Hobart used to be one of the real heavy hitters in the welding machine manufacturing industry. So what happened? The welding supply industry has experienced buy outs and consolidations just like many other industries in the past 20 years or so. Even the welding supply chain I deal with has gone from Holox, to Linde, to Airgas in the last 7 or 8 years. And honestly, there have been some hiccups along the way but that's another story for another day.
ITW - Illinois Tool Works now owns both Miller Electric and Hobart Welding. In order to comply with the Feds rules on monopolies, Hobart has been focusing on welding machines under 250 amps.
In other words, the hobbyist market.
Does that mean that Hobart Tig and Mig Welding machines are toys that are only suitable for weekend warriors?
Absolutely not.
Take the Hobart TIGMATE AC/DC Stick and TIG Welding Machine for example. It is a fully functional Tig welder that can weld aluminum as well as steel, stainless steel, and cast iron. Hobart's specifications state it can weld aluminum up to 3/16 thick but realistically, with only 165 amps, you might be yawning while you wait for a puddle. 1/8" thick aluminum should be no problem with 165 amps...even with a 20% duty cycle. Especially if you use a 50/50 helium argon mix.
The low end minimum arc start amperage is listed at 20 amps for welding steel on DCEN. That could be a real issue on really thin body panels or thin wall chromoly tubing. It can be overcome by using a small piece of copper to start the arc.
Have you heard of Hobarts 5/3/1 warranty? It means 5 years on the transformer and main components, 3 years on the pc boards, and knobs etc, and 1 year on the peripherals like regulators, torch, etc. Not too shabby.
So what's the problem? This little sucker is listed at 167 lbs for the shipping weight. Wow!
20 years ago that would not have even raised an eyebrow. But now that inverter power sources are available, 167 lbs seems really heavy for a 165 amp tig welding machine.
That makes me want to keep shopping...So Lets look at another option.
The Miller Diversion 165 is a very comparable to the Hobart Tigmate. Duty cycle is almost identical, accessories are the same since both the Miller and Hobart TIG welding machines come with torch, regulator, and everything else needed to tig weld except a cylinder of argon.
But the thing that interests me most about the Miller Diversion 165 is that it has a low end arc start of 10 amps. So the bottom line is that the Diversion has even better capabilities than the Hobart TIGMATE and it weighs less than 1/3 as much (about 50 lbs). That is because the Diversion 165 uses inverter technology to greatly reduce the weight of the transformer.
The prices of the 2 miller welding are almost identical, the warranties are very similar. But the weight and the low end arc starts are enough to make the big difference.
