So after almost a year of playing with my welder I can review it
So the welder still alive
No welders being abused during this review
Starting the accessories it came with...
8 meters ground lead
8 meters electrode lead
Both cheap copper but it revealed to be not alluminum so I could say good
It uses dinse connector DK 16-25
I had to change the ground clamp because it was a cheap battery charger clamp that I mold at the first weld I replaced with a good strong and masculine 600A brass molding clamp
I had to replace the electrode holder because the one I came with the welder wasn't strong enough even to keep a 2,5mm rod no bueno
I replaced with a 300A sacit parva electrode holder
Power cord with European plug
1,5 meters 2,5mm²
Enough good until few days ago , because I broken it
It's plastic ish kind of cable
I will replace in this days with a proper H07RN-F 3G 2,5mm² ,2 meters I think...
As I was using it with a CEE adapter I will put a CEE 230V 16A plug
16A because I will never use over 160A or better no more than few minutes
The welder itself
Only one single issue the potentiometer knob
It was not fitted properly ,I was using 100A instead of 120 , I found it a month ago, I solved the issue today just pulling it out and positioning it in the correct position
Not a big deal at all so no complaints about
This welder has not
Hot start
Antistick
Arc force
It is just a simple stick welder ,I don't know if it can do scratch Tig , probably I will try in the future if it survives
Rathed amperage is 250A , pretty confident with this value because I used this welder full power to cut a beam using E and the arc was more like a
Imagine a jet post burner and put the flame a the end of the rod and this is what I've seen
Duty cycle 100% at 194A and 60% at 250A
Open circuit voltage 60V (measured it)
Load voltage 34V
The welder works pretty good
I generally use only because I like this rods , but I use also stainless and no problems
The arc is smooth and stable for what I can understand by my experience
Little parenthesis about E
This welder isn't rathed to use this type of electrodes but
The first weld it made is being a 4mm E .
During this period I have the welder ,I made a long series of attempts to weld using E
The issues I got has being only during initialising the arc ,and that is obvious because not enough open circuit voltage , but I've found also that my manipulation of the rod was wrong
If you use little bit more amps than what you need and you keep consistency in your travel/motion and arc length it will run E no problems at all
My major problem with was because the rods were not fresh they were old and corrupted ,in 10 I picked by the pack 4 were good .
Got the same issue using my engine driven so I understood that the problem was in part me and in part the rods
Back to the welder , according with my 10 months experience with this welder I have to say that I'm happy with it ,it is cheap so I can't ask to it to be a great welder but I asked and for an hobbyist as me it is
The main defect with this welder is the current adjust , because is tricky to set the current ,why?
Because it's a wide range scale 0-250 ,there is not an LCD display which tell you the exact amperage you're using ,and the scale itself isn't accurate to say ok 100A 120,140
I don't know if you can see in the picture but on the scale you will see 40A jumps
Starts at 20 a line than 60 another line 100 etc ...
So you have to turn slowly the knob and hope you got the right current setting at first attempt
I will post in the comments of this topic the links to related thread I make about this machine
I runned out of fastom and heat shrink tubing so I can't complete the new power cord for my welder
I've just soldered the connections for the plug
Tomorrow or even this evening I could go to the electrical store to buy the fastoms and the heat shrink tubing
Notice that the heat shrink tubing is required not to insulate in this case but just to give more strength to the cable in the cable holder area
I ended up using 2,5/3 meters long power cord for the welder
Should be good enough to get a good flexibility and much more comfort than the factory 1,5 meters power cord
I'm using H07RN-F 3G2.5mm² cable that should be able to manage 25A .
It isn't the proper cable yet because it should need 4mm² or 6mm² cord but since I will use a 16A plug and I should normally don't need nothing more 140/160 amps in the normal continuous duty scenario (I normally use maximum 125A ) the cable should be thick enough to work in stable condition for my needs
125Ax35V are roughly 4.4kW output power so divided for 230V are roughly 20A
Good enough also because I do only stick with this machine so I will never hit to much the duty cycle
And also the power switch on the machine is only 20A rathed amperage so it should be fine
I will upload some images as soon as I get all set up and ready to work