Need to get a Welder!

Hi All,

I now have a need to do a bit of welding in a small way, largest material will be steel angle about 1 1/4" section maximum; mostly it will be much smaller items, small repairs etc.

I have a ghastly stick welder which I can do 'bodge jobs ' with but hate all slag chipping and spatter etc.

I am NOT an exerienced welder but have done some OK bits and pieces in the past under supervision.

I would like something like Tom Lipton uses in his videos but it looks a spendy bit of kit! my budget is up to about £300, is that reasonable and what should I shoot for please, TIG or MIG? what are the pros and cons please?

I will only be able to work outside and have a small angle iron table bolted to a wall to work on.

Cheers,

Martin

Just get something like a Sealey 150 Mig... and a Hobbyweld argoshield bottle with the change . You'll want a SIP Meteor auto mask from Toolstation too ! I poo poo 'd Mig for years until i bought one . Tig would be nice but it 'll be rubbish for 300 quid

Mig is difficult if not impossible on a windy day though...but almost foolproof indoors or windless outside .Another thing , don't let the welder get damp , the electronics hate it.. and angle grinding sparks can get sucked in by the fan , and short out the circuit board.. and they're expensive

Edited By Hacksaw on 14/01/2017 16:45:01

Edited By Hacksaw on 14/01/2017 16:49:29

**LINK**

I have got one of these, slightly over your £300 but a good bit of bit, I have spent days welding cars together, plus heavier stuff.

but as said above mig on a windy day is impossible, unlike with stick where the rod and slag are the shielding, with mig its the gas, so easily gets blown away.

as for TIG, it is a lot harder process to master, so unless you fancy taking a class then I wouldn't bother,

Allan

Your needs depend on the gauge of the steel you want to weld so max and min Amps are important.

To weld both car gauge and say 3mm + thick angle iron you need a MIG welder that goes from 20A up to 170A single phase.

To stay in your price bracket that'll be a big ol'e 2nd hand unit. I paid £200 for mine off the bay much better than the hobby Cebora 130A I used to have, only needed a lead re making as the monkey had not bothered to tighten it on the earth clamp.

Gasless sounds great but is in fact a waste of time and you're back to chipping slag.

People seem to forget to change / clean the torch tube or use old rusty wire then think the wire feed is toast and sell it cheap.

Try the mig welding forum **LINK**

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Where is Ajohnw for expert advice on this topic.

He may not be able to tell you what to get. But he should (I would think) be able to tell you what not to get.!

Nick

I've got a Clarke MIG145. It's not as good as JS's sooper dooper MIG, but after getting the hang of the basic process on the top kit, I was able to get a decent bead with the Clarke one.

Apparently they are much used by hobby car restorers as they will run of a 13A socket.

Must admit, when I'm in a hurry I use the stick welder, which I am almost getting competent at

Neil

LOL Don't buy anything I bought. It all looks pretty promising actually but the only place I could weld is outside at the moment and that wont change for a while. All I've done is check for sparks just to make sure it does spark.

Seriously I wouldn't take much notice of all tig below £300 is rubbish. At some point some one may be able to state which ones are worth buying. At the moment there is probably a risk even above £300.

Not sure on inverter stick welders but getting to grips with stick isn't easy on the old cheap hobby transformer ones. I was lucky perhaps. I had tuition on a small industrial 3 phase one at work so at least I know what I should do when I get one actually welding.

Before I bought a mig welder I hired one. They had engraved what to do if it did this or that on the case. One thing was spatter. I asked them if they wanted to sell it so bought it after the hire period was over. Same model as they used at work most of the time at a decent saving. I've since sold it. I'm not keen on mig.

One thing I would say is get yourself a proper flow gauge and that the disposable bottles don't last long but at least you will be able to see what the flow is.

John

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Neil, Does your Mig set run on a RCD protected circuit without tripping due to earth leakage, or is it on a none RCD circuit? I am lead to believe that there may be earth leakage that may trip one.

I ask because I have a Clarke 151EN set up for both gas and gassless which I havnt yet got round to using. However i will need to shortly.

I have 13A ,16A and 32A circuits in my garage workshop but they are fed from a RCD protected busbar. Not sure if i will need to get a seperate mini consumer unit sorted for it or not.

I worked as a coded welder on BNFL projects for too long with very good equipment but all I have now is a clarke 170amp mig (says 151 but when cold it wil put out 170ish) No euro torch, just a cheapo unit which I can just about get into spray mode if cranked fully up and cold. For thw money it is brilliant. Mine is an older version of the 151EN and these are good enough for home use. I modified the roller carrier to strengthen it up as this is a weak point, especially if you are running fast wire speeds. I would very strongly advocate buying or renting a 1/3 or 1/2 size bottle as you will need a decent flow rate outdoors and the poxy little cans empty extremely quickly. Only just read the above post!! Marc, mine run from an RCD and it will trip but only at full duty cycle by which time the earth lead is about to melt anyway

e

Thanks Fizzy, useful info to me and I am sure others.👍👍👍

You stick welding problems are likely one or more of numerous failings.

Cheap welder, poor rods or selection, wrong current, poorly prepared surfaces, not enough practice and a welding mask which is not ideal.

I can weld, but not an expert (like my younger brother). He has had inverter welder for some time and keeps on recommending I get one, too. I just use my huge oil cooled stick welder, purchased from the local college many moons ago. It needs at least a 16A supply and 'drains the mains' at switch-on. It is a 2 phase welder capable of about 400A, I would think, but I only run it on single phase. But it does run rings around these little cheap portable stick welders. Everything except portability!

The slag should not be a problem to remove - if it is, there is some welding shortcoming somewhere! I would suggest most of the problem is the cheap, underpowered welder, practice and helmet. My auto darkening visor made my welding so much easier.

As above, a good mig would prolly do all you need. I hate the small, hobby type. Not yet done any tig so no comment possible. I stick to arc welding if possible because of the cost of gas for my minimal usage.

I followed Neil on current draw. I thought 120amps was probably tops for a 3 pin plug. It is 120amp and the plate states 17amp peak 13amps effective. It also states something else that could be worth looking at on all welders. Duty cycle. I've seen some commercial stuff that isn't that cheap that state 30%. The 3in1 gives 2 ratings. One of them is 100% up to 93amps. It's 60% above that. Only time will tell if these figures are correct.

My general impression of tig from looking around is that it's partly aimed at thinner materials. Seems to be it's forte. Getting used to using a filler rod probably wont be easy for many people.

I sometime wonder if people get hung up on current. Maybe from days of old. With an inverter it should give pretty similar usage at any current it's set at. That wasn't the case with many of the old smaller transformer units. My old transformer stick welder didn't like striking and arc at low settings - bit of a pain as I mostly used it on car body work. That out of interest was easily capable of melting cable in a reel and causing it all to stick well together even at moderate settings. I didn't bother to pull all of the cable out of the reel - once.

John

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I don't know if it helps, but I'd offer the following;

If you can, get an inverter welder, whatever sort you get. Modern inverters are so far ahead of any of the old fashioned transformer machines its just not worth thinking about buying a new transformer welder now. It will make your newbie welding experience better in two different ways.

Firstly it will make your welder easier on your power supply. Transformer welders have all sorts of extreme electrical demands, which inverters eliminate. With a marginal supply an inverter will do a better job of giving you a stable arc.

Secondly, if you give an inverter a less good supply than a transformer welder, then the inverter will still give you a more stable arc.

Internally, inverters make use of closed loop control and this affords better consistency of electrical output. In electrical terms, a closed loop regulated supply has better load *and* line regulation than an open loop scheme like a raw transformer.

When you then add to this that inverters can be dynamically controlled, you begin to see incredible capabilities like "arc force" control emerge. I know you are not explicitly looking for "ghastly stick welder" but if you get any kind of inverter welder, you probably want to be looking at a "multiprocess" welder, just to get value for money. Normally this would be MMA (stick) and some other capability. So if you get a multiprocess welder make sure it has an arc force control. If it has "arc force" then it is no longer a "ghastly stick welder". The two are mutually exclusive.

There are very few situations where your old transformer welder will outperform a new inverter. If you get a DC only inverter then, when doing MMA you can experience "arc blow" when say approaching the inside corners of angle iron. An AC transformer welder will help in this scenario, but it's the only one I know of. If you are worried about that, then get an AC/DC inverter.

Generally you are going to find two kinds of inverter welder, MIG/MMA, TIG/MMA. You can get MIG/TIG/MMA machines, but normally they're in the "Tom Lipton" realm.

Naturally, MIG welders will focus on the benefits of having a wire feeder, and if they are multiprocess will switch between constant voltage (MIG) and constant current (MMA). In a general sense, any welder that can do MMA can also be converted for TIG welding, and given that a MIG welder will have a gas valve, it will probably do TIG welding better than most. Why would you then bother to get a TIG/MMA welder?

TIG/MMA welders do not usually bother to provide a constant voltage capability. Obviously you can get separate wire feeders, but these are the "Tom Lipton" territory. If your machine cannot support constant voltage then a wire feeder is not going to be useful to you. On the other hand, proper TIG welders will usually offer an AC capability.

An AC arc will help in certain MMA situations as already described. Critically AC is pretty much a requirement for Aluminium welding. If you get an AC capable TIG welder make sure it has variable AC balance. This allows you to control the cleaning action. I won't bother with that here but if you end up welding any aluminium you're going to be very interested in that.

Most TIG welders come with a variety of pulse options, slopes and ramps, which can work with your foot pedal. These features are easy for manufacturers to offer, but I must admit to not using them much. For TIG the foot pedal its self is not mandatory, but do get one because you will want to use it.

If you go for TIG, reckon on getting more than one torch. A high current torch will be clumsy on delicate work. A delicate torch will quickly overheat doing high current work. I won't talk about water cooled torches, I understand that these are the panacea, but they are a bit "Tom Lipton" for me.

If you get a Chinese welder it might be quite good. Mine is German badged, but made in China. It's all right, and I would recommend one. Be mindful that Chinese welders generally have metric gas fittings. Most US/English welding equipment is..... English. If you have a lathe and a bit of imagination this isn't going to bother you too much.

I really would recommend TIG, for the workshop. TIG is definitely indoor welding. For jigs and fixtures it is perfect. You can do the smallest of welds with ease. For high temperature fixtures it is a godsend. For any "visible welding" TIG is "the way".

If you do a lot of sheet metalwork, perhaps MIG is the way. For sheet metalwork TIG cannot do everything that MIG will do, but if you're not happy with a lumpy seam on the inside of your outer wings on the car, TIG is still what you're going to need.

TIG is technical, but if you're happy with that, you'll do fine. Quality MMA welds are *MUCH* harder.

For TIG you need a bit of brain. For MMA it's less brainy, but you really have to have actual skills if you want anything approaching a proper weld.

MIG can give you a proper weld on heavy plate work jobs, but on light work it will never be "nice".

I've never used gasless mig. Maybe some one else has ? The OP does say that they need to work outside. Maybe that's ok? Also mentions a £300 budget.

It could be worth him mentioning what stick welder he actually has. There have been some decent transformer units on the market in the past but tend to be rather massive to get the right sort of volts amps characteristics. There seems to be some variation in inverter ones too.

John

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Easy to answer - yes. As In use it outside I run it off a 13A RCD socket. I put one in a convenient spot for things like mowers and pressure washers in the front and back gardens.

Bigger issue is tripping the MCB (overcurrent, not leakage) on switch on, not a problem with the MIG but often one with the arc. I use an extension lead (uncoiled) which stopped 99% of the nuisance trips.

Neil

I wondered if the OP needed to work outside because of the mess that stick welding makes.

My shed is so small I would never bother with stick welding indoors. TIG welding in the shed is no problem however. If you weld recently machined parts, prep is often fairly minimal anyway. With little grinding you only need to clear any oil contamination, and welding is fine. The actual welding process makes little mess, and on a grotty day you may not even need to open the door.

If you get a multiprocess TIG welder, then there is nothing stopping you from trailing the leads outside and using standard welding rods instead.

On a calm day, outdoor TIG welding is O.K., but slight draughts will set you back. Obviously stick welding is not immune to the wind, but it is more resilient to wind effect.

It might be worth pointing out that there are stick welders and there are stick welders. One part answer is to look at the feedback scores on Amazon. I thought that there would be a clear winner. There is. This one.

**LINK**

I can also be used for TIG. I'm inclined to think stinking fish when I hear talk about scratch start. Visions of having to scratch the electrode over the work to get an arc to start. I'd be more inclined to think it relates to open circuit voltage etc. This unit has lots.

I'd wonder about arc forcing on it but it might get round a problem I sometimes had when running long welds on very thin stuff. The inner metal in the electrode would finish up well into the outer flux and no way would it restrike if I stopped. Break the end of and it was hard to avoid sticking. It might also make this worse but 80v to get it up and running again should be more than adequate.

Personally I don't think there is an electric welding method that doesn't have it's difficulties. Gas is much more forgiving in some ways.

John

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You could try the following;

**LINK**

Contrary to my own suggestion it does not have an Arc Force control, but it is intelligent in MMA mode.

It comes with a ground lead, MMA torch, TIG torch, gas hose - but no regulator.

It is DC only but is 200A amps and has HF start.

Inside £300 budget.

I don't have this model, but one similar which also does AC and plasma cutting.

Wow! Seems like there are a lot of different options and differing opinions on this, not to mention jargon..

Most of what I will need to do is small repairs on things like broken brackets, make up small (approx 3/16" to 1/4" steel formers for screw mountings; tack welding small items on steam punk type sculpture thingies, etc.

I will probably never need to do sheet metal car body stuff.

I take the point about wind when outside, fair comment!

The welder I have at the moment ia a very old unreliable Clarke thing that makes a lot of mess and spatter.

I am happy to put in the time practising and even perhaps do an instruction course if available near me. Should perhaps do this first to get some idea of what is actually involved befroe spending out.

Cheers,

Martin