I've never welded before and want to learn how to mig and tig. I was looking at a few miller products and i want them and i know there great quality. How ever would any of these welders work not to make anything fance or useable just to learn how to weld ? or would should I just get the two miller welders and spend the money

http://www.harborfreight.com/welding...x-welders.html

http://www.harborfreight.com/welding...c-welders.html

 

If you've never done it before and want to learn, the most economical for you is to take a welding class at a community college near you....You get to try out a variety of machines and all the welding coupons you can handle. But, if you're set on buying a welder, stick to the bigger names. Miller, Lincoln, ESAB, etc

 

Unfortunately there arent any community colleges around here that have them. However there is a welding gas company around here that has what they call welding workshops and it's a weekend or one day course that teachs you the basics and lets u do about 4 hours of welding. I will be going to this class for both mig and tig But I also want to buy my own so I can practice here and become better. Practice dose make perfect.

 

dont even go down that road. practicing on a garbage machine will make you a worse welder because you will learn terrible techniques to get that garbage to work and they will carry over to working on a good machine

save up and buy a used lincoln or miller. the squarewave lincolns or the sync 180 millers are both great tigs and can be purchased used for fairly cheap.

 

Theres lots of harbor frieght tig videos on youtube and people seem to be putting them to good use...what more could you want for the price
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_hP8G1j5LU

 

maybe they have improved, but from what I have seen they are a joke

 

The tig might work, but there's no amperage control or many options at all.
Might work for some things.

The flux core mig was ****. Feeds the wire in crap spurts.

 

i started with one of those. I a good tig machine for beginners and light fab work. once you learn how to tig better you can get a better machine like miller or so.

 

Just save up and buy a miller or lincoln or other good name brand. you can get one used for 500 bucks or the starter tig from miller is 1100 and works great ive used it. just make sure you get the pedal upgrade cause the stick controller suck

 

b16bri - I've got a Miller 180SD if you are interested. It's got about 30hrs or less on it since I've owned it and I am the only owner. PM me if you're interested.