About The 180 TIG material thickness

[MMW]

If you just want to know if a 180 class tig machine can do thicker than 3/16" the amswer is yes. I got by for years using a Lincoln 175 square wave tig. I commonly welded 1/4" aluminum with occasionaly thicker. Use of pre heat & bevels works wonders. The biggest issue was the duty cycle. If I wasn'
t careful the machine would shut down. Once in a while I'd pop a 50 amp breaker also.

Any machine in this class is almost the same as far as output. Lincoln upped theirs to a 225 amp & Miller to a 200 amp. At max output the duty cycle was stupidly low. You can only get so much out of a 50 amp breaker with a transformer based machine.

The above applies to transformer based machines.

[MMW]

If your talking about the diversion welders, the 165 & 180 are both rated the same. 150 amps at 20% duty cycle. The 180 duty cycle at max is 10%. Not very good. So even though you get an extra 15 amps it's only good for 1 minute out of 10.

With aluminum there really is no substitute for amps.

[Raul McCai]

I have a 165 with foot pedal if you want to come try it out. I'm 20 minutes south of the parkway bridge...

Kind of you to offer.
How thick have you welded with it?

[californiakid21]

Check this out. Anyone have any feed back about this machine? It's a thermal arc 186. 200amp. Square wave, ac/dc tig stick and a little higher duty cycle than miller diversion with a lot more options.
It's a toss up for me because I'm a miller guy and think they have a good product.




http://m.cyberweld.com/tharc186acti.html

[turbo38t]

I have welded 3/16 with it. Wouldn't weld more than 1/8 with any seriousness. Very nice on 1/8 but duty cycle or not how much aluminum r u really going to weld with an air cooles torch?

Kind of you to offer.
How thick have you welded with it?

[Raul McCai]

how much aluminum r u really going to weld with an air cooles torch?

I'll see more steel than aluminum. I don't need very much 3/8" aluminum but I will need some.

Most of the stainless I'll work will be thinner like between 0.020" and 0.125"
The steel will be thicker: from 0.125" to 0.375"
Aluminum I'll see will be mostly 0.250" to 0.375" but less often 0.375"
Then there will be the very occasional bit of inconel and hastalloy. I'd love to have a ton of inconel (I'm a brewer) but the stuff is spendy.

It's a thermal arc 186. 200amp. Square wave, ac/dc tig stick and a little higher duty cycle

Nice price. Thermal Arc is a Victor product. ( Victor was Thermadyne) they have multiprocess machines but managed not to include a plasma cutter.
A 35% duty cycle you have what - - - 6.5 minutes of welding time out of any given ten minute period?
Are they making the 186 any more?

look at the PDF for the 181i
http://victortechnologies.com/Therma...29_May2012.pdf

The miller 165 has duty cycle reported at
60 A at 12.4 V, 100% Duty Cycle
150 A at 16 V, 20% Duty Cycle
165 A at 16.6 V, 15% Duty Cycle


The Victor machine duty cycle is reported as:
140 A at 25.6 V, 30% Duty Cycle
175 A at 27 V, 20% Duty Cycle

I don't know how to read the Volts/Amps differences. That is: what's it mean to the welding experience that one is 25.6 V and the other is 16 V in a sort of similar range of Amps.

[elvis]

You have the duty cycle backwards. 35% is 3.5 minutes of welding and 6.5 minutes of cooling. 100% would be non-stop welding.

[californiakid21]

The only place I've seen that thermal arc 186 is on cyberweld.com
That fabricator 181 you pulled up isn't the same one.

[MMW]

If your going to do more than the occasional 1/4" to 3/8" aluminum then this size machine is not for you.