can anyone recommend me a good hobby tig welder?

Rehmann

Got mine off ebay for £140. Good quality and its the nuts

second that

Mine also has a plasma cutter and Arc welder functions.

got a link??

Are they dc/ac or just ac?

quote:

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Originally posted by big_wasa

Mine also has a plasma cutter and Arc welder functions.

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www.rehmann.com

Mines a lower spec one, but Big Wasa's sounds a bit better.

Dc for the money and they where on ebay a few years back.

[Edited on 26/5/09 by big_wasa]

that www.rehmann.com link goes to R.E Mann insurance brokers whoops

what is a plasma cutter and what does it do? (how does it cut etc)

quote:

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Originally posted by omega0684
what is a plasma cutter and what does it do? (how does it cut etc)

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I have the 200A Rehman off Ebay. Came from Germany, quick delivery (2 days) works very well.

Need Bigger tungstens (and torch collets to take them) than supplied if you want to use high power.

Buy some extra ceramic cups, I broke a couple (me being clumsy not the products fault).
You tend to do this at 3am sunday morning when the shops are closed!.

Cant fault it. My welding quality went up 500% compared to my MIG efforts.


Downside is the Gas.
I rent from Air Liquide.
Rental is same price for any sized bottle (about £80 per annum). So will get a BIG bottle next time when I change.
Check your local dealers, and shop around ie BOC, Air Products etc.

Adams Gas in Kent do £40 (deposit) for a small bottle and no rental + price of the gas. Nice if you are within driving distance and a low volume user.
I am thinking of driving down there and getting two bottles, then changing one when empty, so always have a reserve.


Glad I went TIG, Now wish I had got an AC/DC one. So I can play with Ally, but they were twice the price. May change to AC/DC later.

I paid £200 for the TIG set, including delivery. This was a year ago, and was a good price. Average was about £220.

Havent seen one on Ebay recently.

The pro / cons:

Either pay out £2-3k and get a professional one, which will be excellent, and can always be repaired if it ever went faulty.

Or buy a cheapo Chinese import.
Excellent value for the money.
Not as good duty cycle, but OK for home and light use.
A bugger if they go faulty, as probably no one will repair them. Probably scrap if this happens.
BUT CHEAP.
You can have 5 to 7 x Chinese welders for the price of one UK Prefessional set up.

The choice if yours.

Just my 2 Reils worth.

To give some balance and a few facts on this discussion:

To actually USE much over 150 amps you need a water cooled torch, welders over this power with gas cooled torches are just daft, you won't be able to hold the torch even wearing gloves after a minute or two of welding!!

You can buy a decent, used, non-inverter tig set for 500 to 700 quid, and inverter sets for around 1200 quid of a decent make with available spares.

I have a rehmann plasma, £150, which I could not refuse at that price, but lets not kid ourselves with the german sounding name, they are cheap and chinese all the same!!!

Having recently had to weld up a load of hygienic stainless pipework at work with an inverter arc welder with a tig torch lashed onto it (Iwhen I am used to my all singing set here at the workshop) I have to say that if you are on a budget, you can do very good work using a basic scratch start arc welder setup, and these are so cheap its silly. if you want to weld ally, and need to get into tight spaces using a bit of power (like you do to weld exhaust runners onto the head plate) then you really could do with a water cooled set with its correspondingly small torch