DIYbanter - TIG welder info

On Sep 3, 3:39*pm, David Billington
wrote:
Jon Elson wrote:
Bill Martin wrote:

FS12746

It seems to come with an air-cooled torch, if you are doing anything
substantial, you will probably want to get a water-cooled torch and
cooler.

It is only rated at 20% duty cycle at 200 A, so you have to stop every
30 seconds or so to let it cool at rated current.

You will want to get gas lenses instead of the cheap ceramic cups to
reduce Argon usage, gas is now the most expensive part of TIG welding.

As for reliability and maintainability of the brand, I have no idea.

Jon

What duty cycle details do the US mandate, in Europe the standard is 10
minutes IIRC so a 20% duty cycle would give *2 minutes welding time.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Don't know that there's an "officially mandated" duty cycle here.
Hobby stuff can go from 5% on up, industrial quality welders vary with
how much cash you fork out, some of the engine driven and mongo
transformer welders will run 100% duty cycle and cost accordingly.
The duty cycle is in the specs, it's up to the buyer to trade off cost
with duty cycle. Usually prep and setup time are longer than the
actual welding time, so lower duty cycles aren't really that
constraining for a lot of projects. Structural steel and heavy pipe
joining are exceptions.

Stan