Welders

[gwagensteve]

I agree that's very cheap - couple of comments though -

A) do you have a 15A circuit?
B) 4 position current control is pretty coarse - this might haunt you when your doing some work.
C) 20% duty cycle at 120A doesn't look too good to me, especially with fan cooling. I reckon get a lot closer to 50% at about 120A.

I'm sure it would be adequate for your needs, but it is a cheap MIG and you do get what you pay for.

For the purposes of comparison - here's a quality product. you might not be able to stretch to an ESAB, but this is a "professional" machine. Note, the 150A unit runs on a 10A plug and still claims 150A at 20% duty cycle. (ESAB don't rate their machines at 10% duty cycle- you won't get much work done at 30 seconds on.... 4.5 minutes off)

http://esabsp.esab.net/templates/docOpe ... 123320.pdf

As I said, I don't think the one you are looking at is a bad buy, but it is useful to compare with the real deal. A welder is a "lifetime" purchase - you should be welding stuff up with it in 20 years.

Steve.

[mightymouse]

And whilst we are talking about cheap welders, most have al secondary windings to reduce the cost - copper is much better but more costly to build.

If you had a choice go for a copper secondary.

Have also struck very cheap units ( if fact I had one that literally fell of the back of a truck - really !!! ) that used the welding transformer to supply the wire feed. Things were Ok when you first pulled the trigger, but as soon as the arc struck the voltage fell, the wire slowed down and burnt itself into the tip. Speed it up and it was just a series of wire spurts and zaps. It also used reject automotive alternator diodes which also worried me if it ever managed to maintain an arc.

The transformers still under the bench waiting for that special application - which I suspect will never come.

So my advice - if you havn't tried it be very very careful.