It is very interesting seeing what other people put the priority of different systms are. Watching people talk about tig fascinates me. I have used our tig at work and to be honest I consider it extremely slow. We have someone that took professional welding courses to get good with it and what he can do is amazing but it takes quite a bit of time to run long beads. With a stick or a mig you can run beads extremely quickly in comparison. As I have said in this discussion I like mig welding because to get to a skill level where you can do hobby and light farming type welding can be done fairly quickly basically all you do is put the tip next to the metal and move it along where you want the bead. Not much to doing that. For someone like me that does small jobs it is perfect. I built a set of loading ramps for my trailer. Basically that involves getting some angle cutting it and welding it together. the cross pieces sit on top of the long angle running from the ground to the trailer. All you are doing is welding them so they dont slide. I had to fix a crack in my trailer frame etc etc. The other thing that seems to be legendary is Oxy/Acy
I found the comment that you can cut straight smooth lines with Oxy/Acy amusing to be honest. I think the person that made that comment forgot how many hours over how many years of practice it took to evolve to that point. I have only seen one person in my life that could cut perfectly straight smooth lines and he was a pipeline welder all of his life. Someone said that you have to have Oxy/Acy for fabrication. My friend who does a lot of fabricating things such as, Building trailers, Building Street rods including building the frame, He took a 1940's model F5 truck and put put a late model pickup chasis under it and then built the flat bed for it including a headache rack that looks like a spider web. I know for a fact that although he has an oxy/acy rig he had to turn in his bottles 7 or 8 years ago and has not felt the need to go purchase new ones. So he has not used his oxy/ acy for any of the projects i mentioned above.
For the person that needs to do some welding and maybe make small projects but has never done that I think they just need a few basic items.
1. Band Saw - The one at harbor freight for under 200 is the one everyone I know has it does a relatively good job and makes nice straight cuts with almost no skill level involved.
2. Drill press - You dont have to have one but sure makes it nice when you are trying to drill straight holes.
3. Mig Welder - Fairly pricey up front but one 20.00 roll of wire lasts almost forever if you are just hobby welding. You dont have to worry about keeping the wire in a dry environment like you do with welding rods. In my opinion the easiest welding environment to learn
4. Auto Darkening helmet- Not that much more money than a regular helmet and for the novice a lot easier to use.
I am sure there will be disagreement with this and I look forward to hearing other peoples views on how to do fabrication.
I think most of the people on here want to honestly help and tell someone how to become expert at welding. We all tend to forget that for someone new they are just trying to learn how to