just throwing this out there... we have 3 esab 252's at my school, and they are the worst welders in the shop. We all fight to avoid getting stuck using one of them. the synchrowave 250's we have are great. and we have a wire feeder on 1 of them so its certainly possible to do that.

 

Captain Willy, could you take a look at the wire feeder on your Sync 250, and tell us what make and model # the wire feeder is? thanks

 

what I really want is a multi process machine that will let me AC and DC weld with the tig, and DC mig

Miller XMT series? There is a Miller XMT CC/CV on the Baltimore cragslist for $2000, which seems to be a pretty sweet deal.

 

You can run a voltage sencing wire feeder on any stick machine. It is not easy for beginner. John

 

The Miller XMT unit can stick, tig and mig, but does not have AC ouput for doing aluminum with Tig. As far as I know there is not a name brand (Miller, Lincoln, Hobart, Esab) that has an AC/DC Stick, Tig, Mig unit. Miller used to make the Shopmaster 300, that unit did have the ability to do AC tig if a hi-freq box was added. Miller discontinued that model several years ago due to lack of sales. They now have the Shopmate series, which has stick, tig, mig capability, but again no AC for aluminum tig!! I've had a couple customers want this type of machine as well, and I ended up selling them two units to get what they wanted. One guy bought a Dynasty 200DX and a Millermatic 350P, then another guy bought a Syncrowave 200 and a Millermatic 252, that guy got out the door for less than $4,000.00 and can now do pretty much anything he needs. I agree $4,000.00 is a lot of coin, but if there was a machine on the market that had all of these capabilities, i'd expect it to be in that range or much higher.

 

PowCon use to make the 400SMT powersource, which was made for both MIG and TIG. They haven't been made in years, but can still be found on ebay occasionally.

 

...One guy bought a Dynasty 200DX and a Millermatic 350P....

Now those are two machines I'd love to have in my 'dream garage'! The 350P may not be too far away for me, as my employer will be selling one soon....

 

"what I really want is a multi process machine that will let me AC and DC weld with the tig, and DC mig, but since that doesn't exist,"

Lincon Multi-Process line up.
Miller Multi-Process line up.

 

Find an old Miller Shopbastard(master) and you will be good to go. We had them in school(1999). AC/DC CC/CV to bad they dont make them anymore.

 

just throwing this out there... we have 3 esab 252's at my school, and they are the worst welders in the shop.

What makes them so bad in your opinion? I've only spent a few miutes using a 252, and I've used an Esab 161 much more extensively and they both seemed to be a very smooth machines. There are some older machines that will do AC/DC and have built in wire feeders and the AC tig is crucial, infact it's the main reason I'm buying a new tig vs a big mig machine, but I'd rather buy new than used becuase of parts availability, power draw (older machines typicaly seem to be less efficient) and also buying used seems to be a little bit of a crapshoot, not knowing the history of the machine it mite last another 100 years, or it could give up on life in a month. With a new machine I can start babying it right from the get-go.

I'm also keeping my sp-175 which will work for most stuff I want to mig, chassis work, roll cages, suspension, and skid plates will all be tig, sheet metal will get mig so the sp-175 still works great for that. I just want the option of adding a wire feeder to the big tig machine so that I can use it for building large brackets and doing repairs to construction equipment where I don't want to stick weld, and can't tig due to time constraints.

 

What makes them so bad in your opinion? I've only spent a few miutes using a 252, and I've used an Esab 161 much more extensively and they both seemed to be a very smooth machines.

all 3 of the ones we have at school have problems... the goofy on/off switches broke a bunch of times, the digital displays keep dying, but the real issue is the fact that the amps never seem to stay constant at all. All 3 do the same thing, the amps jump up and down randomly and its a constant pain to keep re-adjusting them. Maybe we got 3 defective pieces of junk since it is a school, but I'd never buy one based on my experience using them. I think the syncrowaves are much better. at least the ones we have are in my opinion.

I'm not sure what kinda feeder is on the syncrowave, but its a miller. I'll look next time I'm in the shop. No one uses it since we have a millermatic 350's for mig anyway.

 

This maybe no use to you what so ever, but foronius (Which is a better brand than miller and lincoln by the way) Sell MIG,TIG,STICK all in one unit, we have one at our shop for our robot but it only runs MIG for production reasons.

 

I'm looking for a new tig machine, and this time I'm going big, right now the front-runners are the Esab Heliarc 252 and the Miller Synchrowave 250, what I really want is a multi process machine that will let me AC and DC weld with the tig, and DC mig, but since that doesn't exist, I have a plan. There are a couple 3-phase powersources with wire-feeders for sale localy, dirt cheap, can I use a wire-feeder and just hook it up to the tig, set it for stick welding and start burning wire? My thinking is that it should work the same as if you hook a wire-feeder up to an engine driven welder which is just a DC stick welder, so why wouldn't it work on a tig?

So, will it work, or do I need to just suck it up and find a big shop and move my tools out of the garage.

Max the short answer is no.

You can run a voltage sencing wire feeder on any stick machine. It is not easy for beginner. John

For what you will spend on a Voltage sensing feeder (and they hold their value so used ones are not a bargain) and getting it set up for your TIG power source, I will suggest getting 2 machines, Something like a Dynasty 200 and Millermatic 212 will like take you a long way.

BTW when I was out looking for a new TIG set up I drove up to Miller in Appleton to test some of them side by side. There is a night and day difference between the Dynasty and Syncrowaves, I choose the Dynasty 300DX. The newer D 350's are even better!

But I am guessing the D 200 will suit you just fine.