I am looking at purchasing a tig welder and am looking at the econotig or diversion 165 from miller. This is a home welder and will be used for basic ...

aluminum: charge piping,catch cans, small brackets, resiviors
stainless steel: exhaust, manifolds, and small duty
chromoly: i might venture into

I would just like others opinions on these machines and what possible limitations it might pose. I have alot of experience with mig welding and want to venture into tig welding for my personal projects. I just want to hear your opinion as a part of my research into both of these welders.

thank you

 

Where are you going to buy an econotig? They're discontinued, for obvious reasons, THEY SUCK. No but really, out of the 2 welders you've listed I would say the Diversion, hands down. The Diversion will do everything you've listed above without a hiccup. Thickness of the above materials will be your only limitations. Lincoln, Thermal Arc, HTP are different brands you can look into.

 

wait or spend the difference and get a syncro200 or thermal

 

Ouch, I swear the Econotig gets no love around here.

I've had mine for about two years, and no problems with it. I weld stainless, mild and alumnium.

The one issue with the econotig that had been mentioned before is that it has trouble welding thin aluminum, and that's a a problem I've just recently been able to verify. Anything around 12-14Ga or above is fine to weld, just the thin stuff gets tricky.

I have no experience with the diversion so I can't comment there. All I can say is that if you get a good deal on an Econotig I'd take it. It works great for me.

Also a side note, the only other issue I've had with it is self inflicted. I work in a shop with tons of metal grinding going on and some of that metal dust got into the contacts box and now the welder makes a buzzing noise when you weld with it. Apparently it's a somewhat common problem on the ecototigs. It doesn't affect the welding capability of the welder, just sounds funny. It'd probably be an easy fix if I took the contacts box out and blew it out.

 

I have a diversion and I like it for the price. It’s a very simple machine to use, just set ac or dc and the thickness or amps you want. It has a built in thumb wheel for those odd welding positions . things that I don’t like are; there is no way to make adjustments to the power balance in ac, no post and pre flow settings, you have to buy the foot pedal separately (I guess you have to do that with most machines though), and the torch is fixed to the machine so you can’t just pick a different torch. The good things are again, simple set up, simple to use, cheap, light weight, and it takes most parts from a weldcraft 17 series torch. If I had to do it again I might have waited and got a dynasty 200 or something from HTP, but even if I upgrade later I’ll hang on to this to use as a portable, easy to use back-up.
I don’t know anything about the econo-tig.