Need welder help!

[TSchultz]

I am in the market for a new welder possibly two. Mig and a stick/TIG. Looking at doing light duty mfg. Welding a lot of stainless steel tube. Have been talking to the local welding shop and they recomended the Millermatic 180. Is this heavy heavy enough of a welder? Duty cycle? Am I going to be able to weld for longer times or am I going to have to sit and wait for it to cool down?

How would the miller 180 do on aluminum with the spool gun? Nice clean welds. Or is TIG the only way to go?

Now as far as the stick/TIG, I used to have a decent old stick welder but sadly it was stolen, and now needs to be replaced. I know almost nothing about the newer combo stick/TIG welders. It is my understanding that you need to get up into a fairly good sized rig in order to weld aluminum on the TIG side? Recomendations, how thick of steel can you weld with a TIG, aluminum?

I know a lot of questions thank you for your help.

Tom

 

[maddog21]

depend... if you want a big size, then u got to find a higher amp on that machine. i might not know anything about weld but i do welding alot at work, school, and at home. MIG is the better than stick or TIG. maybe you can try get 220 amp or higher if you can find? i have a about 60 or 50 years old Stick weld machine at home and it still work!

 

[skipper]

YOu should go with the Millermatic 212 you would like it and a spool gun will hook up to it for aluminum to make great welds, if you want bigger i just bought the shopmate 300 and weld alot with it and i really like it just have to invest more money because the feeder sells seperate i also have a synchrowave 200 tig/stick that works real well and i use it it works well but most of my work can be done with mig so it sits alot. it all depends on the type of work you want to do with it i have 20 employees welding production for me 8 hrs a day and the 300's work great we have one 212 that we weld with also and have never had a problem with it

 

[spring snow hero]

if your budget allows a multi process inverter machine is the answer. they are small and have amazing duty cycles.....and they do it all. some have built in freq starters and you just need a feeder, spool gun, cooler.......what ever you want to add.

if you are doing light guage tube work tig is that answer. it is infinately more controlable, but not as fast. if you are welding material of say .125 or bigger the mig will be fine and fast too.

the spool guns work good, they are no sub for a tig rig, but they do a lot of welding fast, and if you understand aluminum well, they can produce nice quality welds. all production shops building decks and boats shoot wire from spool guns.

I have been a pro welder for better than 15 years and I have found that any pro grade rig, regardless of mfr works well. stay away from the chineese stuff, but miller, lincoln, esab, thermal dynamics, redi arc, linde, hobart.....and more, used em and never had one that was better then the others except for pipe.

 

[TSchultz]

Has anybody used something like the Miller Maxstar 150, Inverter type How does the TIG portion of it do? The one downside I see is that you cannot weld aluminum. I'm asuming that this is the inverter type welder that you are talking about isn't it spring snow hero.