small 130A invertor welders.

Any one got one of these 4 kilo machines. I have been told they are crap,--yet they sell like hot cakes.

Anyone got one.

 

What no reply?

I thought every one had these things. I have seen them being used by the Thais do do high roof work because of there lightness.

However an Aussie engineer who I have respect for said that his cut out after a few seconds of continuous welding, that of course is unacceptable.

Any opinions on these things.

 

There are a lot of inverter based welders out there & most of them are chinese junk. Eblag is full of them but honestly would you buy one with dubious or no guarrantee? I was looking for a Tig welder to do stainless & other fine work & looked at inverters, the problem seems to be most of them suck so much power from the single phase supply they will be lucky to run at half rated max power if that.
Typically for a 180 amp inverter (a typical size) with 240V supply an inverter will pull anywhere from 16 amps on lowest setting to 40 amps on full whack.
You are not going to run that for long at the end of a long lead down the boatyard! In the end i settled on a British built tranformer based machine running on three phase, fixed instalation but i would rather have the power.

 

Got one cheapo crap like that.. it's useless. Thou it camed with a "bargain" when I bought me automatic mask, which by the way works fine, so no harm.

 

I use the Miller Maxstar 150

http://www.millerwelds.com/products/tig/maxstar_150_sth/

You have to pay for it, but this is a excellent machine.
I don't weld enough to have several units, so if I had to do it again I would pick up a similar machine which does ac/dc tig so I could muck around with AL.

 

China junk

I had a project on the islands that we needed an inverter welder for. I burned up three boxes in three days then the forth one worked and it welded just fine for weeks and is still running fine.

I bought a China plasma cutter and it worked fine for about an hour then burned up. Returned it, burned the next then the third worked.

That was my experience.

Given the choice I would buy first world, but we did not have that choice.

By the way the China gloves we bought were almost tissue paper and we got steady finger burns from the holes that kept opening up.

Just reporting as we lived it.

Scott

 

Thanks yachtwork, not good news but thats your experience OK.

The Chinese is all I can get, the guy in the shop said he had sold about 70 and only 2 had come back but they can be repaired --he said.

Then he said they were great for tacking stuff high up and could carry the machine on the shoulder strap. he continued to sort of talk me out of it.

The company that makes the Chinese plasma cutter refuses to import to Malaysia!! dunno why,--I can guess.

 

A couple of the main tool/shop suppliers around here carry these things, often under their own house brand names but sometimes with a Lincoln sticker on the side. A couple say "Made in Italy" but look more like "Final assembly in Italy using Chinese components".
The prices look amazing (180 amp MIG with accessories for under five hundred bucks?) until you read the fine print. Incredibly short duty cycle, impossibly onerous warranty terms.... I've been a bit sceptical.
Good to see my scepticism isn't misplaced....

 

What does that duty cycle actually mean? say 60%

Like I can only use it 40 minutes in 1 hour? Then what!!! let it cool down?

Not much good when you want to finish a job with 1 more inch of weld.

I can buy an oil cooled 160 weighing in at 20+ kilos for 100 bucks, they never stop, but 20 kilos is a pain on boats,--up and down ladders or using a halyard if you got one, then back up again at night so it don't get stolen which is what happened to the last'!!!!!.

Like kieth said above a 160 amp machine draws 31 amp at 220 V thats a lot. I would have to upgrade the breaker to run that.

 

Pretty much.... duty cycle, IIRC, is on a 10 minute basis. So a 30% duty cycle at a given current setting means that in any 10 minute period, there's a good chance you'll cook the thing if it's producing an arc for more than three of those minutes. Or, put another way, you need to take a 7-minute beverage and snack break for every three minutes of actual work.

 

Is that a 3 minute solid run? something like 1 meter weld?

Thats not too bad,--I suppose. There is an overheat light, so when that comes on you gotta stop.

Might be ok for what I do.

 

My Chinese MIG-welder/plasma cutter/electrode welder didn't work when I took it out of the box, but that was just a connector that was dangling free after the long journey. They will have discovered by now that the addition of a small tie-wrap prevents a lot of problems.

I've used it for more than a year now and found it to perform incredibly good. The duty cycle is 80% at 90 amps (electrode welding!), so including changing electrodes and looking at the weld you can keep on going all day.

The user manual is the only weak point. Like always it is a bundle of riddles, words that are in no dictionary or just improperly used.

 

Inverter welders are an extraordinary invention, they live the transformer welders be it MIG or TIG for dead. Smooth, light...however not cheap at all.
Unfortunatley inverters got a bad reputation because most people know only the cheap version. Try a Lincoln invertor and you will not look back. It will cost you thoug!
http://www.lincolnelectric.com/knowledge/articles/content/inverter.asp

 

Hopefully they will come out with an "Engrish" translation dictionary, it would be very helpful in this day and age.

 

Frosty,
duty cycle is extremely important when choosing a welder. A "stick welder" (SMAW) should be at least 65% duty cycle. A CV(For GMAW, FCAW) should be higher, preferably running at desired parameters for 100%. Lincoln, Miller, Hobart, ESAB all put out good quality equipment. I used some Chinese equipment when working on a fuel tanker in The Bahamas & went through constant melt-downs & "gremlin chasing". Never again! Another thing to look for is that the welder has copper windings, not aluminum.
Mike