An update on my Stickweld 250. I owe it to anyone reading the thread and to Longevity and Simon.
After the issues that my 250 seemed to have, Longevity offered to have their folks take a look at the machine. It was sent back.
They told me to send everything back so I packed it up in the original carton with cables and everything it came with just like I received it. A week after they received it, according to the tracking number, having heard nothing back I called and emailed the POC that I had been dealing with and CC'ed Simon on the email. By the end of the day I was told that a replacement unit was being shipped out. A couple of days later the box arrived.
My first response when I saw the box was not good as it was the original unit's shipping box with the original unit serial number on the box and I thought they screwed up and sent me back my broken unit. Thinking the worst I opened the box. There were my old cables/stinger and I knew it was bad but wait; the bag around the unit did not have the tears that mine did. I pulled out the 250 and there was a brand new Stickweld 250 with a new more recent serial number. It probably cost Longevity more time to remove the new unit form its shipping box and put it into the original unit's box than to just ship a completely new unit in its box. Me I did not care how they did in-house logistics, as long as I was made whole and the replacement unit worked without the problems that had been identified since I first got my original unit.
I hooked it up and tried it out. I immediately noticed a significant difference in amperage requirements using both 7018 as well as 6010. The arc even to my neophyte ears sounded different from what I had been hearing with the older unit. I did not want to say anything here on line about the replacement unit until I gave Shield Arc a chance to evaluate it with his expertise.
A week ago I got back together with Shield Arc to let him re-evaluate the unit. Bottom line, his comment was there is nothing wrong with this replacement unit. We played with the AF which he had doubted worked from the beginning and he could see incremental differences from 0 -10. For the first time I could actually see the difference in the puddle at the different AF settings which were not there before and if I can see the AF differences as well it was definitely working. We did determine that the machine still has a "preference" for Esab 10P Plus but the 6010 rods that just would not work for hill of beans before now worked pretty well. The 6010 1/8" now was running 45 amps less than before and within 4 amps of his V350-Pro so it seemed to be working really well. I can say that without Shield Arc's identification of the problems I may very well have never known anything was truly wrong but just blundered on with the defective unit. Now that I have seen how the unit is really supposed to work and seen the effect that varying the AF has all I can say is how nice it is. I do not know if it came form the factory "defective" or if the shipping company did something that created the problem but I will say that I thought Longevity (with a little bit of prodding) stood behind their product and made me whole.
I owe thanks to Shield Arc for his assistance and I must say that I thought that Simon/Longevity stood behind getting the problems resolved once it was truly and clearly identified.
The Stickweld may not have the features of a multi-thousand dollar unit but it is not a multi-thousand dollar unit. It is what it is and is very good at what it is targeted to do. I am quite satisfied and have no problem recommending folks to consider the 250 if that is the type you are considering.
