Welder advice

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I have to admit, I dont weld often enough to be able to make consistent good welds with a stick, never have. I also find that my lungs appreciate the vastly reduced amount of smoke from a MIG. Most pro welders usually end up with impaired lung function and eventual lung disease. Once I got a helmet with auto darkening I could get reasonable mig welds in a few minutes after months of not welding. One thing that has changed radically is the size and weight of welders. The old welders were heavy as they were a big transformer, the new ones are inverter based and lightweight. I can run my MIG off a 6 KW generator and make it portable without having a dedicated gas drive unit. Unless someone is production welding with a high duty cycle the old transformer style are not needed. I have not done it but seen the results of hardfacing surfaces with a MIG and its impressive. The trade off is that is probably a good place for an old style transformer welder.

I have a similar cart for my Lincoln. Harbor freight has lighter duty versions that will work.
 
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On the topic of the table... I have a square "cage" made of 1.2" tub steel that sits on a 3/8 plate with industrial casters under it. It was being trashed from a shop that had like 10 of them. They were use for rolling 55gallon drums of oil around inside the cage. It's heavy and the perfect height to work on. The plan is to weld a steel plate on the top for a work surface, bolt on a vice, make shelves to hold the welder and a bench grinder and attach some form of extension cord and socket. This way I can roll everything out at once. I'll take some pictures when I get home.
 
ABMax24 said:
You guys really need to look up multi-pass welding. I don't care if you are welding with tiny 0.023" wire in a tiny mig or 1/4" 7018 rod with a 500amp CC power supply, you will never weld 1/2" thick in a single pass. It is absolutely doable to weld 1/2" material with a small 100 amp mig (GMAW) machine, just make more passes.

I run a fab shop for a living, with very limited exceptions you very rarely deposit more than 1/4" of material in a single pass. Weld procedures (in particular max heat input values) don't allow for anymore than this. This is for common low-carbon manganese steels, exotic metals or alloy steels are often more stringent and deposition thickness is often lower to limit heat input.

All this being said I gringe when people want MIG machines, yes its easy to run a nice appearing bead, but weld defects are so much more common with solid wire processes. Particularly defects undetectable by common NDE methods, lack of fusion is very prevalent because it's possible to lay molten weld material overtop of the base material without actually melting and fusing to it.

A basic DC/CC power source for stick and learning to weld with 7018 is a very valuable skill. Almost every welding code everywhere recognizes this as an acceptable means to weld mild steel. Gas and gasless flux-core wires are another means of easily producing acceptable joints, if the correct wire and gases are used.
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A big machine would be nice, but my little guy does stick and flux wire. I definitely make more than one pass and try and get at the piece from more than one side.

peakbagger said:
I have to admit, I dont weld often enough to be able to make consistent good welds with a stick, never have. I also find that my lungs appreciate the vastly reduced amount of smoke from a MIG. Most pro welders usually end up with impaired lung function and eventual lung disease. Once I got a helmet with auto darkening I could get reasonable mig welds in a few minutes after months of not welding. One thing that has changed radically is the size and weight of welders. The old welders were heavy as they were a big transformer, the new ones are inverter based and lightweight. I can run my MIG off a 6 KW generator and make it portable without having a dedicated gas drive unit. Unless someone is production welding with a high duty cycle the old transformer style are not needed. I have not done it but seen the results of hardfacing surfaces with a MIG and its impressive. The trade off is that is probably a good place for an old style transformer welder.

I have a similar cart for my Lincoln. Harbor freight has lighter duty versions that will work.
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I wear at least an n95 mask while welding. There's a lot of smoke from flux wire for sure. I met a few retired welders that are nearly blind and can hardly breathe, so I do take it seriously. I like that my tiny welder runs on my 6kw generator just fine and gets the job done. If I were making a lot of welded stuff consistently I would definitely upgrade to a professional rig with shielding gas.
 
I used to manage lot of projects at papermills on relatively thin wall stainless being welded with TIG. Those guys were good and did not wear any respiratory protection. Unfortunately stainless welding can form hexavalent chromium which is nasty stuff. Most of the welding was outdoors or in buildings with reasonable ventilation. I know the welders definitely preferred TIG.

This OSHA sheet may be interest on welding fumes. https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OSHA_FS-3647_Welding.pdf
 
I don’t buy much from Harbor Freight, but if I recall, my right angle fixturing magnets all came from them. For clamps, I mostly use large toggle clamps from Irwin Vise-Grip, or antique c-clamps collected over the years. Grease the threads to protect from weld spatter if using flux core or stick, but not really as much an issue with MIG.
 
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Are the pictures visible to others? I am starting to think I have some plugin compatibility issues.
 
Yeah, but you're not missing anything, as long as you can click on the links.
 
Ashful said:
Yeah, but you're not missing anything, as long as you can click on the links.
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Sounds like maybe my adblocker is preventing me from seeing anything at all. I couldn't see the pics in the magic masonry boiler thread.
 
SpaceBus said:
Sounds like maybe my adblocker is preventing me from seeing anything at all. I couldn't see the pics in the magic masonry boiler thread.
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There's likely some form of whitelist in the settings, where you can add hearth.com and amazon.com. Whether or not it will still work to block the thousands of other annoying adds they've been adding to this site in recent years, is only a guess, you'll have to experiment.

I do wish they'd eliminate the annoying drop-down adds that now appear on hearth.com when viewed on an iphone. They literally block the entire navigation bar, making navigation of hearth.com from any iphone or ipad a bit of a chore.
 
I'm thinking I may really want gas now after all the posts. Is the Hobart 125 a better machine than the lincoln easy mig? Not a huge price difference.
 
walhondingnashua said:
I'm thinking I may really want gas now after all the posts. Is the Hobart 125 a better machine than the lincoln easy mig? Not a huge price difference.
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Gas welding is much easier all the way around than flux core. I look like a competent welder with gas, when I use flux it looks like a child did it.
 
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My guess is both companies know their competitors and both are roughly equal. Probably depends on which one is on sale at a local welding store. Be aware that you do need a gas regulator for the shield gas and in many cases that is an option.
 
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peakbagger said:
My guess is both companies know their competitors and both are roughly equal. Probably depends on which one is on sale at a local welding store. Be aware that you do need a gas regulator for the shield gas and in many cases that is an option.
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I don't think the lincoln comes with a regulator and the hobart does. Probably worth the price difference.
 
century welders are a lower cost sub of Lincoln, my 90amp mig came with a gas reg. so you could run either type wire. course that was a bunch of years back.
 
I got a good deal on a used esab migmaster 250 a couple years ago. Came with a new big spool of .035 wire and a tank of gas. I have welde everything from exhaust to 3/8" steel and it does fantastic. I wanted a big welder that could welder heavier stuff if needed. There are deals on market place. You just have to be fast. Mine came up for sale on a Sunday evening and I told him wanted it. So I picked it up Monday afternoon.
 
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duramaxman05 said:
I got a good deal on a used esab migmaster 250 a couple years ago. Came with a new big spool of .035 wire and a tank of gas. I have welde everything from exhaust to 3/8" steel and it does fantastic. I wanted a big welder that could welder heavier stuff if needed. There are deals on market place. You just have to be fast. Mine came up for sale on a Sunday evening and I told him wanted it. So I picked it up Monday afternoon.
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I would love to have an ESAB product.
 
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FWIW - Welding equipment used to be stolen off construction sites as there was a ready market with no questions asked. Be careful that what you are buying is not hot.
 
peakbagger said:
FWIW - Welding equipment used to be stolen off construction sites as there was a ready market with no questions asked. Be careful that what you are buying is not hot.
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Thats with anything used. Its always a gamble.
 
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