Hi Zen... Me again :o)
As I am chained to one of those things all day I'll have a stab at your question
That 220 machine will work fine, especially if it has a High freqeuncy initiator. This really common feature just makes starting your arc easier by establishing an extremely high voltage/no amperage (+100,000v) arc which creates an ion trail,which the main arc follows to the work...(ish). This is a nice feature but not absolutely necessary for all DC applications ie steels
If your going to tackle aluminium the machine needs AC and full time high frequency selection. Beyond this square wave rectification and wave balance control are nice to be able to alter cleaning/penetration characteristics.
Big machines like the 450A/600v lincoln superwave that follows me around have nifty features like postflow gas control, pulse arc programmability, and variable current upslope and downslope curves so that when you turn off the hand control the machine slowly cools your puddle and at just the right instant gives a little burst of current to fill your tail crater. But honestly all of these nifty toys are usually turned off.
So the main differences between an average/smaller welder and a big/exotic one are a bunch of features that have very limited/specific uses.
Sean

Since I don't weld aluminum, I can't comment on some of the items that were previously described, but pretty much a tig machine is a tig machine...some have pulse, high freq., postflow, preflow, sqarewave, but most I deal with don't....you have the negative, positve, and you're common ground strap....oh yeah, and your aperage adjustment...that's about it.

Zen,

If you don't plan on welding aluminum or exotic metals then you don't need a tig machine. There's no point in spending money for features that you don't need. Any DC CC welding machine will work just fine for carbon and stainless steel. This machine will also work very well for stick welding. The only accessories that you need for tig are the gas apparatus and tig torch.

Dave

Ps: You WILL become a good tungsten grinder long before you become a good tig welder.

For the price of renting a tig machine for a weekend you can get a whole semester of safe supervised training at your local community college, which will include an experienced teacher and all the different machines they have to play with. If you show promise many instructors will let you bring your own projects into class so you can get credit for fixin your trailor hitch.

Good luck Zen


Lawrence