The best TIG welders for beginners

AHP publishes AC/DC TIG at 10 to 200 amps, a 60% duty cycle at 200 amps, 35% at 155 amps on stick, capacity of 24 gauge to three-eighths of an inch on mild steel and to a quarter inch on aluminum, AC balance adjustable from 30 to 70 percent, and 50 pounds.

This has been the default first AC/DC TIG machine for years for a straightforward reason: AC output at a price that used to buy DC only. Sixty percent duty cycle at 200 amps is also a genuinely high rating — far beyond what home use demands, which means the machine is never the limit.

Adjustable AC balance is the control that matters most for aluminum. It lets you trade oxide cleaning against penetration instead of accepting one fixed compromise, and it is the difference between fighting dirty aluminum and simply turning a dial.

Two honest caveats: the bundled torch and consumables are the first thing most owners replace, and the manual is thin enough that you should budget time for learning the machine as well as the process.

Eastwood publishes AC/DC TIG at 10 to 220 amps on 240 volts and 10 to 140 amps on 120 volts, stick at 20 to 180 amps, an AC TIG duty cycle of 40% at the full 220 and 60% at 179, capacity up to a quarter inch, high-frequency arc starting, and adjustable AC balance, AC frequency and pulse.

What you pay over the AlphaTIG buys the box rather than the arc. The flex-head WP-17F torch arrives on a twelve-foot lead with a gas-lens collet body, collet and number 8 cup already fitted, and the foot pedal, argon regulator/flowmeter and ground clamp are in there too. Add a gas bottle and you are welding.

It is also the lightest machine on this page — Eastwood publishes 22.93 lb — which is the specification you notice every time the work will not come to the bench.

Its 40% duty cycle at the full 220 amps is lower than the AlphaTIG's published 60% at 200, though both are well beyond hobby demand.

Lincoln publishes AC/DC TIG, pulsed TIG and stick on 120 or 230 volts, at 8 to 205 amps of TIG on 230 volts and 8 to 125 amps on 120 volts.

What a first-time buyer actually gets here is a finished setup. The Caliber 17 torch, a Foot Amptrol, the regulator and flowmeter, the electrode holder and the work clamp all ship in the box, so there is no second shopping list between delivery and the first bead.

Lincoln's dealer and service network is also the best in this category, which matters if something goes wrong — and on a first machine you do not yet know whether a bad arc is the machine or you.

You pay substantially more than the AlphaTIG for comparable output, and that is the whole trade. The arc controls are not the compromise they once were: pulse, AC frequency and AC balance are all adjustable on this machine.

Two percent lanthanated tungsten — blue band — works on AC and DC, so one box covers aluminum and steel and you stop thinking about it. Common sizes are 1/16, 3/32 and 1/8 inch.

It also contains no thorium, so grinding dust carries no radioactive-material handling question. Thoriated tungsten still works well on DC and is still widely sold; most shops have moved away from it for exactly this reason.

It needs a dedicated grinding wheel. Sharing a wheel with steel embeds particles in the tip and contaminates the arc, which is a frustrating problem to diagnose.