You call yourself a welder and then suggest running FLUXCORE wire for suspension work? Ive seen Canadian welding, Im married to one and have to listen to her relatives show me their latest POS every time we visit. Or is it just the Maritimes that are that bad? BTW, the FP120 comes with regulator and Ive seen them on Ebay NIB for under $350. Add $20-30 for UPS, and rent a bottle for $50 a year and you are good to go. Dont add up to $800 in Yankee money.
In the shop we use a 220v Miller Mig, and an old Lincoln AC buzz box, the one that just about everybody and has got sitting in their garage.
How about a Henrob? I havent seen that reccomended yet. It "cuts like a plasma, welds like a tig", and I've got one on its way. No reason it cant do all you want it to, and at a lesser price. Looks good to me. www.cut-like-plasma.com
I just finished Welding I at my community college. Learned everything from MIG, TIG, SMAW, Oxy/Acy, and plasma...don't be in a rush to start laying down beads man. Sign up for a semester or two and you will get hooked...so hooked I joined American Welding Society! Just compare the before and after: Before Welding Class: After Welding Class
That questions' been asked about 1000 times over here, plenty to read. http://www.hobartwelders.com/mboard/forumdisplay.php?f=3 Aeroman (and everyone) if you haven't used the Anti-splatter spray, it works. Keeps those nasty little bb's off the surrounding area. Spray it on the whole area first then weld, no splatter to chip or grind off afterwords. I hate splatter, it makes even a good job look shitty. .
I've got a DVI Miller, although it's not a "Millermatic". It welds a LOT better on 220V but I use it on 115V a lot of time. I'm not sure if this holds true to the Millermatic but mine has to be plugged into 20amp 115V. I would guess that since it has "20amp circut protection" that it does. This is a pain in the ass because everywhere I'm at doesn't have 20 amp outlets (T-shaped) and it's just as much trouble to swap in 220V/20A as it is to swap in 115V/20A.
Man those prices you guys are throwing out there...... Home Depot has the Lincoln 135 for about $450.00 Lowes has the Lincoln SP175 for $550.00 a small bottle of CO-2 cost $100 for the bottle and $11.00 for the gas. I have a stick welder for the serious stuff, a Lincoln SP 175 for small stuff and a Henrob for light stuff. Wish I could afford a Tig, but I just can't justify the cost for what little I would use it. Buy the best and the bigest you can afford and you will be happy. Cheap works like shit. You do get what you pay for.
Like a million other guys I'm dreamin' about learning to weld and buying a welder. My only question is. Why not a Oxy/MAP set up?? as a first welder. I've got a book on rebuilding Chevy pickups and the author suggests either an Oxy/Acy or MAP settup as a first choice because you can use it to heat bolts, King Pins etc. in addition to welding. Just wondering and dreamin' about learning to weld and getting a set up of my own.
Cause it's so damn tough to master, especially as a beginner. In high school metal class, I aced everything but Oxy, it's very tough to get a good penetrating bead, let alone a good bead with no warpage. You have to do twice as much work, modulate the heat and feed in filler. It's also tougher cause there's more guesswork (that's skill for the real wleders) involved in fine tuning your application of heat, tip selection, etc. And for sheetmetal and aluminum work it's an absolute art. On the other hand I heard they're starting up MIG classes for monkeys down at the local zoo, I'm signing up for a class..... It's a cheap buy-in, but you have to keep buying supplies- flux, filler, gas, etc.
I have 2 Henrobs and love them. One in the shop for doing patch panels and the other at home for cast iron and cast aluminum repairs. The modern body shop MIG was developed somewhere in the 70-80's for the alloy version of steel used in todays vehicles. It is not the best thing to use on older mild steel bodies and patch panels as it produces hard to grind welds. Plus I can do a hammer weld or close to it with a Henrob and finish it for priming long before I can do similar with my MIG. Plus consumables are a lot cheaper!
I hadn't read any of these posts when I replied first, I was just trying to quickly help with a link to some pro welders who post. But in the above reply there's some incorrect advice, no offense to the poster meant. First, a good 220 machine will turn down way far enough for sheetmetal. I say "good", meaning a professionally used brand. I know there'll be people argue that many welders are as good as Lincoln or Miller, but lets stay with Miller or Linc. Currently I've got a Miller 251, it has digital adjustment which helps you develope exact settings over the course of time on the things you most commonly use it for, which gives you a ballpark for anything out of the ordinary. It has no problem turning down to weld 22ga if you wanted to, I use TIG on sheetmetal personally but what I'm saying is it'll weld thin sheet and also turn up to blaze up WAY far enough for anything automotive, I've never had a call to do anything over 1/2" on cars, but have welded 3/4" and up on tools I've built, and repairs on other things....so one machine can do it all. As far as "whatever gas your supplier sells", you want C25 or don't pack it home. Lastly, you don't want any part of a stick welder. If you do I've got an old Airco that's been taking up space for 25 years, the only reason I don't throw it out in the trash is it still works.
I've was at exactly the same place you were before. Took the class & it helped tremendously. I bought a Miller 180 (220V) & can't speak more highly about it. Remember, you can change wire size to do sheet metal & thick stuff too.... What I like best about the Miller is that the controls have infinate settings. Meaning you can really dial it in. Best of luck & defiantely take the class.
I did a google for welder comparisons, and somebody in the Evilbay message boards collected up most of this info and put it in a post. I updated it with the new Hobart models... You should probably ignore the prices and try MySimon or go to a local guy.
I heard somewhere that Hobart owns Miller. I heard the Hobart 180 is very good also. I'm about to buy one myself.
That's exactly why you DO want a stick welder. Around here they auction them off at "U-Store-It" type places when poeple haven't paid rent. You can get them for under $50 and the only consumable you have to buy is electrode rod. Also, it's the BEST way to learn how to weld. You have to get used to setting your attack angle or you end up with a shitty ass weld. IMHO buy a cheap old stick welder to practice with and use for structural stuff and go ahead and get the 110V MIG. Lazy rich bitches MIG everything so leave them the $11,000 3ph. welders and sped your money on your car.
Just as a side note & for comparison....... A Lincoln 135[brand new] welds without stopping -welded a seam on its highest setting approximately 18" long before the thermal protection feature shuts it down. An 8 year old Hobart 135 welded [three] seams on highest setting that were each 26" long [nonstop] without shutting down. Both are rated at 20% duty cycle....interesting.....???? Seems to me, all the newer machines are degraded in performance somewhat.....
11,000 3 phase ? Where did that whopping exageration come in ? With a 220v MIG it's not 3phase, it's a $12.00 plug and a length of 220 cable.........just like an ummmm,.....STICK WELDER ? The first thing anyone with any welding knowledge will tell a guy is not to underestimate what you'll be welding in the future and not to buy too small of a machine, matter of fact to step up one grade. A $1500.00 Miller 220v machine isn't that much more than a $800.00 110v machine, but it'll sure as hell outperform it many times over and for more years. 110v machines are entry level machines that aren't meant to be "worked". Just like the guy that goes cheap and buys a Sportster and thinks he has a Harley, funny thing is he always wants to trade it in for the real deal in a month. I tried telling a friend this same exact thing, he was just sure he just didn't need "much" of a welder so he bought a 110v Lincoln, less than a week later he came over cussing wanting to trade it in because it kept cycling out and stopping while he was trying to weld 3/16" and the dealer wouldn't take it in on trade, he flat out told him it happens all the time and they'd have 50 used 110v machines at all times if they did. So he sold it at a loss in the local trader and bought a 220v machine.....I didn't have to say told ya so, he did. Then the dealer told me a while later that the second guy even brought it in hoping to get a good trade on a 220v machine since it was such nice condition. Sorry to hit a nerve telling him he didn't want what apparently you have. If thats all you can afford & it works for you, good deal. I TIG almost everything, what's that make me ? Bill Gates ? Everyone who has the money to buy a 220 MIG is a lazy bitch ?
Hey Roost---different strokes for different folks maybe???? The information that I gave was not wrong. I am aware that you can turn a heavy mig down.-However, in a home use situation, the gas for a "big mig" can get expensive very fast. Most people I know who are not doing "production welding" use a big mig running flux core 0.035 wire with no gas bottle for heavy welding and bracketry---or, like myself a stick welder. They use a light duty mig running 0.020 solid wire with a gas bottle for doing body work. Very few home builders have the luxury of owning a tig, purely because they cost so much money. If you are building rods on a small scale for your own use, you just can't justify the expense. I would never post something that I considered "wrong" or bad information.
Exactly my point. This way you can have 2 cheap tools instead of 1 way more expensive tool. Especially since people are evidently giving the 115V welders away.
I'm also a Miller fan also, so when I went to buy my Econo-Tig a few years back, I came home with a Lincoln Square Wave Tig 255 for two reasons. 1. I decided I was too old to think I'd be upgrading later - I upgraded right then. 2. The Lincoln included a Tig Pulser that was a $400.00 option on the Miller. I made my own water cooler set up with a Pro-Con Carbonator pump and face mounting motor from Grainger and lashed-up the rest with a heater core, blower and stuff. Then Miller came out with the Aerowave and my pal bought one.... it's light years ahead of anything else I've seen. On aluminum it's so smooth it's like licking ice cream.... but it was $7800.00. Whoa! outta my league.
Anybody notice the phony model # that Lincoln, Miller and Hobart use? You buy the same fucking POS 90A welder year after year and they jack up the model number and price every year and some people think it means Amperage! I wouldnt even use a 90A MIG for trunk ballast in my winter beater. If you are limited to a 120V welder then go for a 110-120A version. These are the limit of a house wiring 15-20A breaker. And DONT use a chintzy extension cord. I you have to extend then make your own from highly flexible stranded # 12 wire and no more than 10-15'. As I mentioned previously, check out the Firepower welders, especially the FP120 and FP130. Hundreds of dollars below the so called "big 3" and no loss of quality or features AND you get the gas regulator and gauge with the price of the kit. You will have no problem attaching basic brackets, boxing plates and similar. NOT for suspension work, frame repairs/splicing or other heavy duty work.
The Jalopy Journal
