Everlast all in one

[Chicken lights]

Yes, I agree @DPittman Couple people said today that 9 years is the expected life. Those old fridges used to run for decades! We just keep filling our landfills!

(Insert rant here)

If they built them to last they couldn’t sell you another one. Kind of ironic but that has to be how the sales department looks at it. No more of the “good enough for my grandpa, I’ll get one too” type of sales strategy.

But then again, my generation loves ikea-esque crap that isn’t designed to be moved more than once

Back to welders. How many farms had a Lincoln tombstone welder that never broke down?

 

[DPittman]

If they built them to last they couldn’t sell you another one. Kind of ironic but that has to be how the sales department looks at it. No more of the “good enough for my grandpa, I’ll get one too” type of sales strategy.

But then again, my generation loves ikea-esque crap that isn’t designed to be moved more than once

Back to welders. How many farms had a Lincoln tombstone welder that never broke down?

Yup if they are still farming the welder is probably still there and still working. I know Mty brothers still have one (although they also have newer upgraded welders and probably never use the old one)

 

[ShawnR]

I ran a few rods on the new welder. Pretty smooth arc. Not that I have a lot of diversity in my experience, but it is about the smoothest I have used for stick. Since I am a nerd, I actually started reading the manual...I know, sorry fellow men....but I found an excerpt on Tungsten that relates to Inverter type welders. Up to now, I have only used Red and Green banded and the manual states to not use Greens. Coincidentally, I have used, broken, dipped, ground to a stub most of them anyways so not many left.

Here is an excerpt from the page on tungstens. In short, I am going to explore blue banded. My last machine was a transformer so makes sense that the newer technology might affect the process.

"......

For welding in AC and DC consider the following types.
• Lanthanated 2% (Blue Band). Overall this is one of the best choices for TIG welding and can be used for AC and DC weld-ing. It has great arc starting characteristics, and its point hold-ing capability is excellent.
• Ceriated 2% (Gray Band or Orange Band, depending upon brand and country of origin). This is a good choice for welding with both AC and DC, but doesn’t hold up as well.........
• Thoriated 2% (Red Band) Still considered the best for DC, works ok for AC, but has been banned in many markets outside the US due to a small radiation risk posed as an alpha emitter.
Do not use the following types of Tungsten.
• Pure Tungsten (Green Band). This will create arc instability. The tungsten will not stand up well to the more intense arc created by an inverter welder.
• Zirconiated Tungsten (White Band). This was created as an alternative for Pure Tungsten for Transformer

 

[Former Member]

Go Blue, I did my OCD research, Blue is the new RED. Some rods are extremely good at one thing and suck at the rest. Blue on the other hand does everything well and doesn't suck at anything.

Blue is a relatively new rod as far as development goes which is why it is not readily acknowledge.

Me I only have blue.

 

[6.5 Fan]

Never had a Lincoln but still have the pos Forney that my dad bought in 1953, the year they got power on the farm.

 

[Former Member]

As a new TIG welder the best advice I can give anyone wanting to learn tig is pick one setup and only change one thing, in the case of tig power setting (for material thickness). This eliminates dealing with to many changes and trying to figure out which one is messing you up.

With tig you need left and right hand and foot coordination.

So at the beginning keep it simple, no pulse, use your foot, no fancy settings, use your foot. The rest is just getting a feel of placement of torch and filler.

One last piece go about 5 to 10 (max) amps above just to give you a bit of overhead, that way full pedal gives you control without worry about too much heat.

Fancy features, come later, when (and if) you need them as mist welding can be done without them.

Its like learning to machining (or anything else), learn and master the basics, makes the advanced stuff easy.

AFTER THOUGHT Tig is really easy because you have control, lots of it, what is hard is the three limb coordination required, knowing that you know whats required.

 

[Susquatch]

Never had a Lincoln but still have the pos Forney that my dad bought in 1953, the year they got power on the farm.

I remember when we got power on the home farm in Sask too. Even then it was just for a few things. We used oil lamps before and even after for years and years. Grandpa only wanted an electric light in the front room and in the yard so you didn't need a lantern going to the outhouse. Wasn't a big light like today but better than falling into one of the old outhouse pits......

 

[Tom O]

Lol ah yes dragging the bucket out to the s*it pit sounds like the first place we rented we had electricity though as well as 8 acres to play on.

 

[Susquatch]

Look how far we have come in our lifetime! Gone from laughter and talking to each other to TV and Video Games, coal oil lamps to electric lights, horse drawn cabooses to school buses, playing on 8 acres to video games and corner stores with weed, Sh-t pits to flush toilets.

My wife got me a bidet for Xmas - I told her I didn't need it. Neighbours dog does a better job and the cleaning system is infinitely better than cold water. She gave it our middle son. He added robotics to it.

 

[Janger]

It seems modern large appliances have gotten more bells and features, complexity and reliability has gone dramatically down. I hear of more people with problems with their few year old appliances than what I think there should be. I have a 65+ year old fridge in my basement that has NEVER missed a beat. I also have a deep freezer that is about 50 years old and it keeps going although I believe it had some sort of repair about 40 years ago. I'm afraid of buying any new appliances.

Put an electric meter on that 65 year old fridge. One old fridge we owned of the almond side by side generation used 1800 kwhr/ year which is 1800 kwhr * $0.18 /kwhr (all in alberta price) = $324/year. The frigidaire we have now uses about 350 kwhr/year by the energuide label. I measured it and it really does. That's $63/year. It's 13 years old. No fancy features on it.

 

[StevSmar]

Put an electric meter on that 65 year old fridge... = $324/year.…The frigidaire we have now…That's $63/year…

Manitoba Hydro has lots of promotions for LED lights… the problem I have with the way they are promoted is that by using LED lights it means in winter I’ve got to burn more gas to make up for the reduction in electric heating that I would have got from incandescent bulbs…

(That’s really interesting how much difference there is between your old fridge and the “modern” one)

 

[DPittman]

Put an electric meter on that 65 year old fridge. One old fridge we owned of the almond side by side generation used 1800 kwhr/ year which is 1800 kwhr * $0.18 /kwhr (all in alberta price) = $324/year. The frigidaire we have now uses about 350 kwhr/year by the energuide label. I measured it and it really does. That's $63/year. It's 13 years old. No fancy features on it.

I haven't done that fridge but I did do the big old deep freezer a few years ago and although I don't recall the exact numbers it wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting (comparing to newer ones). I believe the modern fridges use a considerable portion of their energy in maintaining a frost free freezer compartment. My old girl doesn't have that feature either.

Environmentally I think I rather burn a bit more electricity with a less efficient old appliance that lasts 30+ years than have to throw out one every 8-10 years.

 

[Former Member]

I'll comment on shorter life span of products (and everything else), about 30-40 years ago there came a change in design concepts that was called Limits State Design (LSD). Before I go further you need to understand prior to that we had a good idea of what was required for a component to stand up to the hardships of use, what we didn't yet have control over and fully understand was how to achieve material consistence, so we over designed by a factor of 2, 3, 5, 10.... to ensure we covered all possible shortcomings. Along comes better testing, quality control and improvements in manufacturing and now we able to determine said part fails exactly here. This brings into play the LSD concept. We are now designing to the limit of the part(s) with an over head of just in case of only 10% because we know the parts go to 15%. This greatly reduces costs and weight further improving performance.

The only draw back with this system is critical parts are near their limits constantly, which as we all know, makes for excess wear and shortened life should anything just be slightly out of spec. When failure happens 9 times out of 10 other components are near failure (just not yet failed), hence once the repairs start its not worth the effort to repair at all and becomes cheaper to replace (repair cost wise).

There you have it, we traded lower initial cost and efficiency for the shorter disposable wasteful life.

 

[Tom Kitta]

I'll comment on shorter life span of products (and everything else), about 30-40 years ago there came a change in design concepts that was called Limits State Design (LSD). Before I go further you need to understand prior to that we had a good idea of what was required for a component to stand up to the hardships of use, what we didn't yet have control over and fully understand was how to achieve material consistence, so we over designed by a factor of 2, 3, 5, 10.... to ensure we covered all possible shortcomings. Along comes better testing, quality control and improvements in manufacturing and now we able to determine said part fails exactly here. This brings into play the LSD concept. We are now designing to the limit of the part(s) with an over head of just in case of only 10% because we know the parts go to 15%. This greatly reduces costs and weight further improving performance.

The only draw back with this system is critical parts are near their limits constantly, which as we all know, makes for excess wear and shortened life should anything just be slightly out of spec. When failure happens 9 times out of 10 other components are near failure (just not yet failed), hence once the repairs start its not worth the effort to repair at all and becomes cheaper to replace (repair cost wise).

There you have it, we traded lower initial cost and efficiency for the shorter disposable wasteful life.

We are also by far less green as a result, instead of repairing a long lasting product we constantly replace whole product. Even when it would make sense to repair there are barriers put in place & hence the "right to repair" movement. Given rather limited or none at all recycling you get rather nasty picture of the whole ordeal.

 

[Former Member]

We are also by far less green as a result, instead of repairing a long lasting product we constantly replace whole product. Even when it would make sense to repair there are barriers put in place & hence the "right to repair" movement. Given rather limited or none at all recycling you get rather nasty picture of the whole ordeal.

Absolutely, didn't even want to go there.

 

[ShawnR]

Pet Pieve! I have spent my life enjoying repairing things. First two careers were based on it. (Third one was based on those with no smoke alarms but that is another story)

Not being able to fix stuff is like denying a drug addict his fix! And the results fill the landfill.

 

[Janger]

Absolutely, didn't even want to go there.

We are also by far less green as a result, instead of repairing a long lasting product we constantly replace whole product. Even when it would make sense to repair there are barriers put in place & hence the "right to repair" movement. Given rather limited or none at all recycling you get rather nasty picture of the whole ordeal.

True why don't things last longer - way longer. A fridge could go 100 years. How much more would things cost if they had an expected life of 50 or 100 years? As usual we are way off topic.

I do have some everlast equipment - I've had a few issues with it and had them resolved. So pretty good. I'm not real happy with the dealer - they would not send a part they said was included with a torch I ordered from them. I ended up 3d printing a replacement.

 

[DPittman]

True why don't things last longer - way longer. A fridge could go 100 years. How much more would things cost if they had an expected life of 50 or 100 years? As usual we are way off topic.

I do have some everlast equipment - I've had a few issues with it and had them resolved. So pretty good. I'm not real happy with the dealer - they would not send a part they said was included with a torch I ordered from them. I ended up 3d printing a replacement.

I haven't researched them thoroughly but the bit I've read about the everlast line of stuff seems to be largely positive. I'll guess the brand name is a bit of an exaggeration though.

 

[Janger]

Manitoba Hydro has lots of promotions for LED lights… the problem I have with the way they are promoted is that by using LED lights it means in winter I’ve got to burn more gas to make up for the reduction in electric heating that I would have got from incandescent bulbs…

(That’s really interesting how much difference there is between your old fridge and the “modern” one)

I was really thinking about this - it's interesting @StevSmar. When you remove incandescent bulbs you have to replace the lost heat they provided - I think the answer is not what one would initially think.

I found this chart from Manitoba hydro explaining annual heating costs for different technologies.
https://www.hydro.mb.ca/your_home/heating_and_cooling/space_heating_costs.pdf

Say the heating from regular bulbs costs $10. That is the same technology as radiant heaters which manitoba hydro says costs $1492 year to heat the whole home. Mid efficiency natural gas is $920/year. So natural gas costs this fraction 920/1492=62% compared to electric heat. Therefore the cost of replacing the $10 in regular bulb heating is $10*0.62=$6.20. That is $3.80 less than the heat from the bulbs. Then in the summer if you have AC it's also less - the $10 in heat from the bulbs does not have to be moved outside by the AC. So replacing the bulbs actually has another benefit besides the reduced lighting costs - the HVAC costs are also less.

 

[Susquatch]

I was really thinking about this - it's interesting @StevSmar. When you remove incandescent bulbs you have to replace the lost heat they provided - I think the answer is not what one would initially think.

I found this chart from Manitoba hydro explaining annual heating costs for different technologies.
https://www.hydro.mb.ca/your_home/heating_and_cooling/space_heating_costs.pdf

Say the heating from regular bulbs costs $10. That is the same technology as radiant heaters which manitoba hydro says costs $1492 year to heat the whole home. Mid efficiency natural gas is $920/year. So natural gas costs this fraction 920/1492=62% compared to electric heat. Therefore the cost of replacing the $10 in regular bulb heating is $10*0.62=$6.20. That is $3.80 less than the heat from the bulbs. Then in the summer if you have AC it's also less - the $10 in heat from the bulbs does not have to be moved outside by the AC. So replacing the bulbs actually has another benefit besides the reduced lighting costs - the HVAC costs are also less.

This is all true. Around here, the family all knows that dad goes bonkers over lights left on in the summer but not in the winter.

Gas heating is less in Ontario than electric.

There is essentially zero difference between the different kinds of electric heating. A watt is a watt is a watt. However, there is a difference in perceived heating. Radiant heating feels warmer at a lower room temperature. So sometimes radiant heating is cheaper. Just not if it is controlled by a thermostat to the same temperature.

But all in all, you are correct. High wattage lights are never a good thing, but they are not as bad in the winter as they are in summer. It's the lesser evil equation, not right or wrong.

I'd guess the situation is much more obvious in oil country.