Welding Tips and Tricks

I was looking around at tig welders for something to do and I noticed and have noticed before that Lincoln likes to stay with transformers and miller goes toward the inverters and make a much smaller more portable machine. Why is this? Does Lincoln want to play towards old timers or keep that old transformers and lets miller make the inverters.

Not sure where you are looking? From what I can see, Lincoln's lowest and highest end tigs are inverter. All the mig and mp machines up through powermig are inverters.

I guess I was more referring to comparing their middle sized machines. The dynasty 210 and precision tig 225. The extreme weight difference is what threw me off. Like 200 pounds for the Lincoln and about 50 for the dynasty. That threw me for a loop. Lincolnshire lower end are inverters but they get really heavy on the middle range.

You are spot on there, Lincoln is definitely missing a middle range inverter. If they made one, I would have gotten that instead of the dynasty 210. The precision tig is a much nicer machine than the synchrowave, too bad there isn't an Apsect 250 or something.

Middle range Lincoln? Like my Invertec v-250s ?

Really, really nice stick welder - tig with foot control too. Same duty cycle as my 350 pound Miller dialarc.

The new version is a v-275.

Since they are primarily stick machines I didn't see them. They also said lift arc out of the box so you must have done a little extra work to get a foot pedal. I was mostly talking about primarily tig machines.

Farmwelding wrote:Since they are primarily stick machines I didn't see them. They also said lift arc out of the box so you must have done a little extra work to get a foot pedal. I was mostly talking about primarily tig machines.

Virtually every TIG box will also do Stick. And Lift Arc or Scratch Start or HF Start can all generally use a foot pedal. These are not mutually exclusive features.

Yeah I know they can all run stick except cheaper versions or Diversions from miller which makes me mad. Again I was just referring to primarily tig machines. Your dynasty maxstars, precision tigs.

The squarewave 200 has stick mode. 90 amps on 110, 170 amps on 220. Is that kinda what you were thinking?

maker of things wrote:You are spot on there, Lincoln is definitely missing a middle range inverter. If they made one, I would have gotten that instead of the dynasty 210. The precision tig is a much nicer machine than the synchrowave, too bad there isn't an Apsect 250 or something.

The Aspect 375 is only rated for 240 amps at 40% duty cycle when hooked to 1 phase power outlet. Bit deceiving considering its price and how its advertised.

Skylineauto wrote:

maker of things wrote:You are spot on there, Lincoln is definitely missing a middle range inverter. If they made one, I would have gotten that instead of the dynasty 210. The precision tig is a much nicer machine than the synchrowave, too bad there isn't an Apsect 250 or something.

The Aspect 375 is only rated for 240 amps at 40% duty cycle when hooked to 1 phase power outlet. Bit deceiving considering its price and how its advertised.

While it is a little pricy, it may have a good arc start for low amps or have a really nice arc. Never used it, but every company has to have at least one overly expensive machines.

Farmwelding wrote:Since they are primarily stick machines I didn't see them. They also said lift arc out of the box so you must have done a little extra work to get a foot pedal. I was mostly talking about primarily tig machines.

It's got a port for the foot control under that little screw on cap with the chain.

Really like this welder, only 35 lbs too

My little 120v/240v Thermal Arc 161 does not have foot control, but is also still an excellent tig.

Well I guess that's the answer. If you want basic tig with no fluff controls(pulse, frequency, balance) you can get a smaller machine from Lincoln but if you want more controls you have to get a bigger machine. I guess they are both good machines. Not any experience with Lincoln tigs just millers. So until I try out some Lincoln tigs I don't have anything to say on arc quality. Just an observation on the overall size.

Farmwelding wrote:Well I guess that's the answer. If you want basic tig with no fluff controls(pulse, frequency, balance) you can get a smaller machine from Lincoln but if you want more controls you have to get a bigger machine. I guess they are both good machines. Not any experience with Lincoln tigs just millers. So until I try out some Lincoln tigs I don't have anything to say on arc quality. Just an observation on the overall size.

In my opinion, you'll find that most often all you need is an arc and a foot control.

All the other options are just fluff - important fluff depending on your job of course.

Mostly I don't see the need - my first tig is this 1963 Airco 300. 900 lbs of awesome with just amperage and a foot control.

Crazy nice 7018 welder as well

Best way to learn is with no fluff controls. Polarity and amperage so all you need. It is nice if you are doing specialty jobs, but you don't even need a foot pedal sometimes. Technically you only need a foot pedal for aluminum. It is nice though.

Farmwelding wrote:Best way to learn is with no fluff controls. Polarity and amperage so all you need. It is nice if you are doing specialty jobs, but you don't even need a foot pedal sometimes. Technically you only need a foot pedal for aluminum. It is nice though.

Absolutely, learn to tig without cool features.

I would make the argument that foot control is necessary for many jobs.
When I'm building something for people that involves several different thicknesses and thick-to-thin is the norm, I definitely want a foot control even for steel.

On the decorative piece I'm doing right now I have 3/4" square solid, 3/4" x 1" solid, 1/2" square solid, and 1/4" round bar all going together. Some of the round bar gets tapered to a fine point and gets welded to the heavy bar. Foot control really helps make this weld perfectly.

Clearly I would use some of the cool features if I had them though.

Changing the positive amplitude of the AC wave forms, adjustable balance, and changing the frequency definitely have advantages for aluminum. I'd use the heck out of them

Absolutely Dave I agree. Foot pedal is almost necessary in a lot of cases. If you really wanted to you could do it with about an extra half hour or more of extra prep. Those extra controls are more fun to use when you she my learned with them. Diversion 180 at my high school bare bones. Got decent on that machine and then used a dynasty 210 DX and a dynasty 350 after watching some of Jodys videos at my local tech school and had a little fun just messing with controls. I know Jody talked about it one of his tig welding podcasts about the Hobart school of welding teaching tig welding with pulse first to feed rod. As far as I see it everyone should start the hardest way possible to respect the better machines and process. Start with stock of you can and then use mig for how easy it is. Before you tig do some gas welding-that's what I did and damn I'm glad that tig welding is as good as it is.