21 replies to this topic

[Mini Mad Drakeley]

hi everyone,

i had borrowed a mig welder of one of my neighbours, a telmig 100, tonight when i was at tech i found out it had an electrical fault which made it hard to weld with and dangerous.

i decided to invest in my own mig welder as im wanting to do more projects, im wanting a 150/160amp and im wandering what the best reasonably priced mig welder is, can someone help me out??

thanks, adam

[rosco454]

Without knowing your budget its hard to say but a clarke 160tm is a good bet for just over £300.Comes set up for refillable cylinders (dont bother with the little disposable ones) and has a great reputation for its price.Get your self over to themig welding forum and have a look on there and in the Weldequip shop.

Cheers Ross.

[OllieTheWelder]

Yeah contact welequip, Stay clear from SIP Welders! Clarke, Parweld, Sealey, Lincoln, ESAB atc are all good manufacturers.

Ollie.

[akaflash]

mig tig arcs own make mig is the best you will buy full stop, clarke welders are cheap but unreliable

[Mini Mad Drakeley]

il contact weldequip but i didnt think a mig welder would have cost that much, i might have to look into a 2nd hand welder

[Mini Mad Drakeley]

found this one on ebay, any idea id its any good?

http://cgi.ebay.co.u...=item2ea604ca20

thanks

[olds_kool_lews]

i got a BOC 160turboE (if i remember correct) got it free from my girlfriends dads work, the torch was knackered, so gave it me, said if i can get it to work i can keep it, at the time i had a clarke gasless mig and that was utter crap, so stole the torch and put it on my BOC, been welding ever since brilliant bit of kit, donkeys years old, well used with a piece of chain and bit of hose pipe as a carry handle lol


also with some welders, you have to wire them into the mains, a mate of mine had to get his wired into his house circuit!

Edited by olds_kool_lews, 02 February 2011 - 11:04 PM.

[rosco454]

mig tig arcs own make mig is the best you will buy full stop, clarke welders are cheap but unreliable

Im sorry but thats rubbish,clarke have a good reputation as a good value hobby machine.

The mta one looks to be a re-branded portamig in which case its very good.I have the portamig 211 and its a great bit of kit,its as much as you will need without going to an industrial machine and money well spent for me.

Cheers Ross.

[1275GTS]

i've had 2 clarke mig welders over the last 20 years and have had no problems with them at all. the only reason i have had 2 is because the first one was pinched from my garage. my mate next door had sip welder and has had nothing but problems with it.

[AVV IT]

I've spent months searching through the various "which welder" threads here and on other forums, generally asking this sort of question with a view to buying as a newbie. The general consensus seems to be that the Clarke 135 TE Turbo is both reasonably priced and also seems to tick most of the boxes for beginner & DIY automotive use. So that's what I'm buying

[Mini Mad Drakeley]

i went down to the welding shop local to me and asked about welders, and im considering one thats 170amps and is british made etc and its alot better than clarkes or some other companys in quality so i need to ask my parents for a loan, im really not happy about this but i need the welder, might see if anyone needs welding done if i get it to try make back the costs for it lol

[ibrooks]

What on earth are you welding? 170 Amps is a serious bit of kit and will happily blow holes in 6mm plus steel. It'll also probably need a 16Amp supply if not larger which is more than a normal household mains socket can safely supply. Now you can probably stick a normal 13Amp plug on the wire and use it on a normal socket and just not turn it up to full power but then you might as well have saved some money and bought a cheaper welder that doesn't have that useless extra capacity.

I'll second the opinion that Clarke welders are good pieces of kit. I've had my 150 for a long time and done a lot of welding with it without a hitch. It too should be run on a 16Amp supply but I very seldom weld at it's max capacity so I get away with it on a normal socket. I do use it on fairly high settings on occasion as I do bits of fabrication work rather than just bodywork. I find the second from the bottom setting perfect for car body panel thickness steel. Nowadays I would recommend the 135 and if something happened to mine and I had to replace it that's almst certainly what I would get. The 135 will happily weld far beyond anything you'll find on a car (unless you're looking to weld engine blocks together).

I also use disposable bottles and it really puzzles me why people say they don't last any length of time. Get the high capacity ones from Machinemart and they last many weeks of vehicle restoration use (evenings and weekends welding in patches and panels here and there). They cost around £13 from memory and I always have a spare as well as the one on the welder so that when it does run out on a Sunday evening it doesn't stop the job. I usually buy from Machinemart on a VAT free event which drops the price to under a tenner each. I suspect that the people who say this are not unscrewing the regulator from the bottle when they finsh welding for the day - the seals in the welder and the cheapo regulators they use simply aren't meant for that sort of sustained pressure and will let the gas seep away. Just spin the disposable regulator off th bottle at the end of the day the same as you would close the valve on the larger bottle and their gas would last a lot longer.

Two bottles got me through the restoration of my Cousin's Mini and it had:

Doorsteps (complete on one side and sections on the other side)
Numerous repairs to the floor/inner sills.
New sills.
Repairs to the hinge pillar.
Repairs to the boot floor.
New A-Panels.
New front panel.
New wings.

I've since put patches on the sills of my 4x4 Sierra and there is still gas left in the second bottle. I'm also fairly sure that the first bottle wasn't new when I started the job.

Also bear in mind that the 135 and 150 can be adapted to use the larger bottles for a couple of quid so if you find that you are using huge amounts of gas then you can change to a larger bottle after your first disposable with a total loss of maybe a fiver in parts to change and the extra cost of the initial gas.

If you can find someone with an invite to Machinemart's current VAT free event then you can have a Clarke 135 for a fraction under £220 if you buy this weekend. They have these events reasonably regularly and send invites to past customers so if you aren't buying in the next couple of days it's worth keeping an ear open.

Iain

[hundred]

I have a Parweld 161 (portable version of Parweld 171) that I got from Weldequip, and I think its brilliant, especially compared to the SIP Migmate I had before (that was poo) Cannot recommend these enough.

[Mini Mad Drakeley]

i will keep an eye on machine mart but i was looking at the 170amp welder because im planning many projects, building trailers and anything else i want, and im also planning on becoming good enough that i can weld anything other people want, and the 170amp welder im looking at has a range from i think it was 45amps to its maximum and plugs into normal wall plug and its very compact and manouverable for its size and it will cost about the same as some other welders

[ibrooks]

What make is it? and does it have a little brother from the same manufacturer if they are cheaper than the Clarke stuff? If it's small is it fan cooled? that was a real bug-bear with my old SIP as you could only weld for so long before the thermal cutout was reached and then you had to wait for it to cool down - I've never managed to get the Clarke to do that which has to be down to the fan cooling.

If it's the same price and really will run from a household supply then by all means go for it but 170Amps is way beyond what you are likely to need. I don't believe for one second that you could safey run a 170Amp welder from a 13 Amp supply though - I'd love to see the technical specs to prove me wrong on this one.

Trailer chassis - 2-3mm steel maximum and modern ones even less so you're not even going to be up to the halfway point.

Seriously - look around you and look at what sort of thickness of steel things are actually made from. The welder you are looking at is getting up towards high-rise building construction and gantry crane stuff. The 150 will comfortably weld 6mm steel from on side - that's half a centimetre! A piece 600mm square would be difficult to lift on your own. Railings, gates, flower basket brackets, etc. can all be done with a smaller machine.

Iain