[aevald]

Hello ColdOne, all of the other folks have given you the skinny pretty much as it is. Whether it is one of the older "tombstone" round-top machines or a newer one such as those in snoeproe's pics, those machines are pretty much bullet proof and will give you years of trouble-free service. At the school that I teach, we had 26 of the older tombstones, they were all late 60's early 70's vintage and none of them ever required any servicing outside of an occassional blow-down to get the dust out. As to your power, you pretty much answered your own question somewhat. The only time that you will likely run out of power and trip a breaker is when you are really pulling some amps, if you're a hobbyist you won't likely be doing that very often. At 100 to 125 amps output, I would guess your input draw to be in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 amps max. As the others have said, if the price is right, I wouldn't hesitate to get one of these for my home use. As was also mentioned, you could do a limited application of tig welding on materials other than aluminum and magnesium by simply purchasing a tig torch, regulator, and bottle of argon. If you wished to weld on aluminum or magnesium, you could find an add-on high-frequency unit and weld aluminum or magnesium. In either of these instances you just wouldn't have the option of variable amperage control, but you would still have a pretty decent welding set-up capable of many things. Good luck and best regards, Allan