🔥 Weld Your Way to Mastery!
The ANDELI Aluminum Welder TIG-250 ACDC is a powerful 200AMP digital inverter welding machine designed for versatility and precision. With multiple welding modes including AC/DC TIG, PULSE TIG, and MMA, it caters to various materials like aluminum and stainless steel. The machine features an intuitive LED screen for easy control and comes fully equipped with essential accessories, making it perfect for both professionals and DIY enthusiasts.
Manufacturer | ANDELI |
Part Number | TIG-250 ACDC |
Item Weight | 37.3 pounds |
Package Dimensions | 21 x 19.2 x 12.5 inches |
Item model number | TIG-250 ACDC |
Style | TIG-250 ACDC |
Batteries Included? | No |
Batteries Required? | No |
A**R
happy with the mashine
it is good mashine easy to work with
D**M
Decent AC/DC entry level welder... Pedal is crap. Excellent technical support.
I have a mixed feeling (and I am electronics engineer with welding hobby). I bought it after comparing features and what was included, and liked the blue/white case colors. After having it for some time, I think that it has most of the basic features for AC TIG welder, and it is a good value for the money.I would highlight technical support responsiveness.However, few notes after having it for some time (I am planning a review on YouTube later):1. It came with Euro-style 14GA (2.5mm2) power cable; too thin to carry declared 25-30A 220V current. I contacted the seller and they responded within 12 hours and suggested to send the proper US 12GA power cable - which I received in couple weeks.2. When I opened it, some of the nuts were secured with hot glue which came off due to poor adhesion. Also, the nuts securing 200A output wires were not tight when they were attached to PCB (see picture 3,4). In general, I was surprised that full welding current flows through PCB, which may be a reliability problem running above 50-70A (the welder is rated to 180A). Make sure you inspect the welder before operating.3. It has good AC/DC power control and uses hall-effect current sensor in the feedback loop (picture 4). I measured the arc current and it is reasonably accurate and stable.4. There are two boards inside - one is the master DC inverter, and another is a polarity switch (making it AC welder). The board assembly quality is good and there is conformal coating which allows to operate in humid environment. But I think that they are designed with marginal current handling capacity, there are no extra reinforcement conductors soldered on high-current circuits. There is also no ample margins on the current ratings of diode bridge and IGBTs, so it may be not as reliable as higher-priced welders like Miller's. The boards are not easily repairable if they fail.5. The high frequency start is reliable and very handy.6. The pedal shipped with the welder is useless "as is", it is incorrectly designed mechanically and does not reliably control current. I did modify it to fix the design (see picture with additional retaining wheel), but still the base of it is too thick and very uncomfortable. So I cannot use it. My pedal was also wired incorrectly, the green and yellow wires on potentiometer need to be swapped to make it work properly (connector pin1 = end of potentiometer, pin 5 = taper, pin 4 - +15V). The technical support told that they have a more advanced pedal, and even a wireless one on Bluetooth for purchase. IMHO, the pedal is a waste of money, and they should not ship it. Instead, they should provide the connector pinout and schematics of the welder.7. The TIG torch is basic, but OK. It has a switch on it. It comes with spare ceramic and collets. The connectors are euro standard, so probably other torches will fit.8. It did not come with stick holder and cable, but it came with a couple of spare connectors. I guess professionals may already have these accessories, so it is not a problem.9. There is no single button to open the gas valve - so it is inconvenient to set up the gas flow rate. However, pressing the switch on the torch without HF is an alternative.10. It came with a wrong schematics in user manual, making potential repair impossible. Another area for improvement.11. The boards with heavy heatsinks are not robustly enough secured in the case, and the self-tapping screws are not properly holding because the metal is too thin. So when I turned it on, I found a piece of ventilation fan thrown out (see picture 2). Probably, it was broken during transportation, despite un-damaged packing material. I doubt that it will be reliable on the road if one carries the welder on a truck unless the owner completely changes the board mounts.12. Like all low cost APAC welders, this does not have (expensive) power factor corrector (PFC) required for all devices more than 400W and power company may be unhappy. Andeli has another model at $300 more with PFC.Overall, this is a entry level, full functional welder with good controls, designed OK, reasonable value for money, but manufactured with a lot of shortcuts. The manufacturer may improve it. Still doing its job, especially as TIG below 100A. I doubt though that other welders of the same class are manufactured better...
T**Y
Buy something else
As a beginner I can't get this thing to weld anything correctly after 6 months of owning it. The instructions are terrible and interface is clunky. I wish I would have bought a different welder to start with. After much education and trying to apply it to this welder I don't think it's my fault anymore that it doesn't weld right
C**G
Good Hobby-level AC-DC Tig Kit (updated)
This is a solid little inverter welder. I've only put about 10 hours on it so far, hoping that it's now past infant mortality that does tend to plague some other invert units. This one (TIG-250PEACDC) is replacing my old Longevity MicroTig 250, which was a joy to use, had a >$1500 price tag when new and was about 8 years old before it finally died. Commodity pricing being what it is, this unit I'm hoping for an equivalent lifetime of occasional use. My use case is < 0.18" AL and typically < .125" Mild Steel. Occasional SS makes it into the mix at similarly small size. I often am working small plate items that came from waterjet, so can find contamination even when cleaned, and this welder seems to chug along nicely.This unit came basically ready to go, out of the box, less gas and flowmeter. The photos in the item details didn't spec it, but it came with a flex-head air-cooled torch, a ton of traditional ceramic consumables as well as a handful of gas lens components. And two full packs of electrodes (pure W and 2Ceri). The torch (air-cooled, toggle lever button trigger) is actually quite comfortable and has a denim cord cover (not zippered) rather than a plastic tube. I may very well leave it attached for a while. The terminals are dinse 35-50's (rather than the smaller 10-25) which was nice to see. My favorite water-cooled torch plugged right in (My old Longevity unit had 10-25's, so I have a drawer full of adapters). Gas is a separate connection from the torch electrode (yay!) so is compatible with "traditional" torches rather than the ones that throw power through the gas connection. I do have to track down the specific quick connector for the gas, but that's only once I want to get the water-cooled torch on again.A couple videos do exist on the web for this unit, but the marketing and end-user offerings really aren't popular; perhaps this is a newer box without a lot of distribution yet? I would have liked to see the particular model's manual online before purchasing as well, however the above may be the factor.That said, I'm going to guess from the model number (TIG-250PEACDC) that the 'PE' may mean "personal edition". Which is a good use for it. Don't try and replace your old Synchrowave with this. The controls are easy to figure out even though I haven't gotten into the "smarter" features yet. I'm perfectly happy setting my own balance values and foot on pedal. Lift and 4T are likely features that will never get used. The "Smart" mode does work however - but it's not a smart function - it simply triggers the gas without current so you can, well, test your gas volume without fear of shock. I guest that's smart in a way.So it's a really stable and comfortable box, as new as it is. It responds well, the amperage outputs are what I would consider "close to real" - I did not need to crank it up to 150A for 080 steel. 60-70 amps on the panel was plenty, and I wasn't bottoming out the pedal mid-bead. I didn't put a meter on the leads to really test it, and honestly I've never really equated a panel reading with a wandering foot to a specific number.Oh, and pedal -it came with one. An old style miller knock off (metal formed box, louvered sides, rack drive) - which is unfortunately really poor operational quality. These pedal styles are often found to be lacking, so I'm not going to rate the welder based on the pedal (which I am going to replace). Transparency: I have a certain love of Miller's RFCS pedals (wired or wireless) that are just a dream to have underfoot. So I'm a bit spoiled that way. To evaluate the pedal on its own however, the worst part about it is the drive rack (a bar of plastic toothed belt mounted on a tang that drops down from the pedal, which rotates a pinion on a pot shaft) - which although a good attempt was made, the drive rack is held only at one end on the pedal. This sounds just fine until you see that the pedal inscribes an arc, which means the tangent distance on the pinion is forever changing. The rack is always on the edge of too tight and too loose. The copy of the design is simply flawed. I've seen some modifications made to this style that puts either a bogey/pressure follower wheel opposite the pot pinion to keep pressure on the rack, or a spring attached to the bottom of the rack to try to do same. I'll probably try one of those eventually, unless I can acquire a different pedal.At the recommendation of the seller (email notification after purchase), I checked "the screws and the metal case" for damage. Um, that seemed ominous, but since that was noted, I of course did. I wonder if I received a refurb model after doing that; the sheet metal cover was in fine condition (no shipping damage at all) however a couple of the screws were mismatched; clear indication that I was not the first one inside it. Thus, I was very cautions firing it up the first time (I have a good background in this so it wasn't overwhelming - but still...) No issues with a first smoke test. Chassis is grounded and not high-sided like some of the cheap inverters are. No problem putting your hand on it while it's energized.Last point - the nameplate specs the input power max 38A at 240VAC; typical at 17+Amp 240VAC (TIG). It came with a Euro Schuko connector on it. Which is maxed for 16A no matter where in the world you are. This is bad math. The input cordset was 2.5mm.sq (or 14 AWG equivalent) so the connector is good for 16A, the cable is good for 20A (excluding other factors) and the nameplate says it's going to pull a lot. The input cordset was the first to go and was replaced with a 10/3 and twist-lock to match my panel. I'm running it on a 30A circuit (since I doubt a 20A would last a days' welding - maybe, who knows?) that also has a thermal probe on the cordset. (Not included with the welder - it's a kit I put together at my panel I use when I'm doing other retrofit projects). Cable temp didn't make it above ambient (74F) while I was running it in, so the box isn't terribly inefficient, which is a good thing. (Inverter designers can sometimes cheat by dumping a huge inductor on one side to save component cost in filtering, but that sacrifices efficiency, which means the unit draws more power for its output.)I haven't run it in AC mode yet, but am expecting that it should be just fine; the functional diagram of the weld power supply notes it has a two stage inverter - so almost three quarters of the work is being done just to run it in DC mode; running in AC mode is simply a different software function. I would love to see a firmware option to get a triangle waveform, but that is way beyond this class of machine.There aren't a lot of ACDC mid-level boxes out there in a reasonable price range. This is a good offering that probably has a value of almost twice its purchase price. Past $1k though, if your budget allows, you'd be better suited for something blue, or red, or yellow. This white box, however will find a permanent home here, and so far appears to do the things it was meant to do very well, not just do a lot of things poorly.Update: regarding the pedal, after a little more use it became completely unusable, so I tore it down to fix it. I shortened the rack tensioner spring to 2/3 it's original length (and formed a new loop on the end) and now it feels and performs incredibly well. The welder itself is also doing fine although I still haven't had the need to explore the options too to bottom.Yest another update, May2022 - unit has seen another 30+ hours of tig DC (up to 150a) and ac alum (about 120a). Still as good as day one. TOccasionally I get a weird blast of gas on first arc, almost like it got buffered somewhere in the line and "whooshed" which blows the arc all over the place. Might be solenoid, might be lineset. I don't think it's tank or flow reg since I also have my water-cooled torch and have not yet experienced there. I flip between my water-cooled and the air cooled that came from the unit often, finding I like both. Very happy purchase!
M**K
Full function welder at great price.
I would have given it 5 stars except the instructions suck. After messing around looking for product videos online I finally got this machine set up. I was making nice passes on aluminum in no time.
H**F
NO SUPPORT OR CUSTOMER SERVICE
Dont gamble your money. The machine quit working after few hours and the company will not even respond to my questions none of my emails.
W**E
Great little machine, but very poor instruction
Let me start out and say i am just starting out with tig welding, so definitely not an expert. The machine performs really well and I have been able to get most setting working. I would have really appreciated a QR code to an English speaking demo of the features. Still very happy with my purchase
J**S
Gas does not work
Pre flow initiates, stops through the entire weld, then kicks back on for post flow. Pretty useless.
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