pinkfloyd

so we dont screw over scalies mendral page and i want the thread to be all about me...lol..... i think i have it down to two welders. I am not making the home made one anymore.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=34099
only big difference i can see is that this one^ is lighter and i know that brand is good

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=45031

this one comes with eather a foot pedal or fingertipe control. i have herd that haveing these help a lot and make life easyer.

guys let me know what you think. IF me and my friends decide that these are to much for now then we will get a AC/DC MIG and slowly make it a tig. i know getting one of these will be cheaper in the long run by a lot. If any of you guys know how to get even a better deal let me know.

pinkfloyd

just want to add...both have free shipping and come with Manufactures warranty....

off to work. i hope there is some good info when i get back

Hans

If this is hobby use just get a nice stick(smaw) and goto town, once you get that down and for some reason need more control of amprage go buy the tig hardware, or buy a dedicated tig. Although my best suggestion would be skip the machines and get a real nice oxy-acetelne setup. It will weld...stainless, Al, high/low carbon steel, and chromoly no problem, in fact i think it damn near safe to say you can gas weld any metal

But if this isnt hobbist stuff as in: you want to make cages(i think thats what you said, might be wrong guy) get a nice MIG/TIG, NHRA requires any cage to be TIG'd IIRC, no idea on Sports Car Communists of America
oh and get good product liability insurance(which I hope you will never need)

just my 668.54 Ro lei

ah hell i gotta go grub, im sure scaliwag can help ya out as many others here.

Scalliwag

hans is right you can gas weld just about any weldable metal. You have to have a real good torch and mix handle as well as a assortment of tip sizes. There are a couple of torches out there specifically for welding and work pretty well. The results are not TIG quality even when a person that knows what they are doing use them.
There was even a Monster Garage or one of the Jesse James LA Chopper episodes that they used one.

setzep

I love my Miller 135 Mig but I love my friends Esab Tig better. What are you going to be welding? I liked the TIG to do my SS manifold but my MIG to do the exhaust.

Hans

Hell i got about a year left on my Welding AS degree at tstc, as I am taking classes there in the summer, the rest of the year I am earning my Major in Entrepreneurship at Baylor(dont even start some ****), and I cant gas weld very well... i think its a shame they dont teach it anymore as its a great foundation.

I suggested the Gas/stick welder because if he wants to just stick some stuff together and not for something like cages/safey/production they are the most adaptive for price.

If you arent looking for a hobbiest welder, I would get a multi-process shop rig with MIG(FluxCore)/STICK/TIG/(might want one w/Air Carbon Arc Gouging)
for the price its WAY cheaper to go this route than buy indivdual machines
cant forget a nice plasma cutter/torch

oh and if you havent, go and take some classes, because that will teach you more than you could ever want to know, like when to use spray transfer over short circuit transfer, and arc blow, DCEP and all things of neat *** ****, like not to oil oxygen regulators, and what happens if you do. Now THAT was an AWESOME VIDEO! etc

btw scaliwag, you ever have to mess with the slope, i dont think i have seen many machines nowadays with adjustable slope.

Scalliwag

All the TIG I did just had a foot controller. The newer machines have electronics to preset stepdown.
But you mentioned carbon gouging and that is a dirty word with me If you ever have to use one in an enclosure you will find out that no matter how hard you try to protect yourself against molten spatter it always seems to get you somewhere.
When I did DOT work and they would find a bad area it sure made for a bad day. It was always heavy plate steel so that did not help.
I did not get to fo a lot of TIG for a living. Most of my work was in heavy plate shops.
It was always fun to pick up a gun on one of the little MIG's. They seemed tiny. And 1/16" wire compared to an 0.35 is insane. The 440 3-Phase Millers have a genrator in them and the wire spools are huge. I sure don't miss them though

Hans

bwhahha holy **** i know what you mean on the arc gouging. At school we had to gouge the strap off the back of a V-groove in a little *** booth. and after the gouging I had to cut it into strips so the 'joint' was in the middle of the two plates and it was bent into a C by like a 70ton press, and then it is smushed flat, so the ends of the plate touch. The bead had to hold in order for us to move on. Its cheap though becasue one of the biggest trick was the way you grind the bead and plate flush, if you go length of the bead, when its bent the marks the angle griner leave open up and make stress cracks, but if you grind across the bead its does the opposite. It was a fun test, but sucked gouging.

Scalliwag

The worst episode I ever had was on a ladder about 15' off the ground and cutting loose a staircase stringer with a cutting torch. Believe it or not this got me a lot worse than a gouger ever nailed me.... lemme tell ya why.
The ladder was not tall enough to get as high as I really needed to be and I was kind of in a bad position to start with.
I was cutting and this huge piece of molten slag, at least it felt a big as a golfball went down the back of my shirt. To make matters worse I had my shirt tucked in for some dumbass reason.
So the molten metal went down the back of my shirt and into my pants Right between my butt cheeks which went into automatic "clamp" mode!!!! ARGHH!!!! And I am up on a ladder 15 feet off the ground So all I could do was hold on in extreme agony until the little fireball decided to cool off.
When it did I did not think I was going to be able to get down the fugg'n ladder. You talk about pain. Crites!!! That hurt.

MaxBoostTurbo

Damn scalliwag i could feel the pain over here. I want to learn to weld but don't know where to start i have toyed around with my friends shitty mig welder but need to go to a class for it. later all

ryan

pinkfloyd

when you say "The results are not TIG quality even when a person that knows what they are doing use them." do you mean how it looks or how strong the weld is. I dont have time for clases right now, but i am reading a book. if you know of any good books on basice welding and or anything about welding pleez tell me.

Scalliwag

Both. With the gas weld the heat is displaced over a wider area and that is not good thing. When you TIG weld you wear extremely thin gloves so you can tell how hot the metal is getting. A lot of people TIG without gloves which I think is a horrible idea health wise.
If you try to do either with a gas weld you are probably going to have an immediate health problem.
Although with a really tiny tip at really low pressure is not that hot unless you really fugg up.

I actually like to braze just to play around. It is nice and quiet and you can turn some relaxing music on and as long as you setup so you can be comfortable it is almost therapeutic. That sounds weird as hell but give it a try sometime.
You will get damn good at brazing which will help you greatly in your weld technique on every other weld process you try, especially TIG.
The "artist" that weld metal sculptures probably got started the same way. It's not really work if you enjoy it.
Just try to keep the fireballs out of your pants though

I went to Tarrant County Junior College over 20 years ago. The job I had paid for the welding courses so I jumped on it. The teacher was retired from NASA. He was a Cajun named Ranier. He must have been close to 70 and this guy was the very best welder I ever met hands down. He made everything look so simple that you could not mess it up if you tried.
The best welders always make it look automatic. The frustrating part is when they hand it to you and it's like the fuggin machine has something against you because there is just no way that he was doing the same thing.

A guy brought in a busted side cover off a motorcycle to see if he could fix it and he had it ready in 5 minutes. It was some funky *** casted pot metal.
They had a metal shop there with tools for finishing. When they brought it back you would have thought it was a new part. That was a separate class so we did not get to go watch that part
Hopefully you can get in a class and get some sort of structured learning. Not only do you learn a lot but you may find some local people that will be resourceful and hook you up with access to all sorts of neat stuff.

Scalliwag

This CD on Ebay looks pretty interesting and at $1.99 it is hard not to get at least that out of it Two manuals on one CD. Welding and machining. Those two subjects go hand in hand for the home fabricator.
I always wished I had worked at least a year in a general machine shop
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=25281

EProdRx7

The miller machine listed has some limitations. It is not rated for alum. so keep that in mind. I have a mig 220v that replaced the 120v one that I had bought long before. The quality differance is stagering! If you only intend to do sheet metal or body work then a 120v unit will do it for you but why limit yourself? The 220v machine I have now will do anything. It can do 1/2 plate in a single pass and turn around weld a quarter panel with just a few adjustments. For alum. I have tried a mig but to get anthing worth a **** you need to have a sqare wave mig machine and they are big$$ I went with a miller 180 tig for doing stainless and alum. This is a great box and very versitile. I really think that with welder you get what you pay for. Also stay away from "gassless" migs with the flux core wire. They suck!

pinkfloyd

what do you guys think of this. comes with everything i need and it is under a grand. I think i am missing sumethign because this is pretty cheep compaired to what was on ebay.

link would help
http://www.mytscstore.com/detail.asp...productID=9820

Scalliwag

That's a good deal. I am not real sure why Tractor Supply has good prices on welders but they sure seem too. My AC/DC stick was almost $100 less there than any of the local welding supply houses.

Jeff20B

iTrader: (13)

I picked up a Welder's Handbook (by Richard Finch) yesterday.

pinkfloyd

i have that one...got it from the library.....good book....

banzaitoyota

All I have to say is:

1. RTFI!!!
2. Know the capibilities and limitations of your machine
3. Make Several test welds in different positions and TEST them.
4. If in doubt, take it to a PRO
5. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BUILD A CAGE AS YOUR FIRST PROJECT.
6. Be very weary of the 120V MIGS, they can give the looks of a good weld but in actualiity be very WEAK> TEST TEST TEST!!!!

Any questions come on over to http://www.hobartwelders.com/mboard and ask away, LOTS of experience there. JOhn

Maxthe7man

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...ayphotohosting

Thats the machine I own... I own just about every type of welding machine, and even have 2 of the same process's in some case, however the tig machine has become pretty much the only machine I use at this point.. I hardly even touch either of my migs..the oxy comes out for cutting once in awhile, tig is the way...Max

now

iTrader: (1)

I have tried a few brands of square wave tig units
the miller seemed to be "ball less" it was the worst
for stick welds and didn't clean well when tig welding alu
the one that i purchased for myself was a Lincoln shown
here on ebay :
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=45031
it has very strong cleaning action when welding alu
and stick welds great! you can hear the difference
stick welding between the miller and the Lincoln .
the only bad thing i can say about the Lincoln is that
the tig torch it comes with is way undersized!
matt

Hans

well since Im coming from a powermig 200, Id have to say, I love my Lincoln, and will probably stick with them. but thats prefernece, i mean its like
RX7 vrs all cars
Ford vrs Chevy
John Deere vrs IH
Snap-on vrs MAC
Roundy round racing vrs turny kind
and on and on and on...

All I suggested is a nice smaw macine. Hell you can weld anything with it giventhe right rods, and since I would never suggest anything like cages as a project except for a profesional, it wont have to be a perfect bead. It will do most of what he needs, I think. and besides If he havent welded before a $1500 TIG/MIG is quite a steep start.



But yea that is decent, most likely just right for a hobbiest. but enough rant, i got to go study for a REL final

pinkfloyd

me and my friends both think this is a very good deal. i will take this info to a welding shop and ask them and see what they think.

this kit comes with everything i need. i just have to fill the tank. it even comes with mask,gloves and all the little things that no other kit comes with.

http://www.mytscstore.com/detail.asp...=9820&zz=66209

now

iTrader: (1)

if you don't need to weld alu then this unit i am sure would
be fine.
i also have a junky mig its a 120 unit and
it seems to weld steel fine and was free, but for a quality
weld the bigger $$ tig is great even just to stick weld with,
its so much better than my old lincoln low cost stick buzz box.

I have to say the best thing i purchased after starting to learn to tig weld would have to be the
Auto-Darkening Helmet sure makes the job much easier.

matt

pinkfloyd

from what i have read this will weld alu. but not very good. We will be welding a lot of stainless steel. I want to pay more for the tig but my friend dose not. i will try to convince him. but even after we buy the tig we still need tank,gas,mask and lots of other stuff. so we will prolly get this. we will have to pay tax on it. damn.