I traded my table saw (no more wood for me) for this Chicago Electric Mig Welder. Hey I bartered so no money out of pocket.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=94056

I've been practicing and the welder seems to work pretty good. What I would really like is some advice on what I can weld and the thickness of the metal I can safely weld. I plan on doing some little projects and then moving on to some frame stuff on cars and bikes.

 

I'd limit use of that machine to non-critical components <1/8" thick.

 

I am not the best welder or even close to being good, but I did weld an exhaust and downpipe for my accord with that. With flux-core you will get a lot of little globs of slag around your weld area (not too pretty), but you can knock most off or just grind it off later.

 

I sure hope I can weld some tubing with it because I want to start another bike project soon.

 

As stated about 1/8" is probably max penetration. With flux you'll always have some slag but if you're getting alot you need to either turn down the feed or up the power.

I basically weld with the power all the way up and as slow as a feed as possible without burning through.

Prep really helps alot. Getting the metal shiny and clean leads to less slag and better penetration.

Beveling the workpiece so it mates with a groove rather than flush helps alot too.

 

i have that one.

NO FRAME stuff at all, also on thicker metals it will start welding nice if you have the heat perfect (hard to for with 3 ****ing dash marks for a scale) then it will suddenly go really cold, will look nice, for 2 inches then real skinny then it will grab a gob of wire (due to bing too cold)

also the wire feed is inconstant, it is due to 2 things, it tells you to put the metal washer ontop of the wire spool, don't put it under the wire spool, also the red cofee stir stick looking thing, cut that down about 3-4" it will actually bind and birdnest the wire.


it really is a piece of crap haha

 

i have one of those too.i got it a few years ago to weld fence sections and hand rail pieces together in the field.one thing that bothers me with this thing is that the tip is always hot.weather you have the trigger pulled of not.if you touch the tip when you set it down it sparks and sticks the tip.i dont know if this machine can be run with gas?dont bother it welds way hotter with the flux core wire.i have used a lincoln 110 set up with gas and it sucked compared to the flux core wire.

 

ya and if you're not carful you have to get the harbor freight contact tips.

i didn't see a way to hook gas up to it, even though on the box it clearly says MIG/GMAW ...............cheap Chinese trash!