Tig welder to purchase.

[Bo Wallen]

I'm on the plane back to ct I will help you the best I can later this evening

[RCP57]

In my small level of experience Aluminum takes a lot of heat! I was welding some 1/2"x2"x14" plate to some pipe for our fish boat with the 225 and it would shut down just as the bead started to flow properly. I think if you are wanting to weld heavy stuff like that you either need to buy a 300amp+ welder or plan on doing a lot of preheating. Let the moths fly from your wallet and spend big my friend!lol

[JAMMER]

Cooper That welder I told you about is a 200 Amp if you are going to do 1/2 inch you are going to need a bigger welder than 200 Amps. Ed

[9W Monighan]

I have a Lincoln Square Wave 255 I bought it new in 1997 for about $2600 at the time. I added a water cooled Tweco gun about $175 a Lincoln foot pedal about $130 and a Lincoln water cooler ~$500 . I got this right before the inverter type welders took hold. I wish I had one of the inverter type because the SW255 is big and heavy not making it too portable.
This unit works very well. I mainly use it for welding Bronze together. Sometimes Aluminum and steel.
For my every day Aluminum welding, I have two Lincoln InverTec V-350 Pro with Python push pull mig guns. These get pretty pricey I think the last one I bought was around $8000 for the whole setup.

Here's the Tig machine that I have:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lincoln-Squa...kAAOSw34FVCHZU

This is the one I should have bought but I didn't have enough $$ at the time.
The cooler and foot pedal on the top in the picture are the same as mine.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lincoln-Square-Wave-350-TIG-/291673416210?hash=item43e9172212:gu0AAOSwKIpWDmX k

You may find a nice used one at HGR Industrial Surplus hgrinc.com