This is a really good topic. I have been asking around the shop and my father who is a certified master welder and all agree that gas is the way to go. I snagged up a nice little find of a Farm Hand 115 Mig. It has both the flux and the gas options for use. I just have to buy the gas. I haven't even had it out of the box yet. From what I was told by everyone who has seen it. It is ideal for those on a very fixed or tight budgit. It is also ideal for patching body panels and putting in floors. It does not burn very hot so it's great for 18-16 guage steel.
Right now, the only welder I have in my garage is a Campbell-Hausfield flux core. Low and High setting, adjustable wirespeed, and thats about it. For building the subframe in my cab-I'd rather have used a stick. The welds looked like **** and its either blow-through or gob (atleast on anything but bedframe). Then I replaced the wire with some Car Quest wire-I don't even know how large or small it is, and it welded alot better than the Wal-Mart stuff. I can tack sheetmetal, lay a small bead, and do plug-welds without blowing through. I tacked up the doors on my '54 Ford Truck and welded in a subfloor outside the other day. Seems to be getting better. The welds are usually porous, nasty, a little hot, and hard to clean up. But its better than the pop-rivits, bondo, or JB Weld that some "professionals" use. Mine will be converted to gas, or I'll just buy a whole new welder at some point, eventually.
Hemi Dave is the first one that started off at the right place IMO. Forget about what new welder cost... look at some used ones. I bought mine from a friend of a friend. 110 Campbell-Hausfield MIG . Best $100 I ever spent. I didn't know ANYTHING about welding when I started,.. and like someone said above,.. anyone can weld with gas... and get fairly decent pretty quick. Sure it takes some practice,.. but I'm convinced it's better than flux. I've done ALL my welding on my old truck I am reworking. Just to see,.. here is a link. ALl with the welder I mentioned http://www.peachstspeedway.com/pickupguy.htm If you haven't welded much, and are just learning... skip the flux, and go with GAS,.. you'll save yourself a lot of headaches, and work. If you check around you probably have a friend, business accociate etc who has a decent size business and gets several size bottle of gas. Maybe you can work out a deal and get gas from them instead of messing with a local dealer. I got a friend who welds TONS of stuff. Long story short, I swap my gas bottle with him, instead of a local distributor. And I get the HUGE bottle (350#). I pay him $30 (if he'll even take it) Once you get a welder you'll be surprised what you will make. JUST to learn to use mine I started off making some stuff like a welding cart for my welder.. then a nice tool box (kinda like one of those Craftsman boxes with the wheels and 5 pulls out drawers) Just some ideas
Also, support your local community college or vo-tech school and take a welding night cl***!! The things you will learn there will save you countless hours of learning it yourself (the HARD way). You get to use someone else's equipment, too! When you are done with the welding cl***, enroll in the paint and body cl***!! Dave
Just buy a wire feed that can be converted to gas, and when/if you get frustrated with the flux core, you can just spend a little more to put the gas bottle and so forth on it and go to town. Glad to see someone likes the Campbell Hausfeld, I have a new never used one sitting here waiting for me to weld something with it.
OH... little tidbit for you 110 users... DO NOT just plug it in to any old outlet in the garage (or wherever you are using it) Yeah it'll work,.. but as you may know... every time the line goes threw a receptical, switch, etc.. it loses a little 'oompf' I had mine kick out switch kick out on mu welder a couple times when it was pludded into the wall. THEN I run me a heavy duty wire straight into the breaker box (with it's own 20 amp breaker) and this is it's on dedicted power supply JUST for the welder. It now has more power... has NOT kicked out in the time since I did that (over a year) and I can weld stuff up to 1/4" with it. I just run the wire itself out into the garage and put a plugin on the end of the wire. Left about 30' of wire 'loose' in the garage and it goes where ever I need my welder to go. Basicall I attached the wire on hooks to the ceiling to about the middle of the garage... then let about another 15 feet hang down loose.
For the home Gas shielded is much easier to use. But for those that say flux core has no use whatsoever.. I can tell you there is a reason why I used fluxcore with gas shield in the high pressure vessel industry for 15 years. Required x-ray welds. Most guys judge a weld on looks and ease of welding. In reality, the important things are penetration and washing away of impurities during the process. I have seen many beautiful welds flunk x-ray. Overall for our auto work. Gas shield is the best way to go.
I agree with the guy that said go to home depot and buy the lincoln I have one and like the **** out of it. I also have tig stick machine (lincoln) but if you are not really a welder go buy the gas sheilded machine and you will like it cause it will make a welder out of just about anyone.
2 words....ear plugs. I agree, go with gas if you can afford it. I have welded with both, and find that gas produces much cleaner welds, and much less panel distortion.
I use a flux core, its a mig but came setup for flux, just havent gotten around go getting a bottle yet. I will, but I do like the versatility of a really hot weld when I need it. The thickness the machine can do goes down if I use gas. Have welded both tho, gas is much nicer. Even sounds better haha.
i have a sp-135 as well, and use flux.. i do all my welding with it, panels (.030) frame (.035)... with some grinding turns out good, dont need alot of filler either. these pix are of using flux wire, no filler over the welds yet, just ground down and primer applied.. once cars completely done, then long boarded and filled.
My forte is OA, but fluxcore wirefeed is so much easier that's all I use now. Of course MIG is a step up, but costs more initially and gas replacement is another additional cost, so I'm back to the HF fluxcore machine. It cost me under a hundred several years ago and is still going strong.............. My reply to the hoity-toity that claim cheap is ****...... I never knew one that was skilled with welding that couldn't run a perfect bead with a cheap machine............. A quality weld has very little to do with the cost of the equipment, it's the skill of the person holding the stinger.
LUX BLUE---have you tried flap discs, much easier on the ears than a hard carbide wheel, and work as well if not better. If you never used them b4, go with caution as they remove the base metal faster than you might think especially the course grits like a 40. Please dont waste your money on the HF ones, they dont last and are not worth the money. Good luck!!
I suppose everyone is different but I have been building cars for 20 years now. I see no end to that trend either. What's a couple of hundred extra dollars spent now to get quality welds from now on ? Sure you can cut a tree down with a pocket knife, but why not use a proper saw? Same for welding. Productivity is worlds better with the gas. Less time spent grinding and switching back and forth from welder to grinder. Use the gas and you will get a bead that often doesn't need any grinding at all. That's a lot of saved hours of labor.
A good welder that is properly set up with flux core wire will do a nice job of welding whatever you want it to do. Now if you buy a cheap welder, with **** for wire, you don't know what you're doing, and the metal is rusty, you will get poor results. I have a Lincoln HD 3200 set up with flux core wire and I have welded all kinds of stuff with it, but I am a welder, and I weld for several hours a day, every day and have been for the last 25 years, so your results will vary.
between work supporting families and all the other pressures of everyday life when does one find the time to do this ?????
The biggest mistake anyone can make in mig welding is to think it's easy. It isn't. It requires full attention just like ANY OTHER TYPE OF WELDING. Flux is hotter and harder to grind because of the excess heat and rapid cooling. Then there's the problem of the weld cracking for all the same reasons. Yes it can be done. If someone's willing to invest the required additional time related to the heat/hardness issues then go for it. There's better ways and they yield higher quality and longevity to the process. Always a good thing. I prefer ESAB EG or "easy grind" with gas when I mig sheetmetal, but tig is preferred, OA is last on the list but fun sometimes. All of this is ***uming **** welds vs overlaps also. Overlaps are ugly and problematic when used on finish panels.
Once I went to OA for body panels I never went back to mig. Buy a torch set up. Learn to use that, while you save for a good MIG. A 220 machine with gas.
I think you will find, that the quality of the equipment/cost factor involved in the initial purchase will go up or down depending on the perspective of the purchaser. More professional, doing work for money, better equipment. It's worth the investment, because there will be a return on the investment. Doing your own stuff at home, learning to weld, not doing stuff for hire, usually goes for the cheaper equipment. Most guys in this position, don't see a return on the investment anytime soon, if at all ... What you have to realize is that if you will invest the time to learn to weld, and you do purchase decent equipment it will pay for itself. Furthermore, if you work at learning to fabricate or do patch-panel work or ...(fill in the blank), you may find this side work will pay for all of the tools to do profitable work out of your garage. As you gain experience/skills, you may even make a career change. There's always Community College to help with the learning curve, maybe night courses... It's just a matter of 'How bad do you want it'? One final suggestion for continuing education, ask around 'Who's the best weldor/fabricator and is into old cars in your area'? Go find that guy, introduce yourself tell him what you hope to accomplish. Ask if he'd be willing to help you out, and find out how you can help him out with his projects. You'd be surprised at what you can get done with a little hard work, and a willingness to help out. Those are just some of my thoughts. What's the worst that can happen, he turns you down? Try back again, in a week or two, maybe he was havin' a bad day. Leave your name and number, things change, life happens ... Dan Stevens dba, Steelsmith
This is what I did. I used the .035 and .045 flux core ouside in the wind for thick rusty metal farm welding and graduated to the gas update for finer welds. Took local tech school certification welding cl*** and learned the above. Wished I would have taken that cl*** a long time ago. Probably the best $$ I ever spent on hot rod construction. Take the cl***, learn to weld and you realize what **** there is out there for welding. A lot of home built trailers and car haulers are especially bad. Most of it from not enough power.
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