Help me choose a new welder!

[Big Barn]

OK, not totally useless, just useless for tig welding aluminum. I have thought about getting an ARC welder, and probably will when my shop is built and I have the space. I see the good old stuff on CL all the time in estate sales, I'd love to have one of those 400 lb mothers around to keep the shop from blowing away!!

Ok. I LIKE that route. Miller 211 or equivalent Hobart mig and older transformer AC/DC stick-tig. Oxy-acet rig and you're good to go! Have fun!

Terry

 

[rmully]

Consider a Hobart Ironman 250 .... I am saving for one.

 

[yomax4]

My vote would be for the miller 211 or the hobart 210, depending on if you care about infinite voltage control. The reason I personally choose those is because they are made in the USA. The new Lincoln sounds good on paper but doesn't give me much a warm fuzzy feeling. It's assembled in Mexico, but for the price I'm guessing it's nearly entirely Chinese parts. I've only heard one first-hand review, the guy claimed it didn't do well with 6010 and was having feeding problems with it. It's too new and too cheap for me to trust it right away. I've heard of dozens of people with both the Miller and the Hobart and all seem more than pleased.

Someone also mentioned everlast, they also seem to get pretty good reviews, but I personally can't bring myself to consider one, though not for performance or reputation reasons. They do stand behind their stuff it seems.

Miller has not been "Made" in USA for nearly 2 yrs. label on box says Assembled in USA..Hobart too. No-one makes welding equipment in USA any Longer.

 

[Colonel Monk]

Consider a Hobart Ironman 250 .... I am saving for one.

Nice looking machine - but it's 220 only. I know that 120 isn't the ****, but it gets the job done when you need it, I've had much need where there was nothing else. ****, I even powered a friend's welder from my old Onan 6500W genny in my old RV to make a desert camping repair. That Ironman has a great duty cycle, but I'm not doing anything that big at this point - and I'm still without my own shop, so I need to be compact. We are saving to build a monster polebarn but it's going to be a few years down the road still.

Too bad what was said about Miller only being assembled in USA, but I thought I read elsewhere "made in USA". Not surprised, that kind of thing was doomed from the first part that was offshored. We are reaping the whirlwind on that now.

I have even had to help offshore products, and it feels ******. I'm once again working for a small company, we fabricate and assemble our own product here in the USA. Though I'm sure the hydraulic power pack and some electronic parts are from china

 

[ThomasH]

Nice looking machine - but it's 220 only. I know that 120 isn't the ****, but it gets the job done when you need it, I've had much need where there was nothing else. ****, I even powered a friend's welder from my old Onan 6500W genny in my old RV to make a desert camping repair. That Ironman has a great duty cycle, but I'm not doing anything that big at this point - and I'm still without my own shop, so I need to be compact. We are saving to build a monster polebarn but it's going to be a few years down the road still.

Too bad what was said about Miller only being assembled in USA, but I thought I read elsewhere "made in USA". Not surprised, that kind of thing was doomed from the first part that was offshored. We are reaping the whirlwind on that now.

I have even had to help offshore products, and it feels ******. I'm once again working for a small company, we fabricate and assemble our own product here in the USA. Though I'm sure the hydraulic power pack and some electronic parts are from china

It has been a number of years since the electronics components and boards have been made in the USA for mass marketed items like welders; similar to TVs, stereos, etc. The difference between a Miller unit and a good quality Chinese one is 1) a much more extensive support network of dealers; 2) duty cycle on heavier units; and 3) price - there are costs involved when there are middle men and an extensive support network involved. So there are practically an endless supply of parts and service available for Miller, there are much fewer sources for Everlast.

That said, I have never heard of Everlast not doing a good job supporting customers, and they are using standardized parts in many assemblies so they are not the only source for parts. For instance, I just replaced my Miller 30 amp plasma cutter with an Everlast 70 amp, and they are using the same good quality gun assembly (Trafimet S75) on it that other companies are using. So the standard consumable and high wear parts are available from a number of sources just like they are for Miller and others.

To me, it has become a much less clear cut choice. I do try to support American companies where I can, but the situation is similar to the car companies, you can buy foreign cars with much more American labor than many of the US models. I am not familiar with other "imported welders", but am generally familiar with Everlast. They are based out of California, they outsource the manufacture and assembly of units to their specs. So the difference between them and more traditional American companies such as Miller has become much more incidental. It boils down to doing business directly with a smaller company and doing business directly with your choice of dealers. There can be a good reason to deal with a local to you vendor who supplies good advice and support.

I have all Miller welding gear, except for the plasma cutter. The reason that I bought the welding gear that I did was because it was high quality equipment that had the capacity and duty cycle for the particular welding process that I needed to repair heavy equipment. For me, that meant starting out with a 300 amp transformer unit, buying a Miller XMT300 inverter unit for stick welding, then a couple of Miller XMT304 inverter units with corresponding Miller 32S wire feeders for MIG; and eventually a Miller 12VS suitcase wire feeder for sort of portable heavy duty MIG welding.

Hope this helps.

 

[ATP]

I was looking at your same situation and my choices came down to your list as well. A friend at Airgas told me to look at the Thermal Arc 211i
i did and after 3 months of adding that model to the search mix..that is what I came home with. I have used the Thermal Arc for 2 years without issue. Love the ability to run 110v or 220v and I mig and stick,,, kool to be able to tig by ordering the torch.

 

[Colonel Monk]

I was looking at your same situation and my choices came down to your list as well. A friend at Airgas told me to look at the Thermal Arc 211i
i did and after 3 months of adding that model to the search mix..that is what I came home with. I have used the Thermal Arc for 2 years without issue. Love the ability to run 110v or 220v and I mig and stick,,, kool to be able to tig by ordering the torch.

Looks like a very nice welder, I wish the specs were presented in a more similar manner to the other welders named. All the website's literature and manual links are broken, which isn't a great sign.

For better or for worse, I'm an internet shopper. I like to buy local whenever possible, but the shopping is usually done before I leave the house - I just feel the majority of the sales folks out there are mostly out for themselves, so I rely on product information and forums like this one to determine what's right. And, since my one horse town has next to nothing to offer other than groceries, nuts and bolts, most everything I need in tools and parts are bought elsewhere. Further on that line, since the parts are hard to find in the nearby "metropolis", or they are charging the tourist prices (I live in a tourist area), I'm just buying online more and more.

So I've looked up some info on Thermal Arc and they seem a nice welder, but the symptom of the broken web links lead to other findings: Service issues, eventually resolved Thermal Arc 211i problems and finding out that Thermal Arc is now Tweco, so apparently the mismanaged company was sold, but who knows if it's now better or now suffering from growing pains....

As the guy in the weldingweb story said, 50% of the cost of purchase is the product, the other 50% service. I hadn't really thought of this part of it till you brought up Thermal Arc, but I live in the sticks and have to drive 45 minutes in any direction to hit a welding supply store, so I definitely want to make sure I have a quality product! And local dealers that will service it or support service. If you read Miller's service record it's the best in the biz from what I'm hearing.

I haven't visited any local welding supply shops yet. Might do me a bit of browsing on welding web to learn more, I know there is an Airgas shop but they have a reputation for being shall we say, uncaring for the hobby welder. Not that it's really that important, after all I just need some gas not a pat on the back.... I'm guessing it's going to be the only place around to get shielding gas.

Thanks for the offer of info, I'm certainly not saying that it's not a good product, because I doubt that another company would have carried it forward if it wasn't, but the potential service issues for me and my location seems riskier. I'm looking more and more at Miller now. I haven't ever bought an expensive tool like this before and a little extra expense for a guarantee of good service and company longevity (available parts for all time) are seeming worth it.

 

[Colonel Monk]

It has been a number of years since the electronics components and boards have been made in the USA for mass marketed items like welders; similar to TVs, stereos, etc. The difference between a Miller unit and a good quality Chinese one is 1) a much more extensive support network of dealers; 2) duty cycle on heavier units; and 3) price - there are costs involved when there are middle men and an extensive support network involved. So there are practically an endless supply of parts and service available for Miller, there are much fewer sources for Everlast.

That said, I have never heard of Everlast not doing a good job supporting customers, and they are using standardized parts in many assemblies so they are not the only source for parts. For instance, I just replaced my Miller 30 amp plasma cutter with an Everlast 70 amp, and they are using the same good quality gun assembly (Trafimet S75) on it that other companies are using. So the standard consumable and high wear parts are available from a number of sources just like they are for Miller and others.

To me, it has become a much less clear cut choice. I do try to support American companies where I can, but the situation is similar to the car companies, you can buy foreign cars with much more American labor than many of the US models. I am not familiar with other "imported welders", but am generally familiar with Everlast. They are based out of California, they outsource the manufacture and assembly of units to their specs. So the difference between them and more traditional American companies such as Miller has become much more incidental. It boils down to doing business directly with a smaller company and doing business directly with your choice of dealers. There can be a good reason to deal with a local to you vendor who supplies good advice and support.

I have all Miller welding gear, except for the plasma cutter. The reason that I bought the welding gear that I did was because it was high quality equipment that had the capacity and duty cycle for the particular welding process that I needed to repair heavy equipment. For me, that meant starting out with a 300 amp transformer unit, buying a Miller XMT300 inverter unit for stick welding, then a couple of Miller XMT304 inverter units with corresponding Miller 32S wire feeders for MIG; and eventually a Miller 12VS suitcase wire feeder for sort of portable heavy duty MIG welding.

Hope this helps.

I hear ya on that. I'm a hypocrite sitting here toting "made in USA" anything because I haven't felt that way about everything in my life. Above all, I want quality. I had a Toyota T100 truck, that I bought for it's quality reputation and longevity, as well as better gas mileage for any other truck of it's class at that time. It was a supremely rugged vehicle. It also was assembled in TN or KY here in the USA, and heck - it even had a radiator in it marked "GM" right in the plastic!!

I bought it after my Chrysler vehicle had a failed speed sensor in the tranny, forcing the tranny apparently into low gear at 80 mph and blew it up. ATF everywhere, my $5000 car suddenly worth squat, at only 120K miles. I still owed 4 payments on it. That was the third US-made vehicle in a row that had died before it's time, due to something silly, like a $30 sensor. I mean, who designs a transmission with a failure mode where a sensor failure can cause it to implode?

So you're right, it's become much more murky the idea of buying "american". At the time I bought that truck, if I'd thought there was one manufactured by the big 3 that would fit my needs I would have bought it. Price was a factor too (truck was a used vehicle).

With any kind of machine these days, you're guaranteed that it won't have ALL us-made parts, because so many US manufacturers have off shored their all mfg that it's simply impossible.

I moved back here to the midwest from west coast Silicon valley about a year ago, and seeing so many shuttered plants and people looking for work has sort of rekindled my desire to support our workers. It's not that I didn't before, but with the economy there going gangbusters, and directly connected to SE Asia via that economy, the fate of the American worker is not something that you are reminded of daily.

So if the Miller machine is just assembled in Ohio, that's still good enough for me - and it seems to be well-supported too.

I could probably get buy with any one of these welders mentioned, I could probably even get buy with a cheap welder from Harbor Fright (which just opened a store in nearby metropolis) but all my other tools are old skool USA quality and that's what I want in my welder too.

 

[ThomasH]

Oh gads. Of all of the welders that I would buy, the absolute bottom rung of them would not include harbor freight, or lotos for that matter. There are some things that don't even make good paper weights, which would include the Black and Decker Firestorm cordless 'power' (I use that word liberally in this instance) tools. About 3 years ago I helped a neighbor do some welding with his new harbor freight welder. If I had sneezed snot out it would have made a nicer looking and I suspect stronger weld. He brought down the roto-tiller to my house later and I ground off the bird poop and welded it with my Miller welder and got the usual very good and strong weld.

I also made the mistake of buying a roll of MIG wire from Harbor Freight about 5 years ago. I thought, how bad can it be, it's just plain old ER70-s2 wire. It was bad enough that I drove to Home Depot and got some (on a Sunday) so that I could complete what I was doing and threw out the Harbor Freight wire.

 

[Colonel Monk]

Oh gads. Of all of the welders that I would buy, the absolute bottom rung of them would not include harbor freight, or lotos for that matter. There are some things that don't even make good paper weights, which would include the Black and Decker Firestorm cordless 'power' (I use that word liberally in this instance) tools. About 3 years ago I helped a neighbor do some welding with his new harbor freight welder. If I had sneezed snot out it would have made a nicer looking and I suspect stronger weld. He brought down the roto-tiller to my house later and I ground off the bird poop and welded it with my Miller welder and got the usual very good and strong weld.

I also made the mistake of buying a roll of MIG wire from Harbor Freight about 5 years ago. I thought, how bad can it be, it's just plain old ER70-s2 wire. It was bad enough that I drove to Home Depot and got some (on a Sunday) so that I could complete what I was doing and threw out the Harbor Freight wire.

I had spotted a blue and black welder in my Dad's friend's pole barn last year. My dad and I needed to repair something and he had the key, I remembered seeing it there and friend had not used it yet but said there was power hooked up for it.....

When I saw what it was, and the fact it wasn't a Miller (I say that, because from a distance it had the right colors) I told the old man we should just drop it by the local auto repair where we knew the guy had a real welder.

Not saying that someone couldn't get one of those dialed in to make a "good enough" weld but I want to be able to make smooth welds like I did years ago with a proper welder and properly set up, and dialed in.