Anyone knows of a good welding equipment that is good, easy to use for beginner? What will be the approx cost and where to get one? thx.

 

What do you want to weld? What thicknesses? What types of metal? Do you want the weld to look good or just get the job done? What type of voltage hookup do you have? 110V,220V etc... The bare minimum you will need no matter what are safety glasses, a welding helmet, leather welding gloves and some channel locks or something to hold the hot metal. Once you answer these questions I can give you some different options. Also how much do you want to spend. Minimum is $100 but it goes straight up from there.

It's fairly easy to learn to weld. But I'd advise taking a beginners class at a community college. It might cost $100 plus materials but can learn so much from someone elses experiences and yours as you go through the class. Plus you don't want to start welding and use the wrong techniques. It's hard to fix that later on, so I'd say look into a class. They're fun and an easy A as long as you try

 

have safety equipment..just need a welder now.

Thickness: about 1/8 of an inch or so...for stuffs like muffler etc. I'm thinking of a MIG welder of some brand...something EZ to use...auto feed the wire would be a plus. TIG is nice but too expensive.

 

For welding say you want to weld 1/8" metal. To find out how many amps you need just convert that to decimal (.125) and take out the decimal. That's usually the max amps you'd need to have a weld penetrate 1/8". I just recently but a Lincoln Electric SP-135T from Home depot for less than $400 I think. It goes up to 135 amps and does flux cored welding and mig(gmaw). It comes with the hoses and the regulator to hook up a bottle of argon/co2 mix but it does not come with the bottle. You'd have to look up welding in the yellow pages and find a place that sells and fills bottles. A small 10lb bottle will usually run you less than $100 filled. After that every refill is around $15 and will last a few hours worth of welding depending on what flow you regulate it to. You don't have to buy the bottle right away though. The kit I bought came with contact tips for 9mm flux cored wire and 6mm for mig. It also came with 2 2lb spools (one flux cored one mig) of wire. It also came with a cart so you can wheel the thing around. It comes with everything you need to start welding, and it will handle up to 5/16" penetration. You can always double pass to get thicker welds by beveling the surface you're welding. LOL A lot of info for a beginner. Just don't buy a hobby welder, you'll regret it later on. Any company like Licoln or Miller are dependable and usually have several year warranties. It might cost a lil bit to get started but once you get pretty good you can do exhausts and other stuff like turbo piping for people to pay it off Good luck and feel free to ask any more questions.

Pretty much any mig machine over 125 amps should make you content for quite awhile. The welds with fluxcored dont look that great but get the job done for exhaust but use mig(gmaw) on things that will have stress put on them or if you just want a better looking weld.