welding

[Soundguy]

I agree with Alan B.. The big honkin AC stick welder will let you work bigger projects than the small flux welder.. and the dryer plug thing works great.

If you go that route, I'd like to plug my Hobart stickmate XL 235a It's a monster, as I'm sure the lincoln buzz box is. Tractor supply has them for 239$.. I chose the hobart over the lincoln partly because o fthe money 9 and i had a TSC gift card to help pay for it ).. and the amp capacity. i think the lincoln is 225a or something like that... not that that 10a will make much diff.

If you are wanting to make 3pt hitch equipment.. then I forsee you using metal in the 1/2 range an UP.

I bought my hobart specifically to fix my JD batwing mower... there was plenty of 1/2 metal in the wing hinge area that i had to weld up... I doubt I could have done it with a small mig or flux that I could get int he same 239$ price range..


Soundguy

Before I start, let me say that I am aware of the multiple other threads on welding, of which I have poured over many of them. Unfortunately, while I did pick up some ideas, I am still perplexed. I am posting this new thread because I am jealous of all of the awesome creations that I see some of you weld up and I want to try my hand at it too. I have a limited budget, very limited, but I want to give welding a try. I have done a little welding with a stick welder and a small mig welder (no gas), and I don't have time to take a welding course, though this is great advice, but I am currently a full time student and work a VERY full time job. So now on to my questions. I am considering buying either a Lincoln 100 HD mig welder (without gas, $369.00 locally) or a basic Lincoln buzz box stick welder ($269.00). The 100 HD is $100 more than the stick welder. I know the stick welder has more capapbility in regards to heavy guage metal, but I like the portability and outlet capability of the 100 HD mig welder. Will the 100 HD be enough to weld the type of projects I see you guys welding (3 point hitch projects with angle, bucket hooks, chain holders, etc.) or should I just go with the stick welder?
Teach

 

[Soundguy]

You must have a weak breaker or bad luck.. I've never tripped one while welding on 1/2" plate and my hobart 235AC. Utility or genny...

Soundguy

The only problem with that great welder is...... It's HEAVY!! but none the less it is a good welder. The other problem is if you do go with the ac225 you really should put a 50a outlet. It is fairly easy to trip a dryer outlet if you want to weld 1/4" plate. other than that they do quite a bit.

 

[Lynkage]

You must have a weak breaker or bad luck.. I've never tripped one while welding on 1/2" plate and my hobart 235AC. Utility or genny...

Soundguy

No I just like 7018 rod for multiple reasons. This is what my friend/teacher has taught me with. I am also an electrician so I kind of feel it is necessary to do this. I should also realize that some people use what they need and if it works for them then GREAT!!

I hope I did not sound mean as I was not meaning to.

 

[davemhughes]

Just thought I would post this as its the "anything and everything" you ever wanted to know about welders and welding site. Good guys also.

WeldingWeb™ - Professional Welding Forum - Powered by vBulletin

As I am buying a new welder this week I did a lot of research and they were very helpful.

 

[mdbarb]

Budget is a problem?
110,220,2 phase, 3 phase,volts, amps etc.
One word:
Oxyacetelyne (however u spell it)

 

[Timber]

Everyone is right on the money hear, Buy yourself a Lincon AC welder and so 7011 & 7013 rod and you can do gust about anything with it. Don't go crazy with stuff. Your going to need about 30 to 50 feet of cable and the ends to plug the welder into. They usually come with a welding shield but if you were going to spend extra money I would buy a nice shield but the one that comes with the welder will be fine. Let your eyes adjust inside the shield to see your work and go nuts. Welding like anything just takes practice, the more you do the better you get. Have a ball man, once you have a welder you could never be without one

 

[MikePA]

Are you aware that your posts are in purple, underlined and italics? Just curious. People usually use italics and underline to emphasize something. Not to mention, all italics makes text hard to read.

 

[Ken S.in Ky.]

Teach
I have 2 welders 1wire feed mig and a AC225 just like you are talking about. When i start a project like you discribed in your 1st post I grab the 225 and go at it. If you keep it in the dry out of weather it will be there for your grand kids years from now. With the right rods and some practice you can weld stuff as thin as lawn mower frame and with the multiple passes you can weld as thick as your foot now try that with the wire feed. One of the main things is matching rod size to the materal being welded and amperage range for the rod. I personally would go with the stick welder.
Ken S.

 

[Timber]

Are you aware that your posts are in purple, underlined and italics? Just curious. People usually use italics and underline to emphasize something. Not to mention, all italics makes text hard to read.

yes I am

 

[fattyfat1]

Teach
With the right rods and some practice you can weld stuff as thin as lawn mower frame and with the multiple passes you can weld as thick as your foot now try that with the wire feed.
Ken S.

the pipe welders i work with run their wire feed machines on heavy wall chrome at 480 inches of wire per minute. this is hand welding mind you! if you struck an arc on 1/4 inch material with that much amperage, it would blow a hole right through it. try that with a stick welder! by the way, they also have sub arc machines that will put down a bead 2 inches wide and 1/4 inch thick in ONE pass. try that with a stick welder...... you are only limited by power and budget when it comes to wire welding, it is far superior to stick in ALL aspects. stick welding is 1920's technology. the ONLY time we use stick in our shop is on oddball alloys you can't get wire for, otherwise we tig everything else. 14 welders in our shop producing between 150 to 200 diameter inches a day. (1- 10" weld = 10 diameter inches) and i can count the times they burn rod in a year on 2 hands.

 

[EddieWalker]

It's real hard to beat the all around usefulness of an AC/DC arc welder. You can change your settings and rod to do just about anything. A decent arc welder and a cutting torch and you are set.

You might get a nicer looking weld with another type of welder in certain applications, but for general use, the arc welder is your best choice.

I learned on an AC welder and the first time I used a DC machine was amazing. The difference is huge!! I wouldn't own an AC only machine. It's worth the extra money. Guranteed!!!!!!

Eddie

 

[whodat90]

I'll throw in my three cents. I have a HF AC buzzbox, a lincoln weldpak 110v, a hobart handler 175, and a craftsman AC/DC stick. Each has different capabilities, each has different limitations.
HF buzzbox: It's like learning to drive on a manual trans car with no power steering. It'll do what you ask, but it's hard to get it right. I use it mostly to teach new weldors how to strike an arc and run a bead.
Weldpak: I have the gas mod to make it a true mig, but I run it mostly with fluxcore. It doesn't have great penetration, but is great for tacking stuff in place, which I then take back to the shop for the big welders to finish. It's also very good for sheetmetal work. One caveat to a 110v welder: You can't just plug it into the wall and hope for the best. I honestly think this is why most people that have tried them dislike them. You need to have a dedicated 20a outlet to run them at anywhere near full capacity. If you plug them into an outside outlet that also runs all the lights, etc. and it can only draw maybe 10a, you're going to get crappy welds. GIGO.
Handler 175: My workhorse. I've set it up with C25 and .030 wire. It'll weld from sheetmetal to 3/16 easily in a single pass, bigger with multiple passes, preheat, or fluxcore.
AC/DC stick: Big paperweight, most of the time. It'll do 180a DC, 240a AC. It works well, and the difference between AC adn DC is night and day. I honestly don't think I've had it on AC more than twice in the some years I've owned it. When I do use it is on metal where I need it to stick together, but not necessarily be pretty, or I don't have the time to properly grind every weld surface to shiny metal. I'm not one of the 'use 6011 and go through mud and rust' guys, but I am much less worried about it when using the stick welder. My preferred rod is 7014DC.
I run almost all (other than the weldpak) of these welders off of one, 50a plug. What I did was get a breaker, wire, and outlet all rated for 50a, and had that installed. Then I bought a bunch of dryer plug pigtails that fit it, and put a receptacle that matched my welder's plug on the other end. That way, I didn't have to modify the welders to fit the outlet, and I have a plug that's capable of running the biggest welder I'd ever likely have in my shop. I also had put in a single 110v plug on a 20a circuit with wire and outlet rated for a full 20a. This is what the weldpak gets plugged into.
As has been said before, your needs will dictate your welder, as much or more than your budget will. I make most of my stuff out of 1/8-5/16 steel, so I've got a bunch of welders that cover that range. If I was welding 3/8-3/4 stuff, I'd probably use the stick primarily due to it's larger capacity, but then again I'd probably sell every welder I have and buy a larger mig that could transition into spray arc, which would cover me from sheetmetal up to 1"+. YMMV, KDTTAH, professional driver on a closed course.
whodat

 

[TwinWillows]

Whodat - I liked your writeup. My welder is an old miller 180A AC machine. I've been wondering if DC would be worth changing machines out - sounds like you'd recommend it..

BTW, I get the YMMV but you loose me on the KDTTAH??

 

[sandman2234]

Probably something like
Kids Dont try this at home.
Which is what I thought about when fattyfat started talking about stuff they do at the shop. Most of us want to know about a welder that we are going to use at home, and most of them on single phase power.
Wish I was going to go fire up the Lincoln, but I am still in the "Let's tear down" stage.
David from jax

 

[gemini5362]

I know you have gift cards, but here's a used welder that will outlast you & do anything you could want to do. eBay: miller welder (item 300080082090 end time Feb-17-07 09:27:29 PST) and it's close. It's not pretty in that picture but look at the Miller website for specifications & you'll be impressed. And it comes with a water cooler & tig torch. MikeD74T

Mike you want him to start out learning to weld with a TIG. Isnt that kind of like having someone learn how to drive in a Hemi Cuda ?

 

[sandman2234]

My welding instructor did just that. He sat my tush in front of a tig torch and told me not to leave till I had it mastered. I got it about half way down pat and wanted to try the MIG. He told me to get my tush back in front of that tig, cause he could teach a monkey to run a Mig.
Never did learn to run a mig worth a durn, but that might be because I don't own one that is hooked up. I recently sold the mig gun that could hook to my Miller, but I never bothered to hook it up. Got it in a bunch of stuff at the shop and told the boss I wanted to take it home for my machine. He agreed, but told me later that he didn't figure I would ever hook it up. I didn't.
David from jax

 

[gemini5362]

We have a miller synchrowave 250 Tig at our shop. It is a very very nice machine and I have tried to weld with it a couple of times. In my opinion it is a specialty machine for things that are difficult to weld other ways. In the rate event I have to weld anything I use the Miller 250 mig. I cannot imagine any kind of welding being easier than that. I have on occasion used a stick welder but I am very bad at it. For the poster a mig machine would be the way to go. I am in agreement with a lot of people though that a Mig big enough to do him any good would be expensive. My wife bought me the Miller DVM it works off of 115 v or 230v In the 230 volt mode it is supposed to weld up to 3/8 inch thick. That is about the minimum machine that I would reccomend in a mig and they are not real cheap. He might be better off to invest in the stick welder and then try to take an adult edcuation class in how to weld properly if they are available in his area

 

[whodat90]

Yup, Kids Don't Try This At Home. TW, it's worth finding a good welding shop. A good one will have a welding bay set up and will let you run one machine next to another to see the differences, and that'll tell more than anything else whether or not it's worth the change to you. From a technical standpoint, DC energy flows one way, AC flows both equally. AC is less affected by corners and magnetized metal. DC lets you either put the heat into the rod or into the work, allowing a wider range of metal thickness than pure AC. AC has less options, which can sometimes mean less to screw up. I can run either (not well, mind you) but I way prefer the DC for the 'work' I do. And I prefer the mig over that. My HH175 with fluxcore will do most everything the stick will, with much better control and ease of use. If I could afford it I'd swap the whole lot out for a 250a class mig. That said, I wouldn't trade my experience and 'larnin with an AC stick machine for anything. Welding is all about controlling the puddle and the arc. In an AC stick machine, that's all you have. Going back to my manual car reference, if you can learn to drive a manual steering, manual shift car, everything else after that is easier. If you can lay down good looking, solid welds with an AC stick machine, running a quality AC/DC stick or Mig/wire welder machine is much easier. I can only speak of tig in passing as I have a scratch start tig torch for the stick welder, but never played with it with anything other than C25 which sucks for tig. Fun though, nice to be able to control the heat independently of the deposition rate.

 

[dbdartman]

Mike you want him to start out learning to weld with a TIG. Isnt that kind of like having someone learn how to drive in a Hemi Cuda ?

G, it all depends on the person. In my case, I learned to gas weld while at Class A school for the Coast Guard in late '73. To this day, I've never gas welded again. In 1979, after being out in "the real world" for a few years, one of the guys in the shop tried (operative word here is TRIED) to teach me to stick weld. After 3 or 4 weeks of frustration, he gave me the tig welder. Within 5 minutes I understood what I wanted to accomplish, & within one hour I was laying down beads as nice as his (& he'd been welding over 10 years). A week later I was out on a job welding stainless pipe. The place we were welding for offered me a job at $100/week more than I was making (of course I took it). About the same time ('77/'78) I taught myself to mig weld. Although I've gotten slightly better with a stick, over the years, I still pretty much suck at it.

So, it all depends on the person, not the process.

BTW, where in Ar are you? My GF just bought a place in Shirley.

Oh, & I'll take my lowly Dart, or (better yet) my bro's 69 Coronet 500 wagon (with the 550HP 493) over a Hemi Cuda any day.

 

[gemini5362]

G, it all depends on the person. In my case, I learned to gas weld while at Class A school for the Coast Guard in late '73. To this day, I've never gas welded again. In 1979, after being out in "the real world" for a few years, one of the guys in the shop tried (operative word here is TRIED) to teach me to stick weld. After 3 or 4 weeks of frustration, he gave me the tig welder. Within 5 minutes I understood what I wanted to accomplish, & within one hour I was laying down beads as nice as his (& he'd been welding over 10 years). A week later I was out on a job welding stainless pipe. The place we were welding for offered me a job at $100/week more than I was making (of course I took it). About the same time ('77/'78) I taught myself to mig weld. Although I've gotten slightly better with a stick, over the years, I still pretty much suck at it.

So, it all depends on the person, not the process.

BTW, where in Ar are you? My GF just bought a place in Shirley.

Oh, & I'll take my lowly Dart, or (better yet) my bro's 69 Coronet 500 wagon (with the 550HP 493) over a Hemi Cuda any day.

Hmm that would be a non stock 493 versus a stock hemi cuda
I live outside of Fort Smith, I am not shure where shirley is I will have to look that up. The people that I work with are not welders and we can all pretty much mig weld. To me tig welding is harder and a lot slower. The poster here though I believe was on a tight budget and a good mig machine is pretty expensive.