All-in-one welder question....

My Youtube feed has been recommending "Urchfab" to me based on my viewing.  He's done some interesting automotive and motorcycle projects.

He recently did a video about a welder sold in the UK and I was unable to find a US distributor for it.  Does anyone know of a similar domestic product to a "Parweld XTM 211 Di"?

Probably the same as this: https://www.everlastgenerators.com/product/mig/powermts-211si-tig-package

I've had such good service from Primeweld that I would recommend this

https://primeweld.com/products/mts200-3-in-1-200-amp-mig-tig-stick-welder

Not to hijack a random welder thread, but if this Millermatic 250 still works fine would it be a good thing to pick up? Research into these models makes them look pretty nice, and the manual shows they can use Spool guns too.

https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=5223&acctid=12157

Speaking of all-in-one welders, I recently had to give up on my Vulcan Omnipro 220 from Harbor Freight. In retrospect, I think it was a mistake to try to buy an all-in-one over separate machines: too complicated, and single point of failure could take out all your welding capabilities in one go.

My Omnipro had an intermittent issue where the MIG output would not turn on.  The welder would act as though nothing was wrong, but would not turn on power to the gun.

Sometimes unplugging it for a few minutes or a day would seem to clear the problem and allow it to work again, but eventually MIG just never worked again.  For awhile the TIG functionality would still work, but then that stopped working in the same mysterious way.  (Stick welding mode continues to work.)

It was out of warranty so I tried opening it up to troubleshoot.  I checked that the gun trigger signal was getting through (though of course TIG also failing and it not involving a trigger meant something else was wrong too).  It did not seem to come down to a failed relay or other obvious thing.

The circuitry inside that welder is gratuitously complicated; for instance even the small satellite board that processes the MIG trigger and TIG foot pedal contains its own tiny switching power supply and communicates with the main board over some kind of protocol (instead of simple analog signals).  It's analogous to when cars went from simple circuits to modules with CANBUS.

Anyway maybe I'm a glutton for punishment because I replaced it with... another Vulcan welder. But this time one that only does MIG.  I really did like the welder when it wanted to work, and this one has the same wirefeed mechanism as the Omnipro.  I'm tempted to also try swapping boards between them - I suspect they stuck the same electronics guts in multiple different models.

Later when my bank account and trust in technology has recovered a bit, I plan to add a TIG-only Vulcan welder.  The fine print I didn't realize when I got the Omnipro was it can't do AC TIG, which means I would still need another machine to do aluminum TIG welding.  That detail negated the entire point of getting an all in one which was to save space by not needong multiple machines; turned out I would have needed two machines any way you slice it.

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GIRTHQUAKE said:

Not to hijack a random welder thread, but if this Millermatic 250 still works fine would it be a good thing to pick up? Research into these models makes them look pretty nice, and the manual shows they can use Spool guns too.

https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=5223&acctid=12157

We had a similar miller at work that i used to use pretty frequently and it welded beautifully 

The Swiss Army knife is a knife for someone who just wants tweezers or a corkscrew in a cute package, not a good knife.