maxstar 150 sth vs ecotig

[pollaccia]

I want to buy a tig welder to weld mainly 4130 1" chrome moly tubing. Do you all think that the maxstar 150 sth will handle welding .083 tubing.? Do I need the hf starts and the pulse feature that the sth has over the maxstar 150 stl. Anyone got pics they could post using the above welder i would appreaciate. thanks again paul

[Bob the Welder]

A Maxstar 150 will handle that and a whole lot more without even breaking a sweat! I have had a 150STL for close to a year and a half and love it as much now as when I bought it. The thing that sold me on one was when I got to use one at a nuke plant during an outage. They don't buy toys to do serious work with at those places!

Don't know if you have used liftarc tig before. If not, it may take a (very) little getting used to. I have come to like it very much and never use scratch start unless I have to. Am even getting some of the others to try liftarc for welding boiler tubes.

[pollaccia]

maxstar 150

Bob i was thinking about the maxstar 150 sth with the pulse feature and the hf start. Do you think this would be overkill/ thanks bob for your input. Union,s Rule!

[Bob the Welder]

Personally I would save my money and go with the STL. Haven't used an STH so really don't know how well the HF would work. From what I understand it is not a true HF (I could be wrong) but is supposed to do the job quite well. Best I could recommend would be to try both ways of starting. HF would probably be easiest but that is call you would have to make on worth.

Live better, work union!

[Danny]

Paul,

I have a feeling you might like the pulse feature for .083 wall tube. Pulsing will help reduce your rate of travel around the tube, which would be a definite advantage when the tube is 1" in diameter.