Activity looks a little slow on the forum, heres some reading for ya TBN.
I've had this machine for 3 years now. It's been a GREAT machine. I've Migged, Sticked, Tigged. It's been in/out of y truck so many times I almost wish I had 2 welders instead of carrying this one around. For the price of it I coulda bought 2 chinese welders, (and leave em be) but that idea didn't come at the right time (when the Miller salesman was workin' me over). But I do like this welder. I use it mostly on power from an 8,000W generator.
Here's a recent project (
ripper claw). Here's trying
stick-welding with it.
I've migged continuously at 2/3 power for 20 minutes straight, it never shut down.
Duty-cycle thread HERE. The dreaded 20% duty-cycle that screws up your whole day, ya know, toe-tapping waste of time, a legend around even before the internet (at least with this 20% machine). :laughing::laughing::laughing: I suppose someone could get it to shutdown, but then they'd have to wear that event as a badge of honor on forums for the next 10 years or it wouldn't be worth it. :laughing::laughing::laughing:
I've looked around on the internet for credible tales of modern quality eqpt doing the duty-cycle shutdown thing and they don't seem to exist. I know some of you folks argue vociferously that 20% is not enough, but real evidence just doesn't appear in the fossil record.
Maybe I'm no good at google though. I hate to see new welders waste money right out of the gate assuming 20% duty cycle is going to be insufficient. So please, internet welding experts, if you want to disagree with this, please PROVE it for your fellow TBN member. Provide links to credible accounts, that are in line with what a normal TBN member might do with a welder. Not some pie-in-the sky welding story where you were riding the carriage of a pile-driver up and down on 60mph winds on a drill rig in the arctic ocean, but in reality you were plugged into a worn out 15A breaker and you kept having to go down into the basement and reset it.
Plus this is a new era - its our duty expose fake news! :thumbsup:
In any case be sure that spending real dollars for duty-cycle beyond 20% is just "extra money" cuz you ain't gettin' much to show for it. I've been told that if there's duty-cycle to worry about ----> it's in welding Aluminum. I have not yet tried welding aluminum, so have zero experience to report. I have the spoolgun but don't have another bottle for the gas (yet).
Heres some pics of how I deal with the portability.
I added a loop of webbing
with a squeeze buckle (from a game camera strap)
Added CPC quick-disconnect couplings to the gas hoses. 1/4" size for the Ar/CO2; and 5/16" size for the TIG nitiogen. The short side from the regulator is just "open" because I can purge it easily. The side that connects to the welder has a "shutoff" that closes when you disconnect, so the hose holds whatever gas was in it last, and you don't need to purge it. I like these connectors.
Added a captive wire clipper that can't escape like its predecessors.
Then some fellers on TBN talked me into getting the TIG kit that was a whole lot more FUN! Here's a special fitting I made with the TIG (low pressure only)
