Customer Reviews
I have been a tool & die welder for 30 years and this machine welds as good as any miller machine. Very very impressed!!!!
Nice product, fast shipping, well packaged
Take this review with a grain of salt as I am not a welder. I bought this to learn to weld. I do however have a great deal of experience working with electronics and mechanical equipment. I bought the bundle that came with the water cooler, welder, and ck worldwide water cooled torch. Setting everything up was pretty easy.The cart is sturdy and not obviously cheap. holds bottles and equipment well. I'll probably add some hooks and maybe a shelf or two to hold the electrodes and torches.The water cooler seems to be of pretty good quality, however the assembly was lack luster. It was evident that someone had cut some corners when putting it together. The parts used for the cooler seem just fine, but the cables were not secured and there was trimmed zip ties and even an unused zip tie just floating around in the case waiting to jam something. Some of the bolts securing the motor and pump down as well as the internal circuitry were loose. This prompted me to open the enclosure to properly secure everything and ensure premature failure did not occur. No other issues beyond that.The accessories that come with the welder are all fine. It stick welds really well in ac and dc. My stick welds are ugly but I know that isn't the welder's fault. If I really take my time I can easily make very nice looking and strong stick welds.The TIG portion of the welder and controls are all great. Easy to understand and change. Everything has worked for me so far and the current is accurate. I have had great success tig welding mild steel. I have not had great success tig welding aluminum but that probably has more to do with me than the welder. The foot pedal feels good and current control seems to be accurate. All of the AC balance control and pulse features seem fine. It does clean the aluminum very well. It puts out more than enough current to weld very very thick material while still dialing back enough to weld very thin material without much trouble. It comes with a hand control as well that I have not used but it felt pretty good playing with it out of the box. I have not tried stainless yet but I'll update the review when I do. If I knew how to weld I'm sure it would stack dimes on just about anything.Only reason 4 stars and not 5 is because the Water cooler was not put together well. Haven't had any other issues after about 5 or 6 hours of welding. Never needed to contact tech support but I'll add that if I do.Update after owning it for 5 months. Moving from 4 to 5 stars.This machine is AWESOME. Support for the machine is unparalleled. I'd been really struggling with TIG. My mild steel welds we're pretty dirty and aluminum was impossible to form a puddle. After trying to weld for weeks I finally called tech support. A guy Named Nick answered the phone on the second ring at 6pm. He very patiently walked me through my settings and setup and after about 30 min of chatting he said he was pretty sure I had the wrong gas or contaminated gas. Yeah, sure enough I had 75/25 in a brand new bottle that was supposed to be 100% Argon (dang Airgas store...). Swapped the bottle out and it ran like a different machine. Strikes an arc perfectly. Super stable arc even when doing AC aluminum. Extremely crisp current control. Torch stays ice cold even when welding at 200amps. I still suck at Tig welding, but now I'm 100% sure it's my fault. Even for a complete rookie, you can lay a decent bead of weld after a bit of practice.You cannot get a better machine for the money. If you are just starting out or looking to get a nice machine for a home shop, this thing kicks ass.1 year update:After over a year now the machine is still great. Still no issues even after several 8 hours straight sessions of stick and tig welding. Have not managed to hit thermal shutoff yet even after relentlessly burning rods at 120 amps for several hours straight. I've also welded stainless, copper, and even did some brazing and it performed all without issue. Even after a year of sucking in metal dust it's just fine. All I do is dust it with a blower once in awhile. Continues to be a great machine for me.