Help with under finding £500 ac/dc TIG welder (UK)

[Paddy1000111]

Hello everyone,

So this will be my first TIG welder and I need some help. I wont be a heavy user, I have a Landrover and I need to carry out some ally repairs (hence AC/DC). Plus I just plain want to learn how to TIG weld. I appreciate I'm not going to get a lot for £500 (that excludes the cost of bottles etc) but I hope I can find something for that price! I wondered if anyone knew something that I could get? Maybe even a good used item?

Thanks for the help!

 

[PTvor]

Put "AC TIG" into ebay and set the price limit to say, £50 to £500 and see what turns up.

You get things like Stahlwerk which is supposed to have a 5 year guarantee, MigTig and others, which I think are EU based suppliers, in Germay, Poland and Italy.

Opinions vary as to how much hassle they are to deal with when things go wrong.

Then there are these who are UK based selling generic Chinese TIG sets.

http://www.localtoolsales.com/welding-equipment-plasma-cutters/tig-welders


Some people find they are OK.

If they go wrong you don't have much support and it must be hard to decide to spend £150 getting a thing fixed when it only cost £400 to start with.

To get a new one which will be Chinese but which will have a decent UK based warranty you are looking at around £900.

Then there's second hand.

 

[Paddy1000111]

Thanks for that I appreciate it! There are ones made by "sherman" but I haven't seen many reviews about them. As far as repairs go I would be happy doing most things myself as I can do circuit board diagnostics etc. I just don't want to buy something that is useless!

 

[PTvor]

I'm not a tigster but I've taken a bit of interest in the machines. The general view seems to be that the performance of these Chinese TIG sets isn't as nice as production quality machines, and they have something of a name for being unreliable. Don't forget that an AC/DC TIG inverter is a complicated beast and its reliability won't be helped by having corners cut.

I haven't seen a circuit diagram for one of these generic AC/DC TIG sets and fixing one without at least that is going to be challenging.

See here for a video of a tear down and comments on the standards of construction.

I don't think that they are exactly useless, they are good enough while they work, it's just that the quality is variable and when they go phutt they can be hard to fix.

If you forget the ally and go for a DC TIG machine you can get something quite nice for < £500

 

[NickyEng]

Yeah you will get something Chinese for 500 quid might be reasonable might be a pile of rubbish. It's always a gamble. I would go second hand on a decent brand but at 500 quid you still not gonna have a lot to pick from unless you grab a bargain as Chris a member on here did a few weeks ago

 

[Richard.]

You need to up the budget and save for longer. £500 doesn't get much in the way of acdc. It's a cheap Tig but an expensive door stop. Avoid all these European branded imported cheap sets and buy one with local support to make for a peace of mind life. You might get lucky you might not but can you afford to take the chance. I've heard of UK suppliers like RTECH send machines with faults but they can collect and replace it for you in 48 hours. Tigmig and stalwerk require you to send it back to Italy or Germany and pay for that too before they'll look at it. Save a little longer and spend a little more.

 

[GW8IZR]

Hello everyone,

So this will be my first TIG welder and I need some help. I wont be a heavy user, I have a Landrover and I need to carry out some ally repairs (hence AC/DC). Plus I just plain want to learn how to TIG weld. I appreciate I'm not going to get a lot for £500 (that excludes the cost of bottles etc) but I hope I can find something for that price! I wondered if anyone knew something that I could get? Maybe even a good used item?

Thanks for the help!

there is nothing wrong with buying a tig to learn how it works and use it, heck I have a shed full of stuff bought on that pretence but..

I've restored a heck of a lot of LR's over maybe thirty years and apart from tiging a timing cover on a V8 and repairing one S1 tub which to be honest I could have done a cheaper way by forming a new sheet and swapping the panel I've never actually *needed* to tig repair a LR.

There are far better qualified people on here to comment but for general LR repairs I'd pick a better tool than a cheap china tig, I think a nice quality mig would be better for such jobs.

HTH

 

[Paddy1000111]

Thanks for that, I already have a MIG welder, I want to learn how to TIG weld and I work a lot in aluminium (I have turned my shed into a machine shop). I have a 2003 TD5 with only 50,000 on it so its not too bad at all, just a couple of body panels have electrolysis!

So I will get one for a little more money then. What would people recommend as an entry level AC TIG welder? Make and model?

Thanks for all the help!

 

[Shox Dr]

Firstly welcome to the forums...and the mine field you have just wandered into called Cheap TIG sets. There has [and continues to be] heated discussions on the pro's and cons of buying a sub 500quid set, hell even a sub 1k set.

On the whole the genaral opinion is stay away from units direct from ROC. Also be aware that machines from europe may just be a rebadged ROC unit, doomed to fail. So take into count return costs, and having to deal with ???

BUT [and its a big but] nearly everything you buy is made there these days. So you need to look to what happens when it does go bang. There is one company [I wont mention the name as some people have paddys (no pun)] that stand firmly behind thier gear, its at the lower to mid end of the market, and worth a look in my opinion.

Thats not to say expensive stuff doesnt go wrong, (it's not cheap when it does - I know) so do your reseach (its what the search bar is for, there is a more than enough for you to make an informed decision; whether that is the right one who knows

 

[PTvor]

Well, avoiding the R word, because it's like a red rag to a bull to some members....

You could ring Weldequip - check the link at the top of the page, and ask about these

http://www.weldequip.com/swp-digitig-200.htm

http://www.weldequip.com/parweld-202p-tig.htm

Or if you want to launch the boat and have a five year warranty

http://www.weldequip.com/pro-tig-200p-acdc.htm

Weldequip has a reputation for not selling rubbish and it's certainly worth phoning and speaking to him before ordering. There are many other suppliers.

Generally I think that if you are spending around £850 on a new AC/DC set from a UK supplier with a two year warranty and some sort of established reputation for support, you are likely to get around £850 worth, considering performance and peace of mind and everything. Some deals may be a bit better than others.

 

[dannyp]

landrover bodywork seems to be very random aluminium i think it's called burbabrite but it seems to be an alloy that can cotain pritty much anything that isn't steel and some aluminium and proably in varing ratios day to day.

some landrover pannels weld lovely others barely, personly i think your better off migwelding ally landrover pannels with a copper backing strip. mig tolerates the crud better, wth tig you'll be regrindign the thunsten all the time as it furrs up

 

[Fintray]

landrover bodywork seems to be very random aluminium i think it's called burbabrite but it seems to be an alloy that can cotain pritty much anything that isn't steel and some aluminium and proably in varing ratios day to day.

some landrover pannels weld lovely others barely, personly i think your better off migwelding ally landrover pannels with a copper backing strip. mig tolerates the crud better, wth tig you'll be regrindign the thunsten all the time as it furrs up

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmabright

 

[Jim Davey]

If you have 3 phase I've a nice Migatronic 200 that I can do for around your budget.

 

[rikrobson]

http://www.frost.co.uk/auto-bodywor...ding-tools/eastwood-tig-200-ac-dc-welder.html

 

[Paddy1000111]

Thanks to everyone who chipped in! I appreciate the help! My next battle is trying to find somewhere in Exeter that refills CO2 bottles for my MIG as I have a few pub gas bottles around!

 

[Paddy1000111]

Thanks, I'll give them a try. Places seem to be funny about it!