LOTOSTIG200ACDC 200A AC/DC Aluminum Tig Welder with DC Stick/Arc Welder, Square Wave Inverter with Foot Pedal and Argon Regulator 110/220V Dual Voltage Brown

I'm giving it five stars due in part because of price. You really get alot of machine for this price. I attached pictures of my setup to see how simple this machine is.The ground clamp is identicle to the one on the lincoln 210MP (1500$). The stinger for stick is also identicle. The regulator I feel is of higher quality than the lincoln. It runs a strong tight arch. The machine has minimal adjustments and I like that; preflow dispenses gas before arch lights, post flow dispenses gas after you stop arch, downslope tapers the amps down when you stop arch, clearance effect is worth a little research if your not familiar. The best way I've heard it explained is 0_-5 keeps heat on surface and 0_+5 keeps heat on your tungsten.I first did DC tig on steel using the miller app as a guideline for settings, they were a little hot. The arch was good, the torch will take some getting use too but welds looked great.Next was A/C for some 10 gauge (1/8) aluminum plate and it looked shockingly good. So I'm happy with tig functions.Next was stick, first I ran some 1/8 7018 and it layed down real nice 110 amps on 1/4 steel stock. I the. Ran some 1/8 6011 on the same amps (little hot for 6011) but went down just the same as my LE. Then just for fun I maxed out machine on 196 amps and ran a 5/16 7018 on some 5/16 steel. I was impressed, I kind of thought I would struggle to keep arch lite but I did not. So solid stick machine in my opinion.Down side 1: it seems you need to turn machine off if you switch from tig to stick or from petal to no petal. Otherwise when you turn ampres knob the numbers dont change. A little bit of a bummer because I like to tack weld with the tig then grab my stinger and run stick. Not a huge deal.Down side 2: foot petal cord is way to long.Numbers on amps dial is not very close to what digital display says. That's only an issue when using petal. Before I start burning I stomp on petal (machine will display ampres output) and dial it in that way. When not using petal you turn amps on knob and the machine displays all the time. When using petal if it's not depressed the display says 010, the lowest setting. That's the only thing I would change. Does not come with any filler metal so if you dont have any...you need some. I use 3-32 ER70S-2 for carbon steel and 3-32 ER5356 pure for aluminum. All my tungstons are also 3-32, I use gray or purple, you cannot use green (pure) with this machine. This welder is an "inventor" not a transducer so you use gray or purple with a 35 degree point. That's just what the person that tought me used. Otherwise you will spend alot of $$ buying all diffrent size filler and tungsten. For thin stuff I'm lucky and just pull wire from my mig machine/spool gun. Again using 3-32 across the board is not the "best" way but if your just learning and working on stuff between 12 gauge and 5/16 you wont have any issue. In case you have never purchased any of this stuff, a 10 pack of tungsten can be about 70$, so 140$ for steel and aluminum, the filler is about 10-14$ a tube.The gas for my size tank is about 100$ to swap out. So it's not a cheap process to run.Really enjoying this welder, did not think I would ever have tig at home, thanks to Lotus I do! Happy welding.

I held off on posting this review until I shook out/burned in the unit. Long story short, it's a great little welding unit. For the price, it performs as well as the big name US units. I have a couple of other units and this one is dependable and performs exactly as specified. Very impressed and I would highly recommend it.When the unit arrived, I hooked it up to 110v power and ran 70-80 beads with the stick welder. No issues. Another 30 beads with the TIG function on both mild (up to 3/16) and stainless steel (8 ga) and I am convinced that this is a quality product and am glad I bought it. Grand total so far is about 40 hours of welding out-of-the-box without issue.A few observations:- Customer support is good! A number of reviewers have suggested they are unresponsive, but when the unit arrived, the mask glass was broken and one email later it was replaced without charge in four days.- that being said, the documentation is deplorable. I encountered a few issues documented in the reviews, including the 9/22 amp 'issue' that could have been solved with better documentation. In a nutshell, if you see an amperage setting of 9 on the LED and it won't change with the controls, the fix is easy (but not intuitive): you need to unplug the pedal if you are not using it. This goes for TIG and stick functions. Looks like the software for the control panel does not ignore the pedal if it is plugged in.- I did weld past the duty cycle in stick mode and wound up tripping a breaker in my 20A garage. Welder was fine and a reset of the breaker worked a peach.All-in-all, I'm a fan of the product and would buy it again. The documentation could use some work, but just use some common sense with your troubleshooting and you will be just fine.

Nice little welder, Even though I'm no welder it has allowed me to learn tig and weld up some pretty nice aluminum joints. I've been successful to weld up 3/8 aluminum with multiple passes no problem. The controls are a bit confusing, more so mis-labeled. But all in all a good package!****Update after 1 year***Welder has held up great, has allowed me to learn and become pretty good with AC welding. Once you learn the controls you can lay down some great beads on Ally and SS. The one control that confused me was the "Clearance Effect" and after some research I found it to be "AC Balance" which affects the % of EN to EP....or the cleaning action you get when welding in AC. "0" is virtually 50EN/50EP, I usually set mine to "-3" which is 30EN/70EP I found that to be perfect for me.I own a fab shop and over the year of having this welder the duty cycle hasn't hindered any of my welds, and I've used it exclusively on 220vac.....pretty good for the price and amount of welding I do. One thing I suggest is upgrading the torch and the torch cable. Cannot go wrong with a CK torch and CK superflex cable!If I had to do it over I most definitely would not buy another Machine. It may not have all the features of some others, like pulse and variable frequency, but i like the fact that you don't have to cycle through a bunch of settings to find what you need....everything has its own knob.I definitely recommend this Lotos!