AHP ALPHATIG 203XI

Our rating:

4/5 Gears!

It wasn’t just the Jeeps getting improvements recently, in the hopes of being more capable for repairs, and maybe even producing custom parts for the Jeeps, I picked up a welding set-up for the garage. I’m not really qualified to go in-depth about what makes a welder “good”, but lets take a quick look at the machine anyways:

The features they claim:

• Powerful 200 amp AC/DC TIG welder
• AC/DC TIG and AC/DC Stick
• High visibility LCD screen
• Includes pulse in AC and DC modes
• Rapid Set Function for TIG and Stick
• Water Cooler power outlet on rear panel
• High Frequency and Lift TIG start
• Adjustable AC TIG and Stick frequency
• 60% duty cycle at 200 amps
• Pulse frequency 0.5 to 250Hz, DC and 150Hz, AC
• 2T/4T function
• 3 Year Warranty

Unfortunately I don’t have a 240v outlet for the welder yet, so I can’t test the higher amperage settings, but even on 120v it works great for the stuff I’ve been using it for. It does really well on 3/16 stainless which is what I mess around with most, and has also done well on some various aluminum projects and carbon steel scraps for practice. It behaves like I would expect a decent welder to behave, and has more settings than I know what to do with yet.

The rapid set mode is fancy, but I don’t use it that much. I played with it a bit, and ended up going back to manually setting things myself. It was probably my fault I couldn’t make the recommended settings work, I’m sure a lot of sciency engineering stuff goes into that, but it was easier for me to just guess a number and use the foot pedal to control everything. I would bet that’s a more popular option anyways.

The AC does sound a bit different than the machines I learned on, which I found odd. However it still performs great on aluminum and as far as I can tell the sound is the only difference.

The High Frequency start works very well, nice easy starts, and the contacts for it are easily adjustable when you open the machine for regular maintenance as explained in the very detailed manual that comes with the machine.

One nice feature that they don’t directly mention is that is comes with a Nova rotating head style TIG torch, as well as provisions to make it a 17 style or 9 style torch, which I’m absolutely loving. The swivel head lets me put it exactly how I like it, and I had been wanting to try one for a while before being pleasantly surprised to find one in the box

I like the 3 year warranty, and it seems about on par with other welding machines. They also say that they have many repair parts available on order, and more often than not will send out new parts for warranty repairs instead of you having to ship them the whole machine, which I really like.

As for the stick welding half of the machine, I haven’t used it quite as much, but it ran like any other stick machine I’ve used. It doesn’t have fancy settings like dig or arc force or whatever, and seemed to stick more than the machines that do, but I wasn’t surprised by this

My only real complaint about the machine is that the cover for the controls can be a pain to open up after it closes too far, especially with gloves on. I’ve 3D printed some spacers to keep it open just enough to get a gloved finger under it, but it seems weird that they made it possible to close too far in the first space. I’d love to see some spacers built into the case.

Overall, I’m really happy with this machine, and look forward to sharing some Jeep projects I do with it here. This machine handles everything I need it for very well, especially for the price, and so far I'm happy I went with it instead of the competitors.