Welding Tips and Tricks

I decided it was about time to upgrade my old faithful - 12 year old Esseti scratch start DC tig. To something new with all the bells and whistles.

I ended up with a 200A AC/DC unit from a local importer (yes its Chinese) Full Digital control board and more or less all the setting tweaks I could ever want as a home based machine. Anyhow I will start a new thread with a bit of a review on the particular welder when I get the chance .

My question is regarding the Torch that came with the unit . It's a air cooled unit with HF trigger. Its kind of bulky & clumsy compared to the old scratch start torch on the Esseti. How the torch cable is configured is a little new to me. It's a single mono cable with gas running through the center of the fitting. There is a adapter that came with it to fit a 9mm (small) Dinse style fitting that's used when you plug the MMA cable to the same location.

I was just trying to get my head around how this mono cable design works (The actual single cable from machine to torch head). From what I can tell it looks like the main power cable is actually running inside of a larger outer rubber tube and the Gas flows through the gap between the inner (power) cable and the larger outer rubber tube.

Is this mono(all in one cable and gas) cable design a common design now days or something funky particular to this Chinese machine. My old Esseti at home and the Newish & Esab units at work have a separate gas line . I think the Kemppi at work from memory has a single gas/power line although a different style. The style of this new welder is a 1st for me . I guess my concern would be more about upgrading the torch in the future with this mono cable style fitting.


As they say a pic tells a 1000 words....








Kurt

Hi & welcome to the forum.

Assuming other countries follow the same conventions as here in the UK what you have appears perfectly normal - you should have no problem finding a good selection of torches all with this fitting - the thread here is 3/8" BSP as are all the regulators & even oxy /acetylene equipement - plenty of choice on Ebay if you don't have a good local supplier using this thread - so you can go small WP 9 or water cooled 20 ( my next upgrade when funds allow ) or large WP 17 / water cooled 18 or monstrous 26 !

The only thing slightly odd is most welders here have 3/8" BSP torch connection & a dinse socket close to each other & joined by a buz bar within the set - yours just uses a single power point with the adapter to convert to dinse for MMA - not particularly convenient if you need to swap on a regular basis but really not a problem.

Hope your new purchase works well for your needs & look forward to a review. Cheers.

Thanks noddybrian,
Yes the way the MMA cable connects using the adapter is a little odd.I guess MMA was an after thought and they ran out of real estate to mount a separate post You can see in the pic there is two Dinse style sockets on the left but that's just used to swap the earth cable from + /- when welding AC or DC. I guess some welders have a polarity switch for this as well .

Holding a argon regulator up to the terminal post confirms your thinking its defiantly 3/8" BSP


I don't see my self using MMA option on this new machine . I will most likely use my old 160A DC Esetti as a full time MMA welder now as it came with a great electrode holder and leads and to be honest the Esseti makes a better MMA welder than it dose Tig.

Kurt