Cheap Ebay Welder -- WILL IT TIG?!

hold on a minute something I gotta show you you're never gonna believe this oh come on and I know it's in here somewhere no here it is I bought a baby welder this is an edges VIN and that says it's from eBay from eBay this is sold as a 220 amps stick welder no I just got this haven't even wired it yet give me a minute to just run out and buy a purse for all my stuff we'll get this set up and try it out again sold is a 220 amp inverter stick welder and we'll certainly try that first but what I want to know is will it tick did I mention this cost 50 bucks maybe 60 bucks I'll flash the ad up on the screen and that's what I paid shipping included part of me was expecting some big duty or customs fee given all the China hubbub going on but 50 60 bucks in a week later sinks sitting on my doorstep came with a bunch of stuff to some kind of I don't know DIY welding mask for Halloween yeah we'll go through all this stuff in a minute before everyone starts going crazy in the comments asking for a link or who I bought it from I really don't know I'll put the ad up again I've been seeing these things pop up curiosity got the best of me went on eBay searched for mini inverter welder I don't even remember what I put in there there's a million of them just pick one I don't mean to be negative but I'm willing to bet they're all the same see which one tickles your fancy I opted for the lgbtq version but you know you do you I only noticed a few days after actually placing the order that this thing is actually listed I believe is a hundred and sixty-five to 220 volt welder I don't know about you but I don't have one sixty five volts around here so we'll try it at 110 I'm not expecting it to do very much but we'll try it and after that we'll hook it up to 220 we're gonna try it out fair and square cards where they land or they fall or whatever that thing is and then maybe we'll open it up see what makes it tick okay I'm only just noticing that there is no ground here and they've given me a two prong plug once this thing is powered up I'm going to be extra careful not to touch it wow this thing is loud it's like a hairdryer [Music] 223 thirty volts open circuit terminals are labeled correctly see if there's any AC getting through here not really 56 volts across the casework I don't know what that means but it'll been happier if that was zero all right well it turns on that's a good first step let's give this thing a fighting chance I should have some thin 6013 electrodes let me get the cables hooked up get out the stinger and ground clamp our wire Lee I don't think these are meant to be Wireless took me to better part of an hour just to get through one 330 second electrode see what the literature has to say here hmm I'm gonna have to lean on Google Translate for this one turns out I've got some cable on hand not very much I'm gonna end up with some really short leads but it should be enough for testing yeah I went back and I checked the ad it doesn't explicitly say that it doesn't come with cables but in the picture there are no cables I'm guessing because 1215 feet of good copper wire would double the cost of this welder there should probably be a ferrule or something in here no you don't get one of those either stinger seems reasonable the earth clamp is rated to 300 amps you got to give it to them I mean that's some pokerface right there I don't know if this thing would actually hold up to 300 amps fortunately the welder is only 222 amps you know it can't help but wonder how many people out there I've already bought this welder discovered it didn't come with cables so how much welding cable costs ended up sacrificing some poor living room lamp and are now pushing 200 amps through some 14 or 16 gauge wire that looks terrible I'm just working with what I got alright at least it's not lamp cord this is what I'm talking about on the stinger it should have had one of these I'm ready to go stick welder electrode positive all right ground clamp negative huh I got a bum plug they should turn enough to lock securely that one doesn't even make it a quarter turn well you concerted jam it in there I'm gonna pick it up off of the steel bench with some wooden blocks cheap life insurance wait a minute was I the five fingered Freak this whole time there was a hidden thumb that is an interesting choice you know what I think I'll just use mine [Music] 110 amps maybe a little on the high side I've got some 3/32 6013 this stuff I think I usually run in like the 82 90 95 amps range but let's just see what happens nothing happens again this wire to 110 volts it's gonna crank it up to its max 223 I'm gonna hook it up to 220 I've got it wired to 220 twice the danger I'm back down to 110 inch hundred and E something like that how'd it actually my welding skills aside that did pretty good seems a little cold I'm gonna bump it up to 125 keep in mind that's what the display is telling us we'll measure that in a second I don't know rather respectable if I do say so myself that's the first stick electrode I've burnt in probably three years not to mention the electrodes themselves are older than dirt I think the welder did all right for kicks let me hook up a current clamp went back had a look at the video as you probably saw before I did its welding at 80 amps machine was set for a hundred twenty five honestly the discrepancy isn't that much of a surprise but again I'm really happy with how it's welding I've got some 70 18 s also on 332nd about the same vintage frankly 80 amps felt a little hot for this but the weld bead looks okay I think 80 amps will be on the cool side for this so I'll bump it up just a little bit I'll set it to a hundred and thirty 135 on the welder itself maybe that'll métis about 90 amps [Music] I'm going to bump that up higher 150 [Music] I can't keep that going you know what let me just try to push this as high as it'll go that just kicked out on me I may have tripped that 220 breaker how many amps was that yep it was the breaker all right this is screwing with me now not a great welder but that's just crazy I want to try the same 70 18 rod with my HTP 90 amps so the rods are okay okay ish before I drawing conclusions let me try that again with the pocket welder at 90 amps the machine set to 150 which I think before said 90 on the meter same electrodes you try to flip the polarity you know because why not try that one more time 70 18 [Music] let's talk about what's going on here because half of me is really confused right now I think I know why this thing is having trouble with 7018 but I have no idea why switching polarity made things better though we have learned a couple of very important things allow me to expose important arguably this is not a 220 amp welder did you catch that when I crank the death toaster up to Maximum Overdrive set at 223 amps I was only getting maybe a hundred and twenty out of it so unless I'm measuring it wrong this is not a 200 amp welder though I think the measurements were probably okay because the welds so themselves seemed colder than what the display was leading me to believe though I'm not a professional maybe you really do get more penetration from thinking you have a lot of amps and real amps are overrated the mind is a curious thing not calling anyone a wire who knows maybe if you wired this to 265 volts you'd get closer second and probably more interesting the reason this isn't running 70 18s very well is twofold I think the welder has a low open circuit voltage recall we measured it at about 30 volts seven the 18s need a higher ocv than sixty 13s the ocv is the voltage across the leads when you're not doing anything don't confuse that with welding voltage or heck with welding amperage for that matter but a higher open circuit voltage helps with starting and maintaining the arc and 70 18 s wants more of that not surprisingly perhaps the add for this welder doesn't list the open circuit voltage so unless you're already used to swearing a lot and based on my five minutes of trying i wouldn't recommend this for 70 eighteen sixty 13s spectacular 70 18 s not so much and frankly you could weld your whole life without ever even thinking about buying a pack of 70 18 s though here comes the wrinkle the low open circuit voltage thing hit me just about the same time I decided to switch the polarity so when I tried welding an electrode negative I was also much more attentive to my arc length I had a death grip on the 7018 and was trying to float the tip almost like a tungsten electrode trying to stay as even and constant as possible giving it all the help it can get you trying to make up for that low TV like all good scientists I changed two variables at once which of those made the difference unfortunately you will never know the answer sure I could just flip the connections and try it but no no we'll never know because the low ocv doesn't bode well for our TIG welding experiment we might not be able to light the take arc and as we all know now the TIG torch will be wired electrode negative non sequitur you say perhaps but an excellent segue to trying this with TIG I'll tell you right now when all is said and done if I even pull this off we're gonna be dealing with a bit of a Frankenstein's monster we'll need a TIG torch of course and we'll need gas argon gas two problems right out of the gate first all of my torches have these larger dense connectors compare that with what this machine uses I can't just plug it in trust me I've tried if you decide to do this it's very important that you buy all the correct sized hardware TIG welding is a lot less enjoyable when you've electrocuted yourself to death if we managed to get this electrically connected the next step is to hook in the gas this machine isn't born as a TIG welder so it has no solenoids it on and off as you need it so we'll have to switch to a different style torch this is a 17 V torch head standard 17 size torch but the V variant V stands for valve I suppose this isn't strictly necessary you could just plumb in the gas line open the bottle and just leave it running the whole time but you're gonna use a lot of gas this just gives us a way to turn the gas flow on and off before and after the welds it's a little loose we'll have to put some tape or something in there but lastly even if we get this whole contraption to work we won't have high frequency start the only way to initiate the arc is to scratch start it basically like you would do with a stick electrode but one problem at a time [Music] [Music] okay I think I'm in business got everything connected quite proud of that adapter but I'm not going to show it to you this is not the right way to do it extremely danger subscribers are hard enough to get these days I don't to be killing any mine off [Laughter] here's what the torch looks like I'm missing an insulator ring I guess long switched over to like the 9 or 20 size torch I don't have an insulator that fits the gas lens and I no longer have traditional collets to work with the insulator that came with the torch head anyway all my examples will be strategically selected to not exceed maybe a hundred amps I should be okay that's a sixteenth inch guess that's 1.5 1.6 millimeter tungsten number seven cup and again I control the gas flow with the valve on the back this is pretty much the setup I started with and let me tell you I'm not feeling very nostalgic oh and something I'd completely forgotten with a torch like this with no switch doing scratch start when the welder is on that tungsten is live and take my word for it 1/16 inch tungsten sharpen to a point you're doing something else and you rest this torch in your lap well it potentially makes for a very bad day mild steel stainless silicon bronze interestingly I had the most trouble with the steel started off well enough by the end though I wanted to reduce the amperage I'm used to working with a foot controller with a foot pedal this stuff is thin got a lot of heat into it by the time I was done it looked more like a gas weld 332nd tungsten scratch starts did a real number on that sixteenth electrode sixteenth would have been fine for the amperage that I'm working at what the scratch starts the tips were just coming right off that said I've got to give credit where credit is due for fifty bucks within the amp limit I'm gonna deal with scratch start you know I think it did alright the ark isn't buttery silky smooth but for DC welding this is a starter rig for someone who just wanting to play around every now and again I don't know it's tough call a lot of things going through my head right now let's save that for the end there's the breaker again scratch starting does take some practice it's been probably 10 years since I've had to deal with it and I've been sticking the tungsten a lot if you want to try it think of it like striking a match you just barely want to touch the surface to get that arc going if you're a little heavy-handed that'll just weld itself to the work and you'll break your tip but plenty of TIG welding still happens with scratch start these days environments where you can't have high-frequency quick tip if you're doing something important start off with a piece of scrap near the part that you want to weld do the scratch start on that you have a piece of copper I think that's even better and then pull the arc on your work for continuous welds put a tab on each end scratch start on your tab weld it right into your work when you get to the other side weld off your work and back on to a finishing tab extinguish the arc there and then just cut those tabs off you should end up with a decent weld in a clean part without a thousand little arc strikes and chicken scratches stick welding is not an indoor sport I feel my lungs collapsing as we speak you were planning on one of these for your small apartment it's not gonna work not for very long anyway though the leaf blower they have designed into this thing sure goes a long way to getting that smoke out of your face this thing is still warm that's to say I just got done welding with it which in turn is to say this thing has capacitors in it they're still charged so be careful extremely danger don't worry that I've taken precautions got my fingers crossed there's no isolation or insulation between the casework and the insides I was hoping for at least an old sheet of cardboard or something connections for the switch the line voltage and the rectifier are pretty darn close to the actual metal of the case the negative lead of the welder in the back there is bolted directly to the ground plane of the PCB and the positive terminal is connected directly to the heat sinks I guess that's the business end of the IGBTs there are capacitors in there yeah I can't break those out of there I don't want to push too hard those screws aren't going into drilled and tapped holes and the heat sinks I could tell you that pointed sheet metal screws just driven it with brute force again I don't know what I'm looking at but frankly given what this thing cost yeah I don't know you decide they did protect the line in bridge connections there's goop on all the little plugs keep them from coming out and it's probably 50 bucks just in solder right there okay so it did stick weld and did all right with lower amperage dct mind you we did not test the duty cycle which I planned to but now I don't feel like it not to mention and no offense if you're spending fifty bucks in a welder duty cycle probably isn't high up on your list of requirements duty cycle is how long the welder will continuously weld for before it goes into thermal shutdown to protect its soft squishy bits some light will flash it might be the fan will run for a while and you wait for it to cool it stop before it will do any more welding again hate to be cynical but I wouldn't expect too much from this wee thing here bottom line piece of junk keep in mind that comes from someone who already owns a welder that's not out to get them so I'm probably biased however far be it from me to tell anyone how or how long to live their life though it does burn sixty 13s really well I'll give it that if you're a weekend warrior who just needs to occasionally I don't know what's the stereotypical welding attach a mower deck fix a gate mess up your nice truck trying at a rack or heck maybe you're just curious I would like to try your hand at machine oh factor panel beating or compartment car and you don't mind a bit of inconvenience in exchange for the lower price or mind living in deaths shadow this might be for you though if you're buying it for cheap TIG for a straight DC at low amps which again it seems to do relatively well you'll need to spend more than 50 bucks to get that you'll probably spend I don't know another 50 or 60 for an import torch for the valve you'll need welding cable of course an argon tank with a flow meter probably a decent helmet and gloves consumables it'll start that up you'll likely spend three to four hundred in no time at all curiously and this may very well be a fool me twice situation you can get seemingly similar quality eBay equipment already decked out for tick for example this one or this one this is not an endorsement or recommendation and I don't know if these will actually save you any money at all or any less dangerous there you have it in there for what it's worth category this is how I started granted I started with a better name brand stick welder but this Plumbing nightmare is how I got into TIG welding I did this a few times in fact each time spending just a little more money in a vain attempt to save money yes a story oldest time I did probably spend twice as much in the long term as I would have just buying the welder I wanted but you know sometimes the short term is more pressing I get that heck if the import TIG welders you see on eBay were around back then I'd have probably started there in fact it might be fun to get one end just to try it out fun in that rubbernecking did I just see a car crash kind of way let me know what you think maybe we'll get one for now though that's all I've got I'll refrain from making a final final decision I'll let what you saw in this video speak for itself which is kind of weird because it's a video of me speaking but you know what I mean I don't know your situation or tolerable risk level so you decide I mean welding is in the safest profession to begin with but with something like this you might be at DEFCON 3 right out of the gate I got this for curiosity more than anything else I already owned all the kit to try it out as a TIG welder I'm not sure what I'll do with it now definitely gonna add some insulation before I put it back together plastic washers at the very least but it may become the donor for another project down the road I've always wanted to build a little spot welder anyway that's it there it is it's your money choose wisely and thanks for watching

Channel: This Old Tony

Views: 2,949,209

Rating: 4.850821 out of 5

Keywords: cheap tig, ebay tig, cheap welder, ebay welder, stick, tig, welding, open circuit voltage, ocv, igbt, inverter

Id: --1lSmtuyUg

Length: 26min 52sec (1612 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 29 2019