Good Low Cost TIG Welder? | Eastwood TIG 200 Digital Welder

[Music] [Music] what is a fabrication nation so here it is y'all been asking I've been working on it here it is so for any of you guys are new the channel I am a garage fabricator so I'm not professional anything really I like to make cool stuff I pay a lot of attention to details that's my saying I really like to focus on the details and I've had a lot of you guys subscribers asking about starter TIG welders now the TIG welder that I use on normal basis is the diversion 180 by Miller I think it's basically a starter TIG machine nothing fancy that thing starts off about $2,000 which it which is really pricey for a lot of people a lot of people to want to get into TIG welding start doing stuff in their garage and they're starting to TIG roll cages or intercooler piping or anything like that talk to them to shell out 2,000 bucks and buy a chick welder not knowing what they're doing they're going to like it if they're gonna be able to do anything with it or more so you know I start off a 2 grand I go up so because everybody's been asking for advice on starter kit welders as some of you might know I've been working with Eastwood here lately they have a brand new digital TIG 200 that they just released and talking with those guys they're like hey why don't we send you one let you try it if you feel like it's something that you can take to your viewers and you can it's not a big deal so that's what we did I've been running this thing through its paces for like the last week I mean just running bead after bead after bead welding a bunch of pieces of scrap metal together this is all aluminum stuff here and everything I do I'll weld the backside to you so I've just been trying every study on this page every feature just running it through its paces I want to make sure that it's good before I bring it to you guys you wanna make sure that I like it I will say that it is definitely impressed me this thing is really good it's got a ton of features it's got way more features than my Miller it's actually got a lot more features than what you would find on the market for its price range in my opinion there are some welders that are still a budget style welder that have the same features this one has but they're about five hundred dollars more than this machine here so the first thing I want to tell you is basically what I've done to this machine in its current welding form if you will you know there's a lot of things that you can do to welders to make them perform better or worse so first off 100 percent are gone no argon helium makes no mixtures under percent argon the tungsten is pure tungsten so why people like to well with different stuff especially for aluminum I'm doing the aluminum now so it's a 100 percent tungsten pure tungsten no blends may do some blend stuff later but I just want to kind of break it down to the basis and show you what this thing can do when I got this thing immediately I put one of my gas lens diffusers on here with a fear cup I'm actually going to try this thing several different way I've got some porcelain cups I'm going to put on this but all of them are a gasoline style cup that's what I prefer I think it works way better than what a lot of these machines come Factory with and I recommend that anybody out there no matter what the machine you get that you put a gas lens on your TIG torch it just makes a big difference in my opinion and so that was I did that awesome because I would I wouldn't weld with anything else other than that it is exactly how it comes from Eastwood obviously I've changed a lot of the settings in here to adjust my style of welding but other than that it's exactly what you get in the kit you get the machine is a digital machine very lightweight because of that it comes with a foot pedal comes with a standard foot pedal and the torch actually has a finger trigger on it so with this machine you get both it's easier to change this plug here is for the finger trigger I haven't plugged in now I've got the pedal in but all I have to do is unscrew this one put the finger trigger in there very nice for when you're in tight places and I say you're in a car underneath something trying to weld up some tight spaces on some roll bar choosing you don't have a really place to hold the pedal you get your finger trigger and if you're used to it it can work very well some of the features this machine has are specific to this trigger and I will go over those later all right so enough talking let's get to welding so basically I've got is some two pieces of a 63 I think it's like threes is a three alloy aluminum sheet metal nothing special and the aluminum rod that I'm using is some 40 43 I believe yes 40 43 once you guys to realize that I'm not a professional TIG welder by no means I can get the job done sometimes it looks pretty good but once you realize that because I am like you I am other than just some seat time maybe for some of you I'm just a beginner in my shop trying to kick weld stuff together aluminum and steel so I've got some experience but I'm not a professional I don't do it for a living I just make stuff in my garage all right anyway I've got this stuff just click up together and fires that boy up [Music] all right so the first feature that I'm going to go over is this machine allows you when welding aluminum it allows you to adjust the frequency of the pig will so it's not dude any machines long slot machines have excuses the higher in machine and this one goes from 30 Hertz over 200 Hertz advances it actually changes the art Kohn so the lower the frequency the wider that thing is the higher the frequency it kind of narrows the end and allows you to go more precise and what you're going to notice is a change in sound so we're going to start off at 100 Hertz kind of get a sound coming up a lower frequencies when you have a lower sound field now this will probably I'm already did alright so there you go that's a hundred hurt and I've got it on a mixed load which I'll go over later which mixed mode basically introduces like a square wave into it the comments with AC and DC don't really understand it so that's what it does which turns up all right now what you're going to notice is instantly going to be a higher pitch knowing it's still going to kind of have that that hold to it but it's going to be a much higher noise higher frequency noise again it's the pole pair basically the same setting [Music] alright guys there you go laying down some beads on with aluminum this thing makes me look much better than I really am it has definitely stepped up my game a little bit never really use the pulse feature and it actually works pretty nice to help me kind of get a rhythm and even when I don't use the pulse if I use the mix and it kind of has that pulse sound - you can't change the length of the pulse and it's really too quick to kind of put filler rod anytime it pulses but what I do is every other one basically starting the top so it'll be art of the DC TIG or the AC TIG and it'll do spot welding so this thing has a spot weld feature where you put a special cup on it that cup holds the tungsten specified amount away from the material trying to will and when you hit it it basically does this thing and puts a little spot weld in there for you I have not tried that I've seen some videos of it though looks pretty cool Pope obviously you can change the pulse width so you can have a pulse once every second all it's like 800 times a second and anywhere in between actually things you can have it less than once a second so you can have like long pulses if you want to do like you've seen here the pulse feature can be very useful it helped me just kind of get a rhythm down for your dab and moved add and move type of type of rhythm this machine has what you call high frequency start so some of you guys might have heard of like scratch start well that basically means is you have to touch the tungsten to the material and then drag it off in order to get it to start you don't have to do that with this Scott what they call high frequency start basically if you just hold it close once you match the pedal it will jump the arc via high frequency it's also got an option called lift start which is really cool they note really existed until this machine basically if you're in a really tight place say you're in the car and it's dark in there and you can't really trying to weld in sighs a little joint you can't really see how close the tungsten is to it before you start it's got what it called lift start basically touch the tungsten to that and as soon as you lift off it's going to start so you can basically touch the tungsten exactly where you're going to weld and not have to worry about seeing it and then as soon as you lift off it's going to start that arc the welding will start then with the finger control so basically what you can do is this thing has settings where you can ramp up ramp down your pre flow on your gas your your your post flow on your gas you can set those times when using the trigger itself because you don't have adjustability like you have on the pedal you can preset those in the machine so when you pull the trigger it's going to start off with whatever amperage you wanted to it's going to ramp up over whatever time you want it to ramp up and it's going to ramp up to whatever answers you want it to ramp up to the same thing when you let off the trigger it's going to then ramp down over a specified time length that you put in there in seconds obviously and it's going to ramp down to a specified amp amperage that you have put in the machine and then it's kind of a post flow so if you know that what you're welding is going to be needs a hundred amps but you kind of want to have a heat up period of five seconds you'd start off it's a 50 amps put five seconds in there it's going to weld through as long as you hold the trigger at 100 amps and as soon as you left off let off it's going to then ramp down and cool that puddle off and then have a post flow on the gas like I said all access adjustable very useful if you're using the trigger itself this machine also comes with a very nice flex head torch so you got a nice flexible head torch on there which is not normally standard in your TIG welder is especially not your cheaper TIG welders so I was very nice I've actually never had a a torch to how to flex it on it actually comes in very handy other than that the machines pretty self-explanatory because of the nice manual explains everything like I said I don't know all the features on this thing I played around a lot I've learned a lot of the features but I'm sure I'm missing things that this thing does that I just haven't got to yet the display on it is pretty nice it's just touch button displays far as cycling through your modes and then the twist knob for the amperage you can push it it's actually a button also and that's how you basically select say that you want to change you push it it puts it in change mode you can change it with the dial then let me push it again it's set then you move to the next one so pretty simple I only welded aluminum today looms usually the harder metal to weld TIG welds at least for me it is steel and stainless are a lot easier and so I know that if I can do aluminum the way that I have I shouldn't have any troubles with this machine doing stainless or steel all right so it's not all peaches on this thing there are some complaints that I do have so far they're very minimal I do have a couple things that aren't game changers but I don't really like it so I figured I tell you those two the first one is this thing does not have a fan that cycles on it so some machines we turn it on there's no fan you weld once it gets warm the fan kicks on and it cools it off this machine does not have that you turn this machine on the fan kicks on and it is on the entire time the machine is on other than it kind of being annoying it may actually be a good thing it may keep this thing really really cool keep the components from burning up I think it's just more of a cork for me anything else the other thing is is to cooks but that's kind of the complaint I have with all TIG welders I don't understand why they don't all come with gas lenses maybe there's a reason that I don't know of like I said I always change them as soon as I get them put a gas lens on there and you you won't be disappointed about this conversion kit here one of the problems with your TIG torches that come with elisha machines is that they don't make a lot of small style gas lenses for them you have to actually convert them to a different style torch so about this kit wasn't very expensive and it came with an assortment of gas lenses for different sized pumpkins and then the different sizes of cups for those gas lenses and obviously the college to go with them alright guys to recap I'm gonna be honest this thing blew me away I I think I was kind of expecting to get a machine that just couldn't quite get the job done you know it would work like it's supposed to as far as you know the pedal and the the amperage goes up and down and it does the kick motions but I just didn't think that it would get the job done like it did I'm really impressed with it I would definitely have this as my go to TIG machine matter of fact it will be my go to TIG machine I may set this one up to be like my bench tag to do aluminum and steel and just have my Miller set up to do steel and have it kind of floating around the shop my suggestion to you guys is I would go check them out I'll put some links in the description where you can go find this digital TIG 200 from Eastwood I also put some links in the description where you can get four cups I'll put this one and the furyk cups that I actually have on my torch and go check it out go check it out go read about it go see what you think and think they're under a thousand bucks which is of great price for a really nice particular that has the features and options this one has so my suggestion to you is make your own judgement obviously and you've seen what it did here you see the options that it has go read about it go check it out and let me know what you guys think all right guys how I got for you I hope you enjoyed this hope it helped for any of you guys out there they're like I just don't know what TIG machine to buy I want to get in the game I want to start take welding I want to buy I don't want to spend $5,000 there you go there's a one option for you anyway that's it for this video and I'll see you guys some more this week go do work son [Music]

Channel: The Fab Forums

Views: 449,899

Rating: 4.6834531 out of 5

Keywords: the fab forums, eastwood, welder, tig welder, east wood, eastwood tig, digital tig, best tig, best tig welder, tig machine, what tig to buy, eastwood tig 200, tig welding, how to weld, welding, tig, how to tig weld, weld, tig welding aluminum, welding tips, how to tig, aluminum welding, welding tips and tricks, mig welding, lincoln, arc, miller, fabrication, tig welding basics, tig welding tips, techniques, basics, steel, tip, diy, how-to, tungsten, how to, mini torch, stainless, aluminum

Id: AYn44M5zAr0

Length: 20min 30sec (1230 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 31 2017