Fronius ‘cordless’ arc /dc tig unit

[Arclikeharrypotter]

29 rods out of the lorch on one charge.

Do you think that figure will be middle ground amperage range of a 2.5 or right on bottom end? I've been using fronius machine lately, cracking piece of kit, but think it's time we bought our own, both lorch and fronius have there good and bad points.

 

[Arclikeharrypotter]

Only just saw @Richard. Response, deffo worth a closer look I think.

 

[Richard.]

Whatever the make battery welder bought you need some high value work to pay for it.
If the snap on man sold them on the weekly drip im sure they would end up in the van but a outright purchase with a fair chunk of money for a just incase tool would be hard to justify.
Right job right money Id have one

Absolutely
They certainly ain’t meant to be stored in a cupboard and do a 5 minute job once a year and on the other hand you wouldn’t buy a battery to use it in a workshop environment 8 hours a day. It’s a maintenance/quick job tool. Pays for itself in convenience/time saving where jobs take longer setting up than actual welding or simply where getting power may be near on impossible.
We sold one to to the Lafarge guys. They shut down the cement mill once a week For an hours inspection and general patch up if needed. To those guys shutting down costs thousands per hour so the quicker they can have a weld repair done the better. They bought it this year and it’s probably paid for itself over and over now.

 

[Robbie260]

Get the Lorch MicorTig 200 @pressbrake1

I just got one of those was torn between the foronius and the lorch ended up with the lorch micor tig 200 basic as that advanced ones screen was just waiting to be smashed i felt. I want too get in too a bit of mobile engineering work but as i dont have space too keep a generator welder had too be battery power. I will eventually get a second battery if i think i need it but i dont see any foreseeable situation in which ill need too burn more than 29 rods in one go. Also wanted a hf dc pulse tig machine so thought id kill two birds with one stone and get the micor tig. Partly got it as a present too my self too work on my land rover which is stored in a garage that has no power with no economic way of getting too it.

I felt the external battery was a better idea than an intergated one if it gose wrong. Also im going too install a pure sine wave inverter in my pickup to charge the battery when needed 1500w inverter and its a 300w charger so it should do the job.

A review will be coming ounce covid 19 is over and im back from sea it unfortunately only turned up just before i left so no real opportunity to play before i left, didnt manage too get my hands on plugs for the welder and charger untill the day before i left.

 

[Robbie260]

Even your engine welder will fail one day.
All other welders will fail eventually. Everything dies.

Going off the info in the lorch thread that unit is £1500.
3 year warranty/1000 battery cycles.

That's £500 a year or £1.50 per charge cycle.

If you use it only 1 time per month it costs £43 per job if it dies on the day the warranty runs out.

If I am the only one who can get to the remote spot that needs 10mins of welding with no access for machines or a lot of effort for the farmer to get a generator out there you can guarantee I will be charging at least £100 for that job.

What I just got one for.

after seeing the fronius price im thinking theres more mileage in developing a decent battery pack, better than the dewalt offering but not like the tesla thing.
Any electronic engineers on here?

The dewalt one is just the foronius painted yellow.

 

[Arclikeharrypotter]

resurrecting an old thread here, but now had the lorch micorstick 180 and battery for the past 6 months or so, used nearly every day. Just thought I'd give you my thoughts.

The welder itself is a lovely bit of kit, super smooth when running, I've used this for alot of hard facing, and big jobs burning electrode after electrode in the summer heat we've had and it kept up beautifully. This was mostly run off a 50m 240v extension cord. Only issue ive had is when running off 110V it gives me an error code when striking an arc, so I'm yet to test the 110v side of things. Not sure if anyone here could shed some light on this.

Battery wise, well other than the fronius I've nothing to compare it to. No performance issues, I tried to gauge how many electrodes it would burn off a single charge, i think if you were to run electrode after elctrode the figures that lorch give are pretty fair. In the real world with tacking, down time when not welding and running higher amperage then the number is a little less. Saying that I've done a few jobs that I and others around me were surprised it did off a single charge.

The charger is my on gripe with machine, first one stopped working on first charge, which happens, so thats not a negative. But the power input on the charger unit feels a bit of a slack sloppy fit that could easily be mistakenly pulled out. Other than that does what its supposed to do.

Overall I love the little thing, beats dragging a genset about, and unravelling cables.

 

[matt1978]

PM sent

 

[Brad93]

You know the only thing I think I prefer about the fronius, is the fact that you can use the charger plugged into the machine, if you’re running on a poor mains supply or generator, the charger/battery boosts the power, apparently.

I suppose Fronius have a bit of an advantage in this field, a third of their business is charging systems.

The fact you can have more than one battery with the Lorch though is far better. If you really are working completely off grid, it’s far superior. And a lot more rods from the Lorch than a Fronius.

 

[Arclikeharrypotter]

You know the only thing I think I prefer about the fronius, is the fact that you can use the charger plugged into the machine, if you’re running on a poor mains supply or generator, the charger/battery boosts the power, apparently.

I suppose Fronius have a bit of an advantage in this field, a third of their business is charging systems.

The fact you can have more than one battery with the Lorch though is far better. If you really are working completely off grid, it’s far superior. And a lot more rods from the Lorch than a Fronius.

Unless running off the battery only Think you've always got to use it in conjunction with the charger Brad , the fronius that is. Saying that when I had a go with one I couldn't get it to run properly off the mains, probably doing something wrong.