Welding Tips and Tricks

I am fairly new to the Tig world and wanting to get something that was going to be decent for what I am going to be using it for. Im building an offroad truck that will be fabricated as money allows and was wondering if the Everlast 160STH would be a suitable tig welding 1 3/4 .120 wall 4130 chromoly. That would be the biggest tubing on the entire truck and I would be welding maybe one or two joints at a time at max. I was also looking at the next step up and wondering if the 200 would be worth the $200 extra. This welder is going to be for hobby use only and used very short periods of time so im not worried about catching it on fire I just want something that will get the job done. I have been watching Jody's videos on the different Everlast machines and he has some pretty good things to say about them, but he was welding all smaller steel items in the videos.

Thanks,
Christian

Christian,

The 160 amps would be plenty to weld 120 wall CrMo, but who's to say that someone wont ask you to weld something thicker? Granted, you could always do multi-pass welds to weld thicker material, but there is more time involved there vs having the juice to do it. One thing to be said about the 160STH: The foot pedal overrides the panel amps, which means that just lightly pushing the pedal puts out 10 amps, and flooring it puts out 160, no matter what you set the knob on the control panel to.

If it's in your price range, I would recommend the Power-i-TIG200, which on their website lists for $699, or $210 over what list is on the PowerARC160STH directly from them. The Power-i-Tig welders are capable of limiting amps with the panel knob, rather than have the foot pedal control the full amperage range of the machine. I also recommend dealing directly with Everlast if you are going to buy one, rather than go through Amazon or something. Typically I deal with Oleg, the owner, and every time I talk to him he is easy to deal with and has been willing to wheel and deal.

I guess a better question would be what type of line voltage do you have access to? Both machines are choked back to 120 amps at 120VAC, with full capacity being at 240VAC.

Welcome to the forum Christian.

In my experience a more powerful machine is always the better way to go if you can afford it. Be it MIG, TIG, or stick, you will have things come up that you want to weld and working at or beyond a machine's limit can result in cold welds or the dreaded lack of fusion. I am retired and just weld as a hobbyist now, but once my friends and relatives learned I had welder set up, they often bring stuff to me to get welded. I'm betting you will also have more things to weld in the future than what you are planning now. Just my $0.02 worth

Thank you guys for the responses! I am thinking the 200 is going to be a better bet. Im not going to be using the stick part of it but I like the fact that I will have mig, tig and stick once I get this machine. I cant wait to get my tig on!

I bought a Diversion 180 from Miller. I wanted to do both steel and aluminum. With steel up to 3/16" it was tolerable, but the limits of duty cycle were annoying. With aluminum, even 16 gauge was too much if I needed to weld more than a few inches in one joint. In just over a year I've bought three TIG welders. It would be much cheaper to buy one good one!

Wait, you do know its a TIG/Stick machine, and DC only right? I'm assuming you already have a MIG welder, but I don't want you to be disappointed if it arrives and you have no MIG

Amps - welder available
some is good,more is better,too much just about right

rick9345 wrote:Amps - welder available
some is good,more is better,too much just about right

Too much has never happened.