MMA or MMA+TIG

[christofloffer]

i am retraining as a welder, used to be a tree surgeon but have suffered some rather unpleasant nerve damage which has stopped that altogether. at present i have a gas/gasless clarke 151EN mig welder which i love. i know its basic but it has been more than enough so far. until recently when i got an aluminium set up for it. now aluminium and specialist metals are my main aim as they are light materials that i can handle. trying it with a fairly cheap mig was an eye opener though. very clear why people use a TIG to do it.
so my other welder is a SIP 160 MMA which is a cracking little welder. not had a huge call for it as yet but its mainly for practise at the moment. having a look around though i have seen a few of these suitcase type units that do both MMA and TIG. are they any good?
i ask as i am thinking of selling my MMA welder to invest in one of these. then i can get some experience with TIG for relatively little outlay. i know the TIG side will be limited as they cant be as good as a specific unit but does it make the MMA side suffer?
the last thing i want to do is lose a good MMA welder and end up with a multi purpose but poor unit instead. at the moment the cost of a TIG unit is prohibitive, and the only one i have access to is 35 miles away and broken.
my grand plan was to get good with the mig/stick welders so i can make things from steel to start earning then invest in a good TIG unit that will do everything i ask of it for a long time. it was just a thought that these dual purpose sets start at £210, and if i can get some experience then it might be a decent investment.

chris

 

[BrokenBiker]

first things first, if you want to tig Ali you need ac, a dc inverter mma welder will do it but jo where near as well as an ac machine. The mma tig machine you are talking about are just inverter mma machines that you plug a tig torch into. No hf, no gas solenoid, no down slope or anything like that. The mma side is as good as any other machine, and the tig is fine for the odd job but if you want to tig regularly on speciality materials you need ac/dc machine, hf start, probably a foot pedal too if you want to get deep into it

 

[norlander]

+1 on what BB says. Invest in a decent AC/DC Tig set when you can. I would not bother selling the SIP MMA, I would keep that as part of my kit.Ditto the Mig.
You may want to consider RTech-I think they have an easy payments scheme-their first AC/DC starts at 900 quid -about 135 a month on intrest free credit.
http://www.r-techwelding.co.uk/welding_equipment/Tig_Welder/Tig_Welder_R-Tech_Tig161.