Buying My First Mig Welder, What To Look For?

[megamannz123]

How many amps is your Magmate? is it the 180p? must be pretty powerful to weld axle mounts. I noticed that it only adjusts down to 50amps, and from what I have read 30amps is about where you need to get down to for body panels?

Edited December 20, 2013 by megamannz123

[styler]

In all honesty I would say look for a welding course and it would mean ten times more than any welder specs,

one point people seem to miss is you actually have to be able to weld before buying a welder.

Edited January 5, 2014 by styler

[MRMOPARMAN]

In all honesty I would say look for a welding course and it would mean ten times more than any welder specs,

one point people seem to miss is you actually have to be able to weld before buying a welder.

 

i disagree. you can learn quite a lot from buying a welder and just laying beads. will give you at least a slight idea about what your doing, so the poor tafe teacher wont have to completely baby you.

 

but i agree on the tafe course bit, absolutely essential if you want welds that have any chance of passing engineer's requirements.

 

its a bit late now, but late last year i bought a cigweld weldskill 250a single phase MIG.

 

its a cracker of a welder for the home hobbyist. uses 15kg spools, euro torch plug, can do aluminium, has all the basic adjustments, and came in under $1k.

 

only thing its missing is the 'inverter', but mine will never leave the shed, so i don't need it :)

[love ke70]

i recommend getting a gas one , you will have much better results

not sure about nz but in aus you can buy gas bottles from speedgas and no rental fees , just cheap refills

 

you need to work out how thick the the thickest material you intend on welding will be and then get one with more then enough amps

 

i have a 160amp mig and it struggles with full penetration on anything over 3mm or so

but if you can v groove and weld both sides 5-6mm is doable

 

don't need experience either just get some scrap to mess around with untill you work it out

 

What welder is this that is struggling with anything over 3mm?

I have a old (10 years ish and was $600 then) gas/gasless SIP 150 mig,

which is a massive heap of shit and I hate it everytime it ʞ©$ɟs me around, but I can't justify a better one yet because when it works it works great, although its currently not working on a couple of power settings.

 

its basically 6 power levels with variable feed speed. has to be used on the lowest speed if not it wont keep a good arc and currently wont run on high/high, so high/medium is the most i can get, and that will burn holes in 3mm on a good day if you let the heat concentrate too much, so I am surprised you can't get penetration on a 4 or 5mm work piece with your (what I assume is newer) 160.

 

I don't use gas, my poxy welder is setup for the poxy little bottles and the reg is stuffed and empties a bottle in minutes, very fkn annoying, so I just weld gasless all the time, yes it spatters, no its not the end of the world, get a breeze through your shed? your better with gasless.

 

there are two things very annoying about gasless, 1 the spatter and how it rolls down your jocks when you weld on your back under the car

2, the smoke from the flux in the gasless wire that has to be wire wheeled off everything and clouds up your helmet etc etc.

but that said, a good weld can be obtained, but I don't think I would use it on panel work...

 

Oh and lastly, while a tafe course is good, there is heaps of welding threads on the net tutorials etc etc, I havnt read or watched any of them, and my welding get good penetration and looks neat 90% of the time. It took me years but it can be self taught, and you can always grind back and go again, I did all the panel work in my first corolla, which really taught me a bit about welding panel work.

 

 

 

Cheers, Andy

[frknstn]

you can get a spray on coating that helps with spatter it just falls straight off svaed me heaps when i was just running gasless

[love ke70]

that shit works?

[frknstn]

yeah works damn good

[love ke70]

good to know, thanks.

so it doesnt stop the spatter, it just makes it easy to clean away?

[frknstn]

yea it just stops it from welding itself to the job you get a few bits but nothing like you would without it

[love ke70]

Thanks, I may get some :)

 

 

for anyone playing at home, this is a good little video. I wish my welder had come with a similar table. the more I watch a good welder in action the more I think I am due a new machine...

[Boosted]

Or you could get a can of spray on canola cooking oil, does much the same.

 

I have a WIA 150A Mig. Turns down fine, 6mm and above is a struggle for it, but can be done when you've got the dials wound right round. As mentioned by others, burn holes in 3mm no probs.

Father recently bought a 'chinese' inverter 250A MIG (weldsmart brand or some such). Seems to work a treat, the new inverter technology makes for a much smaller body than the old lumps. Even the crappy welders now come with Toshiba chips, so some of the other circuitry and mechanicals could be suspect, but my brother's cheap Jasic Inverter TIG has worked fine for quite a while.

I'm not a fantastic welder, but I managed to run a good bead on the head of a 205L drum which was measured at 0.9mm thick. Brother was welding heavier stuff with it and rated it in the same league as the 275A WIA welder he's got (that from someone with 15yrs in the industry boiler making/coded pipe welding). Remote wire feeder head (takes 15kg spools) for under $1K, I'm tempted to sell mine and buy one.

 

As far as I'm aware BOC/Air Lquide don't sell bottles, only hire them out. Hire is somewhere around $140/yr/bottle for an e-size at the moment. I use CO2 instead of argoshield (cheaper and not a lot worse to weld with than argoshield) costs somewhere around $40-50 for an exchange bottle. Unlikely to go thru a bottle in a year.

 

My Brother's used Gasless on panel repairs and reckons it's fine. Mate has gasless as well (for automotive work, just as a hobby) and says the spatter is a PITA, but then you're not paying for the gas, so it's all swings and roundabouts.

Have heard others complain bitterly about gasless MIGs. Regardless of Gas/Gasless if there's a stiff breeze blowing, you'll get porosity in your welds. Gasless uses a flux core wire, the flux burns as you weld and creates a gas shield around the weld pool, a stiff breeze will still blow it away and expose the weld pool to oxygen. Most people have the regs on Gas MIGs wound right down for bugger all gas in a workshop environment. Take it outside and you will need to crank on more gas to cope with the breeze, but if the breeze is strong enough you need to put up shields or give up welding on that day.