TIG & Stick Welder, Migatronic Pilot 1800 Teardown

A teardown of a Migatronic Pilot 1800, a combined TIG & stick welder. TIG is short for Tungsten Inert Gas and refers to the tip of the welding handle, which is made out of tungsten. A inert gas comes from the handle, to surround the tip and ensure no air is near the welding bath. This machine can also do stick welding ( Shielded Metal Arc Welding ), which is the same principle, but the way of protecting the welding bath from air is by a layer of flux around the metal stick being deposited into the weld.

In this teardown video, I give a run down of the current paths in the system and I show which parts I kept. If you want to see other welder teardown videos. Check out the ESAB Power TIG 200 Welder Teardown or TIG welder teardown. ESAB TIG Caddy 1500i.

Additional information

The unit was pretty smashed up, when I found it. All enclosure parts, cables and some controls was missing.

The controller board uses a single programmable IC and for the rest its 40-series and LM3xx comparators/op-amps.

The bridge module of the welding machine was labelled PILOT 1800 and only had two TO-247 IGBTs in a half-bridge configuration. The PCB did however have room for an additional eight TO-247 devices. This tells us this is a modular system and the 1800 model was the smallest possible.

A glance of all the parts that was extracted from the welding machine.

Migatronic Pilot 1800 datasheet

Here is the datasheet cutouts for the International Rectifier soft recovery diode HFA320NJ40, the Vishay 3 phase bridge rectifier 36MT140 and International Rectifier TO-247 IGBT GP20B120.