A Couple of Good Little Welding Machines

The Lincoln Invertec V155-S is one of the small new inverter type welders that is slightly larger than a lunch box and capable of very good stick and DC TIG welding. It will run off of a household electrical outlet at 115 volts and 15 amps. If you can plug it into an outlet with a 20 amp breaker it has a better range. It also can be plugged into single phase 230 volt outlet for even more performance. With the right extension cord it can be used up to 200' from an outlet. It is also able to be run off of generators that can sustain loads of 15 or 20 amps at 115 volts.  The price is around $690 with accessories for stick only. It can be purchased for roughly $950 with the stick accessories and a TIG package that includes a torch and gas regulator and hoses. The only drawbacks I can think of is that that it doesn't have any remote current control capability and it's DC only so forget about welding aluminum in TIG.



The WeldingWeb.com forum has a thread with a good hands-on  review.

Now if you are willing to spend an additional $700 you might want to look at the Miller Maxstar 150 STH from Miller Electric. It has remote control, pulsed current modes, high frequency starting, works on house current (115 volts) and is still has similarly tiny size.

There are cheaper TIG welders in the new and used markets, some of which will also do AC TIG on aluminum, but these are going to be tethered to a 230 volt outlet which greatly reduces their portability. The idea after all is to have a welding machine that can go almost anywhere and plug into any outlet and these machines can do that. -- Mitrik Spanner