"Stephen" wrote in message
...
Hello,

I see there is an 850w (peak), 650w continuous generator in Aldi.
There was a web site listed on the side of the box and I scribbled it
down but I've lost the piece of paper. Does anyone know who makes the
Powercraft tools for Aldi?

Has anyone used this generator? What are your opinions? Is it worth
having or is it better to buy a bigger, more expensive, four stroke
model? How clean is the output: is it pure sine wave? Will all
electronics be happy running from it? Is it noisy?

not got an aldi one, but bought one in germany a few years back when my
motorhome batteries died, cost me 80 euro's, but you can get em from B&Q for
£50, or makro for 30 quid when they have em on sale (plus vat of course)

they are all the same internaly, 50cc 2 stroke engine, small genny head,
it's all one casting, so when the engine dies, you chuck it away, the output
is 'regulated' by a simple capacitor and of course the governer that keeps
it at the right speed, but that's all thats really needed,

as it's a alternator being spun at 3600 rpm or thereabouts, it's a pure sine
wave output, the only danger is when you first start it up and it's on
choke, and it runs out of fuel, then the engine speed will be varying, so
the output frequency will be varying too,

the 650 watt output is for a resistive load (tugsten/halogen light bulb,
simple heater etc) for motors the output is pretty low, think 350 watts has
been mentioned,

they are surprisingly quiet, think mine says 96DBA, but no way is it that
loud, it's not quite honda eu quiet, but it's not open frame contractors
generator loud either,

it sips fuel, mine runs for 6 to 8 hours on a tank of petroil... 4.5 litres,
and 80ml of 2 stroke oil, when i use mine it's running a 20 amp battery
charger mainly, and the laptop charger and my vinyl cutter,
i have inadvertantly had it powering the 1kw imersion heater element in the
calorifier, it bogged the engine down a little, but kept on running it along
with the battery charger which is what i put it on to run, voltage would
have been sagging quite a lot, but the charger will run on 90 to 280 volts,
and a frequancy from 30 to 400hz, and the imersion heater element couldent
care less what it gets fed,

Apparantly the 4 stroke versions of this genny are noisier, and use the same
ammount of fuel as they have an engine twice the size, but about the same
output,

the only thing the little 2 stroke gennies dont like is being lightly
loaded, they 4 stroke... i.e. missing every other firing stroke... that does
make them sound louder, when they have a load on them they purr along...
well sort of, but that's due to the cheapo carb that has to be set so it
dosent lean out at full load, and hence is a bit rich at low load,