General Welding Questions

I think that's fine, and really ANY welding setup is much better than none at all. Sticking metal together is fun! It really unlocks a lot of creative potential.

I just wanted to make sure you were looking at all the possibilities, and it sounds like you have. Good deal.

Have fun!
Dave
 
Have fun welding Dave! Someone mentioned it already but splurge and get an aoto-darkening helmet. The flip up helmet drives me absolutely nuts. The little unit you want to get should work for most of what you want to do, my friend Jesse, the sword maker, has one and it is very useful.

One nice thing about stick welders is that the steel doesn't have to be clean before you commence to welding so using rusty scrap is a lot easier with it.
 
I personally bought a Miller unit rather than the Lincoln equivalent. The Miller units have copper windings as opposed to the new Lincoln units that have aluminum windings.
 
DDL, thanks for the welcome! I have been lurking here for a little while, but recently some topics have come up that I've felt like I could comment on. This is a great place - I think I'll stay a while! :D

Guy, you are absolutely correct on both points. My autodarkening hood vastly improved my welding and cut back on the frustration. And I do love how stick will just blast through the crud and let you get to the business at hand: sticking metal together.

Dave
 
Dave I have a stick welder but would love to have a mig and or O/A.

Just a thought on cost. If you buy O/A in Australia you have to hire the bottles so it costs you about $180 a year for hire divide that by the number of times you use it. You blokes may not have the same monopoly on gas and may not have the problem.

I would go with what the others have said get a heavy slab of steel and run several lines of weld at different amperages and speed of thravel you will see the diference.

At my school they had a sample on display so you could look at it to see what it looked like too fast too slow note enough amps / rod size etc.

Generally I find trouble welding thin material with a stick. Some metals weld better also with a dc output. Aluminum is one I think. You can by special rods for stainless.

I have had my welder 26 years it has paid for it self over that time but some years I have not used it at all.

The other tip if thinking second hand is farm or business clearance sales.

You know I can't help myself with a scam stry, My brother bought a professional mig worth a couple of grand back when I worked as an electrician, he got it for a couple of hundred. I replaced $40 worth of diodes and hey prestoy worked like a charm until he sold it for what it was worth a year latter. Strange he did not think to offer me a cut I did not charge him to fix it either.
 
Interesting stuff posted .I have been welding about 35 years now and have done O/A, stick, MIG and TIG welding.MIG was by far the easiest to master, then stick then O/A and TIG.TIG is all about choreography using both hands and a foot pedal but it does the prettiest welds IMHO.Good solids welds can be done by all of these methods providing the preparation of the weld area is done properly.While it is true that with stick and MIG rusty or dirty metal can be welded the weld is better if the metal is clean and the joint is properly beveled.Cleanliness with a TIG is almost a must to get a good weld.
As far as auto-darkening helmets I have found them handy when tacking a bunch of stuff up, but I 'll stick with my old flipup hood.Old habit I guess.Another tip not mentioned is to get some good Aloe lotion.Most new welders get some good sunburn in odd places that can hurt like the dickens until your skin gets a little used to it.Dave :)
 
Good tip on the "burn" DC, I had forgotten about that but, when you mentioned it, it brought a few harsh memories back. Also, watch flashing yourself. That welder's flash can be hell.
 
Hurts a might doesn't it J.It's worse than regular sunburn.When I started this last job I hadn't been welding fulltime for awhile and went back to the welding shop to do some TIG. I had on a short sleeve uniform shirt and of course I was in a hurry and didn't put on any sleeves or button up my collar and by night fall I knew how a grilled steak feels :eek: .
A good tip for flash burn of the old peepers is "potato juice". Cut up a good Idaho into small pieces and mash good.Mix a little water with it and strain it. use the fluid to rinse your eyes.When I was a fulltime welder with guys welding allround me we all used to get it regularly.My wife made a batch up and put it in an icecube tray and when I got flashed I would nuke some ,let it cool and rinse.No more pain.Dave :)
 
This is all good stuff! Thanks. I was in HF yesterday checking out their welders. They only had one Mig, $400, and not anywhere near as nice as the little Lincoln. No autodarkening helmet anywhere. I think I'll start shopping eBay for a while and see what I can come up with, and meanwhile find some local welding shops to watch for secondhand stuff. My step daughter works at a pawn shop, they may come across something - though I doubt the training video would be included. :D

Reg that's a sad story about your brother. I think any brother would think the same way though. ;) There are not debts among family, right? So maybe he can help you paint the house next time or something eh?

I appreciate the welding tips. Since I've no clue what I'm doing you guys have certainly saved me a lot of pain. Thanks.
 
Potato juice, huh? That's a great tip, I wish I had heard that one earlier. That flash feels like someone standing over you and grinding sand into your eyeballs. Not fun. Thanks again.

Ebay would be a good place to check. I've seen my welder on ther a couple times. If another comes up, I'll send it your way. I tried a new HF and Grizzly MIG before this one and it just didn't have the power to do what I needed.
 
TSC carries a fair amount of welding stuff if you have one in town. The one near me doesn't have lincoln, but their are comparable hobart or miller welders there. They also have shields, wire, rods and all that.
My local home depot, and lowes both carry lincoln welding stuff as well. I think they have the MIG your talking about. I don't know how their prices would compare to a dedicated welding shop, but they are fairly competitive on stuff so you might luck out. They also have a small selection of shields, wire and rods and all the other accessories.

One more thing I ought to add, is an angle grinder can be awful handy. Some peices just can't be worked on with a belt or bench grinder. When you run multiple beads, you'll want to grind the first one down clean so your not trapping slag in the weld pool. Its nice to have an assortment of heads for it too, from normal grinding wheels, to a good aggressive wire brush. 3M makes some polishing heads in different grits that work really well too.
 
Dave, I spent quite a bit of time in the welding newsgroup before I bought a good welder. No shortage of opinions there.:eek:
I had to teach myself welding and that's not easy. I keep looking for an adult ed class on welding but they don't have any where I am. I know they had classes all the time some where in DSM when I lived there. I kept meaning to go to one but never made it.
There isn't any decent welding instruction videos that I've found. Most very basic videos pushing a certain brand.

I ended up buying a square wave TIG. A square wave welder is very efficient with the amps it pulls from the circut. If you have limited service, this is might be a consideration. Most TIGs will also do stick welding. I still haven't used the TIG yet but I do use the stick welder when I need to do something. I already had a 110v flux core MIG and couldn't get decent penetration with it. I'm sure an experienced welder could do better with it but I had to go to a stick with more amps and it will weld anything that I can dream up.
 
I'm not Mark, but personally I'd rather have a stick welder, if I had to stay in that price range and there wasn't a bigger MIG available.
I can't tell you too much about the weld quality on those other than I watched another guy try to weld with one a wagon tongue and it just didn't give the penetration needed. Maybe it was his technique, maybe the welder didn't have enough ass. It also had a very light duty cycle, something like 10% (didn't see that mentioned in the ad). He spent a lot of damn time sitting listening to the fan run on it.

At least check the duty cycle on that welder and see if its something you can live with. I really can't say enough though that since I only have one welder I'm glad its one that can weld as thick of material as I'd ever want all day long. I can't do anything REALLY thin, but of the tools I've built and stuff around farm I've worked on I find about 99% of what I weld is 1/8" or thicker angle iron.
 
I looked again and it looks like the duty cycle on that welder is 20%, which is better. The thing you have to remember is thats 20% running at the 100 amp setting. A 20% rating on a stick welder is running at the 225 amp setting. On 1/8" to 1/4" stuff I'm generally running between 75 and 90 amps. Thats not even close to maxing out the stick welder, but your right there at the limit on the smaller wire feed.
These guys say they can get good welds with one and I beleive it. I think its probably harder to weld thicker material with them though, and then you have to ask yourself how much time your willing to sit and wait on the welder to cool down.
 
It seems that many of the "new" MIGs have very low duty cycles. They won't cut it, at least for all the things I use it for. You'd be better off finding a good older MIG with a higher duty cycle on Ebay. My 2 cents.
 
blgoode said:
MArk,
How would you rate this one?
http://www.homedepot.com/prel80/HDU...mc=1hd.com2msn-_-product_feed-_-D25X-_-166034
It would work with my wiring in the shop.
Would an arc welder be better than this?
Click to expand...

If I'm not mistaken that unit is flux core wire only and unable to use gas shielding. If you get a MIG (properly GMAW) welder make sure it is able to use gas shielding or it reallly isn't a MIG. It will also be able to use flux core wire if needed.

One of the better welding forums online is http://www.hobartwelders.com/mboard/ Do a little searching there and you will find lots of information aplicable to your situation. The site is hosted by Hobart but many of the members are Miller fans and there is much discussion about all brands of welders.

For some instructional material try this site and select the handboods. http://www.esabna.com/html/eu.cfm

Miller also has a very good educational student pack for about $25 that is very well worth it at http://www.millerwelds.com/education/tools/#training go to the very bottom of the page.

Learning by yourself can be done but it goes a lot faster if you can have someone show you the way.

Allen
 
just purchased a cebora pocket mig 883 from my boss. Can anyone tell me a little about it?
Its a small mig with argon. Should come in handy. I know its a low amp and is for thinner steels. If I preheat with my gas I may get away with welding bigger stuff. Any info is great.
 
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