Tig Ac

[Frank S]

While I have used many industrial sized Tig machines. Esab Airco General electric Hobart to name a few. The only tig machine I've ever owned was a Hobart HF250 AC/DC stick/ tig combo it was 100% duty cycle and weighed 300 LBS without the optional water cooling unit I also had a Millermatic spool gun II unit mounted on it along with a Hobart Hefty CC/CV suitcase wire feeder, and a Hobart remote foot pedal. The cart I made to roll this thing around was 2ft wide and 4 ft long with 2 large gas bottles 1 pure Argon and 1 75/25 Argon/CO2 mix.
At full load on 220 v it could draw as much as 80 Amps. Definitely for serious welding but hardly big enough for industrial production use.
All of small hand carried tig units I ever used were dismal at best for my way of thinking at least. most were either AC only or clipped wave DC pulse but when you needed to make a few final welds on handrails they did just fine. the bottle of gas even one of the small sized that you could backpack carry weighed more than the machines themselves.
When it comes to big name brands most if not all use at least some components made in the Asian theater.
My advice would be if there is a trade show coming up somewhere near you that deals with products like these would be to attend it. ask questions try to get a customer feed back and not to take the propaganda sheets offered by the sales person on face value alone
most of all would be to try and locate a repair facility that does repairs in general on various machines try and ask what goes wrong most often with which brand.
Then once you decide on one that you feel might be most suited for your use would be to check the stated duty cycle at full amperage if it says 20% FORGET IT, if it says 40% try it, if it says 60% or more buy it