Electric welder at Lidl

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That makes much more sense ... and this might help: **LINK**

https://www.lidl-service.com/static/283496315/280331_EN.pdf

MichaelG.

Usual issue with cheap welders - a high-ish minimum current so it might be a hole blower on thin or rusty stuff.

Gasless wire is nearly as messy as stick welding.

Agree with above I have seen what people have done with gasless & it aint pretty. You need a good welder if you are going to invest in one. I just recently was looking for a Tig welder ac dc to do alloy etc. Looked at Chinese ones but ended up paying a little more & bought nearly new Thermal arc. Same as EASAB American. If you cannot afford a good one I would wait a while & save the pennies. You will be glad you did. The gas bottle is a bit expensive to start with but once purchased you only need to pay for gas refill. Mig for steel 5% argon 95% Co2 will do. Unless you want to do stainless , then you will need 100% Argon. Good luck.

Steve.

Totally agree with the comment on gasless wire, but horses for courses - if you are lying on the drive trying to repair a rusty car the shield gas can disappear with the slightest breeze while a gasless weld, although far more grotty to look at, will have welded OK.

Its what angle grinders were invented for

The issue with cheap gasless welders is that they are often gasless because you don't pay for a regulator or a bottle of gas in the box and that all helps to make them that few quid cheaper.

Just to add, I believe the 1mm to 2mm capability, the reference to 4mm and 6mm is nonsense.

The duty cycle of 60% and 10% for low to high says 6 minutes welding 2mm needs a 54 minute cool down for summer use.

Dave, are they not indicating the cool-down period as 15 minutes - before doing another 90 seconds of welding, then another overload trip and 15 minute wait? All the same, it would be a little less than 6 minutes welding every hour for thick material. Of course, that will be at the ‘standard testing temperature’? You get what you pay for, I guess.

I once had one of this type, they will tack stuff together but they will not produce a structurally sound weld. Thats not to say that in the right hands (I was a full time coded welder back then - I could weld) a strong weld is impossible, but where a complete novice would struggle with a proper mig set up they would surely fail with one of these. On the cheaper models the wire permenantly live which only adds to make things more difficult. The weld will invariably look like bird poo! I could get a half decent weld on thin steel by using max amps but other than that it would just spit bits of metal at the job which might or might not fuse together. I gave mine to my brother inlaw who most certainly confirmed the above!

Thanks, everybody, not knowing much about welding, the advice is appreciated, I now know it is not quite what I wanted.

IF you can find a second hand BOC autolynx buy it .You will have one of the best small - ish MIG welders ever made. For thin material use 0.6 wire. As for gas Co2 will work fine. If you have a friendly landlord you may be able to get your gas(Co2 NOT co2N mix), Have a gas and a beer. Small , cheap mig welders are difficult for even the trained man to use and often immpossible for the amateur. A poor Manual arc weld will look just that !!! It is possible to do a mig weld that whilst to the untrained eye is fine BUT has zero mechanical strength. On one occasion that I was involved in causing a serious road accident, the component that failed was commercially made. Noel

My only experience with electric welding was with sticks, the runs looked good until they were touched, it was 100% flux and 0% weld. I got on ok with gas though, oxy acetylene and welding / brazing / silver soldering are relatively easy. I've always fancied TIG.

Spend some time here mig they cover most, with tutorials as well

Just as a follow up, Lidl now list the plasma cutter as for sale on the 13th Feb for 80squids.

I think this is the first time that one of these cheap Chinese plasmas has been retailed in the UK.

Another follow up: two Lidl stores in the Southampton area that I tried this morning had sold out of the plasma cutter, before 11.15am. I was looking forward to an interesting new toy!

I can confirm this also! I bought a similar Aldi stick welder and just couldn't get any weld penetration at all. I will try again and if no improvement it will be binned.

I should have spent double the money and bought a decent welder from Machine Mart or somewhere. Buy cheap buy twice!!!

Ian

It was a plasma cutter so I don't expect it to weld!

Martin

I went into my Lidl store at 10 o'clock and they still had two plasma cutters in stock. Previously bought the stick welder but found that with 2.5mm rods it is useless, sticking all the time but using 1.5mm rods it works a treat.

When I was in this morning, saw a 13mm bench drill with a variable speed control and rated at about 1 HP which looked interesting.

Forgot to mention, did not come out empty handed, bought an air nibbler for cutting sheet metal at £14.99 and a pack of assorted nuts for £2.99.

Found this feedback - Mig forum

They must be a popular purchase. Our local store did not even receive any allocation at all, even though advertised in their weekly offers booklet.

FWIW my plasma welder is a Jasic and the chap that runs the welding courses I attended chooses to use Jasic kit and says he finds them durable and reliable.

I think the combo unit was just over £300 new when I last lookd, so not exactly 'budget' but certainly not in the £700 arena.