Welding experts what to buy/ do for welding aluminum

I have a millermatic 210 that is already set up for plug and play with a spool gun. To get the gun I'm looking at $650 or so. I have been tempted to buy the ahp alpha tig at $700. I am unsure what to do. I like the idea of the tig as I have never done it and can see it being handy for a lot of other jobs on thin metal where my miller doesn't excel at. My main reason for wanting to weld aluminum is building some weight brackets for a tractor and some gas tanks. Realistically I am going to be using 1/2 inch aluminum on weight brackets. I know the AHP is a cheaper unit compared to the Higher end American made units but this is just for personal use. Please school me up and shed some wisdom on which would be more useful in a personal shop. I also know that tig welding will take practice to become proficient and I am ok with that.

I too have the millermatic 210, I've had for years as well as the spool gun. I have built numerous projects from aluminum with really good results. Nothing over 3/8 though. If you are going to be doing much, I would say go with the tig. If I weren't so old I would have one myself. Let jon mn chime in he has lots of experience here. Nathan

Back when I worked at Tracker Marine where they built aluminum boats I was a maintenance man so I did a lot of repairs to there welders and so learned to weld with both mig and tig on aluminum and I preferred the tig over the mig. Got good enough with a tig welder I could weld a beer can back together. So I where going to buy a welder for aluminum I would go with tig

Just a word of caution,make sure the TIG will weld aluminum(I can never remember, but I think it is DC for AL and some TIG machines are AC only.)

Aluminum uses ac with constant high frequency, some tig selders are dc only and don't work well with aluminum.

I have both tig, and a spool gun for my miller vintage mig which is a 250 amp machine I believe.

I use the mig for heavier stuff, for me the line is about 1/8" most times, over its mig, under tig. Most of the trailer structural stuff I do is done with mig. My vintage will handle up to 1/2" thick fairly well.

For thin stuff, castings and anything that has to be pretty or perfect I use tig because it's much easier to control once you get the hang of it. You need to have ac constant high frequency for aluminum tig, so make sure any of the cheaper tigs have that. A lot of the cheaper ones are dc only and don't work well for tigging aluminum. Also the smaller welders don't have the duty cycle required for heavy tig use. I had a lincoln 175 square wave tig that was a real nice welder and welded very well, but the duty cycle was so short that you couldn't weld anything over 1/8" in aluminum for more than a few minutes. I did find that by putting a water cooled torch on it that helped a lot and got me through til I could get my Lincoln 255 square wave machine.

You will also need a tank of 100% argon for aluminum as 75/25 won't work. It also takes a lot more power to weld aluminum than the same thickness steel. With my vintage all steel welding thinner than 1/2" is done on low range, any aluminum over 1/4" is done on high range. So the power needed is significantly higher.

John the machine I'm looking at is a 200 amp ac/dc with a 60% duty cycle. I've watched videos where they ran it at full amps for ten minutes and it did not overload it. It has multiple adjustments for pulse pre and post amps and so on. Am I being realistic thinking thinking with a 200 amp machine with 1/8 tungsten and 1/8 filler rod I can weld 1/2 aluminum with multiple passes? I mostly will be doing thinner stuff but hate to paint myself in a corner with the spool gun because I see me working on thinner stuff more often. I also already have an argon bottle and have some experience with a dc lift arc tig

60% at what amps? That small 175 I had was 60% duty cycle too, but at only 100 amps. Of course you can weld heavy stuff even with a small welder, but it will take longer and might require breaks to let the welder cool. If you have trouble you can always pre-heat with a torch to shorten heating times. No question tig will be better for thin or dirty material. I'm sure you will get by even on the 1/2" stuff if your not trying to do a lot, I always think of it in terms of production welding in my shop and that is just not neccessary for everyone. Good luck with what ever you decide.

John its 60% at 200 amps at 20v I added a link to the welder. It is the best deal and seems to have best options and ratings out of the cheaper stuff. I think I am going to pull the trigger on this. I am not looking at it for production type job just hobby use. Thanks for your input. If I can do 1/2 inch with pre-heat or adding helium in the mix then I should be good to go with the limited amount of 1/2 I will be doing. If you get a chance check the specs on this welder or the youtube videos on it and let me know what you think.
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I don't know anything about those so I posted your link to Welding Web for advice. I posted a link to my question here. Give it a day and you should have a pretty good idea whether it's any good or not.
Welder advice

Jon thank you very much I'll keep an eye on the thread over there as well as sign up for an account.

You lost me in the second part of the question and brand names. My choice mig or tig would be TIG every time only because I'm confident I would have much more control over the process with TIG. MIG with a spool gun everything has to be just right and has cold starts..

I googled AHP tools country of origin. China

If you go on Amazon there are some bad reviews of this AHP TOOLS Welder.

Hi Jim if you are close to central Ohio get ahold of me and you may come to my shop and try out my tig machine or my spool gun. would be honored to help you with your weight brackets