[troatman]

New member but plenty of bench time with all kinds of processes on ol blue machines. Recently purchased an ahp alphatig 200x. Wondering if anyone has run this machine on a conventional generator

[Artie F. Emm]

Welcome! Congrats on the new machine. I have not used the Alpha Tig, but have heard that inverter machines need a "clean" power source with less than 5% total harmonic distortion. You can look up that metric for your generator, and here's a hint: the more you have to search, unfortunately, the less likely the machine is within that spec. I was considering a generator sold at the warehouse club (mostly to handle power failures, but also to run welders) and had to call tech support to find the THD was 20-something percent.

[Mike]

Welcome...

[troatman]

Thanks for the info. This alpha tig is truly impressive. I had my doubts about a sub $800 machine but honestly I haven't come across anything it can't do. Could use a better foot pedal and torch but again sub 800 can't get too picky. That being said having a hard time spending 3 grand for a inverter based generator to run a $800 dollar welder. Seems silly. I talked to an inverter supplier and he said I could run the conventional generator have but would need to get a battery bank and all that and at that point you're dragging around four pieces of equipment to power a welder. Urg...back to the drawing board