JohnM wrote:

Ignoramus25850 wrote:

Someone offers me a hobart mega-arc 300 with 200' of cable, tig torch,
ground clamp etc. Supposedly can be used for tig welding.

No HF starting.

Question, is that a good deal at $500.

It is a 3 phase machine, which does not bother me terribly too
much. If it demands more power than my 10 HP RPC can produce, I will
add another, second idler motor. These motors cost nothing, relatively
speaking, and can be kept in some unused corner. I would spin up the
first idler and only then start the second, and the load after that. I
have 60A in my garage, easily upgradeable to 75A.

Any thoughts?

i


That should be a pretty good machine, but he's asking a lot of money
for it. If the HF is the old fashioned sort, a cleaning of the spark
gap or replacement of the transformer should be all that's required, I
think any ordinary furnace lighting transformer would work fine.

Offer him $200, see what happens.

Can't be sure, I was thinking Ignoramus meant that it did not have the
HF system at all,
rather than it was not working. Anyway, you really WANT HF. Now that I
have
my Lincoln Square-wave TIG 300, I can't imagine using anything without HF.
And, you will have a horrible time doing Aluminum without HF. Since it is
a 3-phase machine, it either has to be an inverter square-wave system, or DC
only. You can do practically anything BUT aluminum with DC. The whole
reason
I got a square-wave machine was to have aluminum capability. (And, my whole
system of acquiring tools was to get only ONE of any type machine, and
always
try to get the most versatile machines I could.)

Jon