DRM in TIG welders
To me this says &quot;we make such huge margins on these welders that we can intentionally cripple them and sell them at a lower price. Someone out there could produce our top end model for the low end price.&quot; It logically follows that maybe I should start looking into other manufacturers who sell at closer to manufacturing cost, like Everlast.<p>I realize that big welding shops aren&#x27;t going to drop the big two (Lincoln and Miller) overnight, but I think practices like this are really going to hasten the rise of Chinese upstarts making high quality IGBT welders. Once they (or a third party) starts offering good support and warranty guarantees it&#x27;s going to be hard to compete with them when you employ sales practices like this.<p>For example, the Miller Syncrowave 210 shown in the video is $2,700, base price. I use one weekly, and it&#x27;s a decent welder. Alternatively, one could get an Everlast PowerTig 250EX for $1,700 that comes with features missing from the Miller at a price that&#x27;s $1,000 less. The Chinese manufacturers know their price point, and they&#x27;re not going to leave out features supported by their hardware because they&#x27;re hungry for the business. I think the way Miller is behaving is a sign of complacency, and it&#x27;s going to come back to bite them.<p>I already find myself using the cheaper IGBT welder day to day because we don&#x27;t have the SD card upgrade for the Miller and I like features like up-slope and down-slope that have been left out for product segmentation reasons.