Whats The Best Mig Welder To Buy?
#1
Posted 02 February 2011 - 10:02 PM
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
#2
Posted 02 February 2011 - 10:08 PM
Cheers Ross.
#3
Posted 02 February 2011 - 10:10 PM
Ollie.
#4
Posted 02 February 2011 - 10:40 PM
#5
Posted 02 February 2011 - 10:42 PM
#6
Posted 02 February 2011 - 10:46 PM
#7
Posted 02 February 2011 - 11:00 PM
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.
#8
Posted 03 February 2011 - 08:25 AM
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.
#9
Posted 03 February 2011 - 10:13 AM
#10
Posted 03 February 2011 - 01:53 PM
#11
Posted 03 February 2011 - 02:48 PM
#12
Posted 03 February 2011 - 04:01 PM
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
#13
Posted 03 February 2011 - 04:06 PM
#14
Posted 03 February 2011 - 04:10 PM
#15
Posted 03 February 2011 - 04:45 PM
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
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