My how the time flies….I was poking around on here the other day and realised it has been 5 years since I bought my humble Chinese welder so I thought I would do an update. When I first bought the welder I did a review of the various Chinese TIGs that were around at that time – that thread can be found here:
http://ift.tt/1jgOihr
I ended up buying a Token Tools INV200 welder that they no longer sell – I think it has been superseded by some other welders in their range. I don’t have a lot to report back on to be honest, basically the welder works as well now as it did when I first bought it. The only thing that has broken in that time which is worth mentioning is the plastic sleeve that goes around the cord for the TIG torch. That has cracked right through in several places as the plastic sheath is quite brittle now.
I have done a lot of work with this welder. It has been used to make a pipe bender, make a motorcycle frame from scratch, hard tail a custom triumph frame, build a 2 meter long spit roaster, build several full home brew kits and its currently half way through doing a heap of rust repair on an FJ holden (massive job). A commercial welder who is a friend of mine even borrowed it for a week when his kempii died. It did a lot of work that week too – basically ran all day.
I have found in that time that many of the features which appealed to me are not used very often. This is more a reflection of my welding habits than the machine. For instance I never use the pulse, never use a foot pedal and only very rarely use AC welding. I never bought a pedal as most of my welding is done crawling around a bike or a car and foot pedals aren’t practical when doing this…however there have been occasions when one would have been useful so I think I will get one eventually.
All in all though, I am extremely happy with this machine. Its one of the most used and most useful tools in my garage. I love its flexibility – it can (and has) gone from welding rusty .8mm sheet metal one minute to welding up 12mm plate the next. I have used it on aluminium, cast iron, copper, brass, stainless and mild steel (although 95% of its work is done on stainless or mild steel). I have had absolutely no problems regularly welding as low as 30amps, and right up to the full 200amps. The arc is stable and strikes instantly at both ends of the power spectrum. In the 5 years I have had it - I have never tripped its duty cycle.
Would love to hear from other token welder owners out there on how their machines are performing - particularly those that have done a lot of alloy work with one, as this is one aspect of my machine that has never really been put through its paces.
Brendan
http://ift.tt/1jgOihr
I ended up buying a Token Tools INV200 welder that they no longer sell – I think it has been superseded by some other welders in their range. I don’t have a lot to report back on to be honest, basically the welder works as well now as it did when I first bought it. The only thing that has broken in that time which is worth mentioning is the plastic sleeve that goes around the cord for the TIG torch. That has cracked right through in several places as the plastic sheath is quite brittle now.
I have done a lot of work with this welder. It has been used to make a pipe bender, make a motorcycle frame from scratch, hard tail a custom triumph frame, build a 2 meter long spit roaster, build several full home brew kits and its currently half way through doing a heap of rust repair on an FJ holden (massive job). A commercial welder who is a friend of mine even borrowed it for a week when his kempii died. It did a lot of work that week too – basically ran all day.
I have found in that time that many of the features which appealed to me are not used very often. This is more a reflection of my welding habits than the machine. For instance I never use the pulse, never use a foot pedal and only very rarely use AC welding. I never bought a pedal as most of my welding is done crawling around a bike or a car and foot pedals aren’t practical when doing this…however there have been occasions when one would have been useful so I think I will get one eventually.
All in all though, I am extremely happy with this machine. Its one of the most used and most useful tools in my garage. I love its flexibility – it can (and has) gone from welding rusty .8mm sheet metal one minute to welding up 12mm plate the next. I have used it on aluminium, cast iron, copper, brass, stainless and mild steel (although 95% of its work is done on stainless or mild steel). I have had absolutely no problems regularly welding as low as 30amps, and right up to the full 200amps. The arc is stable and strikes instantly at both ends of the power spectrum. In the 5 years I have had it - I have never tripped its duty cycle.
Would love to hear from other token welder owners out there on how their machines are performing - particularly those that have done a lot of alloy work with one, as this is one aspect of my machine that has never really been put through its paces.
Brendan
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