2 years ago, I had the Thermal Arc rep out to demo some machines. I fell in love with a 252i mig and bought one on the spot. 6 months later, I ordered a 186 tig machine. Fast forward a little bit. I'm welding back in a corner, overhead, and a single BB gets in the nozzle, shorting it out. Next time the nozzle touches the work, it shorts out and the machine starts acting funny. None of my settings have changed, but it stubs the wire on starts, the arc feels "cold", and there black snakes floating in the air after I weld. It actually still welds, but it sure isn't right. I call up customer service looking for a repair shop to bring it to, and I start getting the runaround. Is your gas good? Don't use Chinese wire. It's your settings, do a reset. Are you sure you know how to weld? Ect, ect, ect. My local distributor doesn't want to touch, so I finally find a repair center locally and bring it in. It's done 4 weeks later. Replacing a control board didnt do it. Finally replaced the main power board before it was fixed. It had less than 10hrs toral of arc time on it.
Started playing with the tig when I got it, and it didn't seem to weld on aluminum like the one I demo'd. I made a few phone calls, got the same runaround, this time I did blame it on my inexperience. I got frustrated with aluminum welding, and didn't turn the machine on for a year. Then we got a dynasty 280dx at work and within 3 days, I was making pretty decent looking welds, so I went back to the Thermal Arc, and I have all the same old problems. I brought the 186 into work, set it beside the dynasty, and swapped the leads, torch, gas and regulator back and forth. Dynasty welds, Thermal Arc still doesn't. Into the shop we go.
This time, the shop finds some waveforms they don't like, but T/A says they are OK, and tells them to return the machine to me. Before they did, they tried welding with it, and struggle to make it work also.
While they were doing that, I was talking to an esab person on Facebook about my problems, and they agreed to send out a brand new machine!
Now for the real question, the machines are almost out of warranty, and they probably have less than 40hrs time combined on them, and they have been a nightmare. If I push hard enough, I think I can get Thermal Arc to buy them back, they told me it was an option. It's going to cost me some $$$ to replace them, but I'm scared they are going to quit and need replaced anyway. Do I take the buyback, or take a risk and keep them? Most people seem to think they are at least decent machines, did I just have horrible luck?
Started playing with the tig when I got it, and it didn't seem to weld on aluminum like the one I demo'd. I made a few phone calls, got the same runaround, this time I did blame it on my inexperience. I got frustrated with aluminum welding, and didn't turn the machine on for a year. Then we got a dynasty 280dx at work and within 3 days, I was making pretty decent looking welds, so I went back to the Thermal Arc, and I have all the same old problems. I brought the 186 into work, set it beside the dynasty, and swapped the leads, torch, gas and regulator back and forth. Dynasty welds, Thermal Arc still doesn't. Into the shop we go.
This time, the shop finds some waveforms they don't like, but T/A says they are OK, and tells them to return the machine to me. Before they did, they tried welding with it, and struggle to make it work also.
While they were doing that, I was talking to an esab person on Facebook about my problems, and they agreed to send out a brand new machine!
Now for the real question, the machines are almost out of warranty, and they probably have less than 40hrs time combined on them, and they have been a nightmare. If I push hard enough, I think I can get Thermal Arc to buy them back, they told me it was an option. It's going to cost me some $$$ to replace them, but I'm scared they are going to quit and need replaced anyway. Do I take the buyback, or take a risk and keep them? Most people seem to think they are at least decent machines, did I just have horrible luck?
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