The Home Machinist!

Does anyone have any experience with or opinions about this machine?? I found this machine at an auction site and am wondering about it's capabilities.
I'm new to Tig work and hopefully to start doing some aluminum. I have a Miller Econo Twin HF but don't think is will give the the frequency control I need for aluminum. Perhaps this Hobart w/HF arc stabilizer might be the correct solution. (correct me if I'm going down the wrong path here.)

Thanks,
Steve

Hobart was a solid brand with reputation for quality back before the MBAs got ahold of it, eventually winding up as a name stuck on Miller's budget line. That is an old school transformer based industrial grade welder from that period. In fighting shape it will run over 200 amps (not sure exact specs) at 100% duty cycle. As such, like my Syncro 351, it will need a BIG pipe to feed from (dedicated 100A or so). And also like my 351, it will weld aluminum just fine. It doesn't have all the cool new gizmos that you would get on the inverter machines, and I'm not sure if that one even has "square wave" technology, but folks welded aluminum long before that too. One good point is that those old welders were built like tanks (and weight about the same), so very little to go wrong. Inverters can be converted from $4000 machines to scrap with one stray arc and the wrong burned circuit. The down sides (other than HUGE power demands) would be lack of parts should something go wrong. People talk about how power hungry ($$$) they are, but for a home shop I can't imagine it is likely to be an issue. Maybe if your hobby is making large fabricated metal art pieces? And things like high frequency pulse, fine arc balance control, 2/4 step, and so on are nice options that can make welding easier and more efficient, but again, you don't need them to TIG weld aluminum.

To put it another way, that Hobart is like a big ol' work horse lathe from WWII, like a Monarch or L&S compared to a modern industrial CNC lathe. They can both do the work, one is (comparatively) simple and failure proof (within reason) and can get the job done in skilled hands, the other is mind-bogglingly complex with MANY expensive points of failure but can turn a modestly trained operator into a wizard producing complex parts at a rapid rate. Perhaps not that wide a range, but hopefully makes the point.

Dose anybody out there have a Hobart TG-301 welder ?
Please let me know. My name is Rick and my number is 765-720-4404
Thank you very much.