The synchrowaves (and the dial arcs) are tig welders, mainly for aluminum or other alloy type stuff. They were the miller top of the line machines for that type of work, and will stick weld very well too. They were production able tig machines, and usually have advanced for the time arc controls. The arc percent is really handy if you get into trying to repair aluminum stuff, but that's such a rarity for me that simply knowing a couple of buddies with them is enough for me. For the right price tho they would be a phenomenal score for a machine if you got the room and power to run one. It'll stick and tig weld pretty much anything metallic in the galaxy, gouge, and serve as a mighty fine end table in the shop
@Bart I'm a huge fan of older iron. They don't build in welding knowledge, they've been trying to replicate the drooping arc curves of the old school dc generators and they very recently have achieved what i would consider parity on the very top level machines that go around 15 k plus. The inverters have their place for sure, in construction you often move machines around everywhere, so the ability to hump them up stairs and stuff to do repairs or to different jobsites is huge. On bigger jobs you can have literally thousands of people, so they are even sold in 6 packs so you can have 12 machines on a cart, a nice and compact option. With transformer machines this has a huge footprint, with a ton more power, lead, and cable needed. Factories and jobsites can use much less electricity since the inverters are far more efficient, sometimes the power companies will even try to force the issue over this. I ran some of the larger transformer ones in the area here back when i started, 1000 amp machines running .052 and 3/32 dualshield, which was being switched to a robot weld during my time there.
I've got tons of posts in this thread and others about this exact thing too, it just depends on what you're doing and trying to accomplish. If you aren't needing the very specific attributes of an inverter i have a hard time accepting a higher price point for a more delicate machine that usually has an inferior arc. If you are setting up a production setup with trigger selectable programs on a high duty cycle, by all means. The miller xmt series is ubiquitous and will weld pretty damn well, and of course the pipeworx and similar multiprocesses welders are amazing. Lincolns offerings are likely better, most contractors i work for usually run miller likely due to cost so i run mainly millers at work. I run my Lincoln 72 sa200 on my truck when I'm welding pipeline, and it's the most amazing arc I've ever run. The cross country engine drive is equivalent to a dc generator, the arc is different but they are very well behaved and consistent, while the generators drift a bit as they heat up and cool off. Obviously the engines are 50 years apart in technology so score ease of that to the new ones too. But I bought mine for 500 bucks from a junkyard while bar hopping and shopping for a "let's get drunk and build a pontoon boat" weekend, which you just can't quite replicate with a computer
