Are Thermal Arc Fabricator 181i or 211i worth a second look?

[Mr Otford]

Background:

Big birthday coming up and SWMBO understands that a large chunk of cash hanging on my wrist is not my sort of thing and is, reluctantly, coming round to the idea that a reasonable welder might be better.

I recently completed a 10 week refresher evening-course in welding as much as to give me a chance to use professional gear so that I could find out where I was going wrong with my cheap and nasty gear as to give me an opportunity to try TIG welding. Much to my surprise - and at my first attempt with the TIG machine - the trainer said that my gas welding skills (such as they are) are sufficiently up to snuff for me to make a reasonable TIG welder.

So, I was wondering what the team think of the Thermal Arc Fabricator 181i and 211i units. Pictures are available here:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Thermal-A...204?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item2a2eb58fd4

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Thermal-A...667?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item27d22a0cb3

Until I played with the TIG unit at the college - admittedly a couple of grands worth of computer controlled joy - I hadn't considered TIG as an option. One concern I have with the TA units is that they are Lift Start and I think that the college unit was HF start.


I should say that, much to my delight, a Hobbyweld stockist has appeared in my local town.

Also, I don't expect to use TIG for everything but having a machine which does MIG/Arc/TIG is very attractive and means that I don't have to buy a replacement regulator for my gas welding set (which I've never used for want of convenient gas).

What does the team think?

Thanks

Richard

 

[Shedendman]

Have you had a little look at this?
http://www.weldequip.com/ifl-170-mig.htm

 

[Jim Davey]

The 211 is a good little machine. I don't think you'll go far wrong with it. I've sold a few to guys welding gates and railings as they needed a machine with good 110v performance. The stick part was handy for them too if they ran into something thicker that the mig couldn't handle.
As far as the tig function goes I never got as far as playing with that. HF you can live without but downslope and postflow are essentials in my book so check it's got that. It's not a deal breaker if it hasn't, it will just make your tig jobs a lot more pleasant to do and the results will be better.

 

[Mr Otford]

Have you had a little look at this?
http://www.weldequip.com/ifl-170-mig.htm

Looks very attractive - except that it won't weld aluminium. Not sure that the Thermal Arc unit will either!

 

[Mr Otford]

The 211 is a good little machine. I don't think you'll go far wrong with it. I've sold a few to guys welding gates and railings as they needed a machine with good 110v performance. The stick part was handy for them too if they ran into something thicker that the mig couldn't handle.
As far as the tig function goes I never got as far as playing with that. HF you can live without but downslope and postflow are essentials in my book so check it's got that. It's not a deal breaker if it hasn't, it will just make your tig jobs a lot more pleasant to do and the results will be better.

Thanks Jim

 

[daleyd]

Looks very attractive - except that it won't weld aluminium. Not sure that the Thermal Arc unit will either!

No, the thermal arc is dc only as well. Not sure you can get ac multi process machines, if you can they probably won't be anywhere near the same price as the thermal arc your looking at!

You can weld Ali (of a fashion )with mig, obviously nowhere near as pretty or as versatile as tig, but it's do able.

 

[Jim Davey]

Very doable on the EWM and Speedtec machines, both weld aluminium with ease.
EWM has the edge with pulse and the 4 semi circular drive rolls but I've had no issues successfully demoing both on the tricky soft wires like 4043A. Stick to 1.0mm, forget 0.8mm if you want an easy life

 

[wheresmejumper]

I think if your spending that kinda money and you want to do a bit of tig, hf is a must.light stainless that isnt magnetic and is delicately placed-last thing you want is to touch start.
if its mainly mig youd use, get a mig first.a basic 2nd hand rtech tig or similar could always be picked up cheapish after.
dont be tricked into the wow, its 3 machines in1.its normally 3 very compromised machines in 1 unless you double or treble your budget
.practically every tig or stick machine is 2 machines in one anyway.

 

[chevy2]

Only my opinion of course, but if those 3in1 machines were better on tig, ie with HF start, adjustable postflow and up/downslope then they'd be far more desirable.
to the original poster, if you could get access to the samemachine at college again, do everything you did before but this time all with the liftarc start and not HF, it may change your mind about a machine with liftarc only?

 

[daleyd]

All good points above, but only you can decide what your budget etc suits. Ive got one of the 3 in one machines, and for me (A hobby welder, not a pro) having the ability to do all 3 processes in one box for under £800 all in was ideal.

I don't earn my living from it, but it's nice to have the ability to tinker with TIG if I want, I can do MIG for thin stuff and I can do stick welding as well.

Lift TIG is quite useable, obviously not as good as HF but once you get the hang of it it's OK. See some of the videos on you tube for the results. I've only played with the TIG function on mine really, but a mate who can tig weld to a good standard borrowed it and said it was actually quite good. (It doesnt have all the bells and whistles of a high end TIG set but as has been said these machines are a compromise.)

Out of interest, will it be a DIY machine or are you using it in a professional sense?

 

[Mr Otford]

All good points above, but only you can decide what your budget etc suits. Ive got one of the 3 in one machines, and for me (A hobby welder, not a pro) having the ability to do all 3 processes in one box for under £800 all in was ideal.

I don't earn my living from it, but it's nice to have the ability to tinker with TIG if I want, I can do MIG for thin stuff and I can do stick welding as well.

Lift TIG is quite useable, obviously not as good as HF but once you get the hang of it it's OK. See some of the videos on you tube for the results. I've only played with the TIG function on mine really, but a mate who can tig weld to a good standard borrowed it and said it was actually quite good. (It doesnt have all the bells and whistles of a high end TIG set but as has been said these machines are a compromise.)

Out of interest, will it be a DIY machine or are you using it in a professional sense?

Hi Daleyd

DIY use only. Primarily ARC/MIG but I thought it would be nice to have the TIG option. Which 3 in 1 do you have?

It's to replace:

a Migmate 130 for which I used to use bargass for shielding but hasn't been used for ages,
a Cosmo 150 which is loaded with gas-less wire and
a really nasty, but quite amusing, Powercraft 160A arc welder that I picked up from Aldi. (Some may remember me asking what the members thought of it a few years back).

The only one I paid for is the Powercraft which set me back £30 plus a fair bit for 32A Commando fittings and not very much for 25m of HO7 10mm cable.

I also have a gas welding set which I have never used and has, as I found when I took them into college for testing, one faulty gauge.

I found at the welding course that, much to my surprise, my welding isn't too bad and I would benefit from spending money on good kit. This was the primary reason for taking the course.

Richard

 

[chevy2]

One bit of advice as quoted by Jim Davey several times is when looking for a mig welder feature is to get a machine that is synergic, mine is.

what it basically does is automatically increase or decrease wirespeed when you turn the amps up or down for different thickness materials which saves the hassle of for example having a wire speed of 2 on the lowest setting amps and maybe 6 on the highest, and then a whole new bunch of settings when going up or down on a thinner or thicker roll of mig wire,

On mine a wire speed of 5.5 is good for virtually everything on 0.8mm wire and wire speed 7 for 0.6mm wire,
simply crank the amps up or down and weld away!

 

[daleyd]

Hi Daleyd

DIY use only. Primarily ARC/MIG but I thought it would be nice to have the TIG option. Which 3 in 1 do you have?

It's to replace:

a Migmate 130 for which I used to use bargass for shielding but hasn't been used for ages,
a Cosmo 150 which is loaded with gas-less wire and
a really nasty, but quite amusing, Powercraft 160A arc welder that I picked up from Aldi. (Some may remember me asking what the members thought of it a few years back).

The only one I paid for is the Powercraft which set me back £30 plus a fair bit for 32A Commando fittings and not very much for 25m of HO7 10mm cable.

I also have a gas welding set which I have never used and has, as I found when I took them into college for testing, one faulty gauge.

I found at the welding course that, much to my surprise, my welding isn't too bad and I would benefit from spending money on good kit. This was the primary reason for taking the course.

Richard

Hi Richard

I've got the rtech mts210 version, which I think is fairly similar to the thermal arc one. They seem to be a generic type which is the rebadged for each manufacturer, but I could be wrong.

Really pleased with mine, it's got a decent ( for DIY use) duty cycle, and for the type of work I use it for is more than adequate.

If you search out multi process welder on you tube there are some videos of them which are quite interesting.

I paid £700 or so for mine from rtech ebay site as a shop soiled one, but I honestly couldn't find any evidence it had even been out of the box, and that included mig and tig torches, electrode holder for arc welding and a regulator.

So far it's welded up a mates roll cage on a land rover and a load of pens in a barn to make stables as well as me messing about with it in general, and hasn't missed a beat.

As has been said, if you want to get seriously into tig then perhaps you may be better getting a top notch tig set, but I knew for me it was just a hobby thing and I would never spend the time and effort to justify that, but I could justify this on the basis it could do mig tig and arc, and from what I've seen do them perfectly well.

I really wanted a mig welder to be able to do car bodywork stuff, but then when I thought well, I may need a stick welder too, and perhaps I'd like to try tig at some point - that's when I started looking at these

The stick welding on it in particular (I thing with inverters in general) really flatters my ham fisted efforts, compared to cheap buzz boxes it's so much easier to use. (A good welder I'm sure can knock out a good weld with anything, it's the ease of use for people like me I'm impressed with!)

Hope this helps,

Dale

 

[Mr Otford]

Hi Richard

I've got the rtech mts210 version, which I think is fairly similar to the thermal arc one. They seem to be a generic type which is the rebadged for each manufacturer, but I could be wrong.

Really pleased with mine, it's got a decent ( for DIY use) duty cycle, and for the type of work I use it for is more than adequate.

If you search out multi process welder on you tube there are some videos of them which are quite interesting.

I paid £700 or so for mine from rtech ebay site as a shop soiled one, but I honestly couldn't find any evidence it had even been out of the box, and that included mig and tig torches, electrode holder for arc welding and a regulator.

So far it's welded up a mates roll cage on a land rover and a load of pens in a barn to make stables as well as me messing about with it in general, and hasn't missed a beat.

As has been said, if you want to get seriously into tig then perhaps you may be better getting a top notch tig set, but I knew for me it was just a hobby thing and I would never spend the time and effort to justify that, but I could justify this on the basis it could do mig tig and arc, and from what I've seen do them perfectly well.

I really wanted a mig welder to be able to do car bodywork stuff, but then when I thought well, I may need a stick welder too, and perhaps I'd like to try tig at some point - that's when I started looking at these

The stick welding on it in particular (I thing with inverters in general) really flatters my ham fisted efforts, compared to cheap buzz boxes it's so much easier to use. (A good welder I'm sure can knock out a good weld with anything, it's the ease of use for people like me I'm impressed with!)

Hope this helps,

Dale

Hi Dale,

Thanks. I think I might have seen a post from you about this machine elsewhere on this forum? It does appeal from the point of view of having all the bits - unlike the Thermal Arc unit. I'll have to study them some more.

Rgds

Richard

 

[Mr Otford]

One bit of advice as quoted by Jim Davey several times is when looking for a mig welder feature is to get a machine that is synergic, mine is.

what it basically does is automatically increase or decrease wirespeed when you turn the amps up or down for different thickness materials which saves the hassle of for example having a wire speed of 2 on the lowest setting amps and maybe 6 on the highest, and then a whole new bunch of settings when going up or down on a thinner or thicker roll of mig wire,

On mine a wire speed of 5.5 is good for virtually everything on 0.8mm wire and wire speed 7 for 0.6mm wire,
simply crank the amps up or down and weld away!

Useful point. Fiddling with the wirespeed on the Cosmo is a royal pain :-)

Richard

 

[daleyd]

Hi Dale,

Thanks. I think I might have seen a post from you about this machine elsewhere on this forum? It does appeal from the point of view of having all the bits - unlike the Thermal Arc unit. I'll have to study them some more.

Rgds

Richard

Ha ha yeah, I do seem to be a walking advertisement for these machines

When I looked at one originally I did quite a bit of research, though that was 2 years ago and things may have changed since then. The rtech was cheapest (with the shop soiled option) and came complete with everything rather than having to get separate bits from here and there. There were units which were marginally cheaper but by the time you added tig torch and reg they worked out more expensive.

It also has the synergic feature chevy2 mentioned, it's very easy to set up and use

 

[Mr Otford]

Ha ha yeah, I do seem to be a walking advertisement for these machines

When I looked at one originally I did quite a bit of research, though that was 2 years ago and things may have changed since then. The rtech was cheapest (with the shop soiled option) and came complete with everything rather than having to get separate bits from here and there. There were units which were marginally cheaper but by the time you added tig torch and reg they worked out more expensive.

It also has the synergic feature chevy2 mentioned, it's very easy to set up and use

Hi Dale

Nothing wrong with shouting about how impressed you are with a machine - in a way it is far more helpful to someone like me than saying "it's rubbish, there are better ones out there".

Cheers

Richard

 

[daleyd]

Another point for the rtech machines is their customer service is reckoned to be very good, though this is based on other Peoples testimonials from this site, I don't have first hand experience of this. Presumably thermal arc etc also have decent warranty as well, just another point to consider! ( I confess I didn't even think about this originally but found out about their good reputation subsequently)

Whichever machine you plump for let us know how you get on!

 

[Mr Otford]

Hi, sorry for the, apparently, interminable silence.

Having checked the gas costs at my local Hobbyweld stockist I nearly bought one of these:R-Tech MTS210D http://preview.tinyurl.com/mm2v2cf until I realised that it only has DC TIG. Correct me if I am mistaken, but am I right in thinking that I need AC TIG to weld alloy? If that's true, what is the benefit of buying this unit? Don't the MIG and ARC capabilities of this unit happily overlap? If I want to be able to weld alloy am I looking at spending a large-ish fortune?

Cheers

Richard

 

[daleyd]

Yes you will need Ac to weld Ali to any standard, though it can be done with mig. (Not very good looking welds and not as controllable as tig)

I have one of those and they are a good machine if you are only doing steel/stainless.