Whats up, im in the market for a welder...i dont have anywhere near enough money for any TIG welder and i know nothing about brands and quality and **** like that, i have very little experience with wirefeed, but i would like to buy a decent wirefeed welder to learn on and start on a few projects. I dont want the cheapest peice of **** you can buy but i would like a decent welder, ive seen some in the 3-500 dollar range but i cant remember the brands.

What would you guys suggest for a beginner???

Thanks alot!

 

The best thing is to search for threads on this topic. You can usually find one on the first page here, since the question is asked about 4 times a week.

Everybody eventually gets tired of compiling their best answer to the question, so you will typically only get half-assed answers when you ask this. Look for other threads for the other half of the ***.

 

Some of the hobart handler migs are pretty nice and fairly reasonable. I would look into on of those.

 

yeah we should make a stickied thread about this....serisously every week there is 3-4 ones of these.

now for my half asses respone...

Miller
Hobart
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lincoln
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ebay/harbor freight pieces of poo welders.

 

http://www.northerntool.com/we...oogle

 

http://www.northerntool.com/we...11005

Whats do you guys think about that?

Or would the Hobart one in the link above be alot better?

As of right now i just want something to use for doing exhaust work, and making intercooler pipes, ect. nothing major.

I dont know a whole lot about wire feed welding...im in my second year of college and were just starting with oxy/acetalene welding. But what exactly does using gas with a wire feed welder do? Just make cleaner welds or what?

Sorry in advance for all the stupid questions!

 

http://www.millerwelds.com

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by k24em2 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Some of the hobart handler migs are pretty nice and fairly reasonable. I would look into on of those.</TD></TR></TABLE>

True

what ever you deside to get, shop around a little first. I had a handler 140, but about 3 yrs ago someone desided they needed it and my dads 4wheeler and broke into his building and took em. I finally desided to get another welder a couple of months ago and was gonna get a handler 180 this time from tsc http://www.mytscstore.com/deta...D=600 but desided to call around to all the welding supply places I could find before I went to get it, so I gathered all the phone books I had, and all the books I had my wife at her work . The price of a new millermatic 175 varried by $115 from the lowest to the highest of the places I called that were within driving distance. I ended up getting the millermatic at the place that gave me lowest price and end cost was $25 more than the hobart from tsc, but was a 1hr 20 min drive rather than a 25 min drive to tsc.

 

I'd recommend the Miller 180... or 185, whatever it is.

 

I have the bigger Clarke welder at home. Its a fantstic unit! I prefer it to the Miller we have at work.

Uses all the same parts externally (consumables) and can be found cheaply on ebay!

I give the clarke

 

well i borrowed a some cheap *** thing from a friend just to mess around...and well, things didnt go to well haha, i did pretty good just going in a straight line, but when i tried to weld 2 peices of exhaust pipe together... didnt go so well, the welder didnt have any temp adjustments so im thinking that could of been part of the problem, but when i would try to weld them together it just melted through easy as hell... im sure it didnt help that was my first time welding...oh well time to find a decent welder to work with and see if that helps!