of a transformer's weight back in 1940, so airplanes could actually get off the ground with radios aboard. Naturally, the meeting ended with the old fart being laughed out of the room. The GhynoAmerican wrote up her report, and just to cover her glutius maximus, put in a line about Old Herb and his silly idea.

Later, somebody at the company read Ghyno's report, and being old enough to remember hearing about 1940, called Old Herb in to explain WTF he was talking about. Herb being a loyal company man, detailed the situation with a block diagram on the whiteboard, and was dismissed from the office. Shortly after that, Herb was either early retired, or fired for sexually harassing the PC, EEOC Quota Filler GhynoAmerican, and the silk shirted sunuvabych in the front office called a meeting to announce his brilliant concept to invent the "Inverter welder". He even had a block diagram. All the Wunderkinds went back to the lab and built the damn thing, just like Old Herb designed it, and the Inverter Welder became reality.

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Hey KY, why are you posting in my thread? I thought you knew better. Guess not. hahahaha

Same old stock photos you use in miller and sft. How about posting something you made recently? Joe put up a bow bender he made a year ago. My kitty bed was a year old, and I'm sure your pics there (except for the redneck knurling - which I'm sure the FAA would be very interested in) are all old.

I loved that square tubing mig shot you posted. Either you can't cut things square or you sure as hell can't grind edges evenly.

What do you want me to post? I have a whole thread of pics of the bandsaw with nothing but fabrication pictures in it. I don't have access to a mill or lathe, so I make do with what I've got. I also don't expect anyone to worship me for anything I put online. YOU'RE the one who has the fat head here, not me.

Oh, but you don't come here either do you KY? Right Franz? We ain't never seen KY lurking at all over the past week have we? Well, if you consider about 5 hours a night as "not here" I guess he isn't lying. :rolleyes:

I'll also be the first to admit my AL tig sucks right now. I have under 2' of bead with the process. Some of them look like Engloids or Benny's welds, and then some of them are proof that I didn't clean the material well enough. How about we see some destructive testing done on those parts in your pics? How well do they hold up?

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Yeah, that was mature and enlightening. :rolleyes: