Welding Tips and Tricks

I'm spinning my wheels here......

NEED: Nothing

WANT: Everything

I don't have any specific needs other than wanting to learn to do stuff. I'm retired and I am not looking for a new career, but I am looking to challenge myself to learn new skills.

Back in the 1970s, I did learn Forge, Stick, MIG, TIG (machine was the size of a refridgerator) Oxy/Acet and spot welding.

Of all the types of welding, TIG appeals to me the most. Stick is what I would reach for if I needed to repair something on a farm setting and MIG.... well, if I needed to build stuff that involved a lot of beads, MIG does make that easier.

I've gone from low cost (only when compared to other more expensive machines) Everlast PowerMTS 225 Lightning to the Esab Rebel 205ic and lastly the Miller Multimatic 220. Downtime wouldn't kill me, but shipping stuff is not cheap and something like the Multimatic 220 could be serviced locally, is of known decent quality, and would do pretty much everything I would expect I'd want to do. I am somewhat miffed at some fancy pants features missing on the Miller that the Esab has, but I don't even have any recent welding experience, nor any specific needs.... so why do I care?

Thinking about things, I started looking at TIG machines rather than the do everything models, but there doesn't seem to be much of a price savings.

The aluminium capability isn't a must, but I'm sort of hoping to buy one machine and be done with it. It will be a hobby, not a career, so costs do need to be kept in check. I only have 30A in the shop and both the Miller and Esab want slow acting 40A breakers as they do sneak a couple amps over 30 when going full tilt. I'm pretty sure my underground feed is good for 50A so it might just be a straight replacement of the breakers.

Everlast is tempting, but it's about 1000 miles to the service centre, the Miller would only need a 15 minute car ride to the local warranty repair shop.

And finally, I'm in Canada, so some of the brands you guys get south of my border are not common up here and repairs may once again become difficult.

So, after reading all that (thank you for taking the time), does anyone have any other ideas or is the Multimatic 220 the way to go? The Esab 205ic is about $500 more locally and harder to find.

Regards

Christian aka

Kaptain "I wish I had more money that brains, but it's more like I'm just short of brains" Zero

Didn't you already pose this in your other thread? Or is this to be a more central repo of all the good advice?

My choices ranked: Miller, Esab, HTP. Personal pref on order from experience.

In my opinion, AC is a must. I don't think I'd waste my time with a TIG welder that didn't weld aluminum. I certainly don't want to weld aluminum with anything else. Other people are happy to use a spool gun on a MIG, I am thankful I don't have to do that, and I have two welders with them.

As an owner of Miller equipment, I've always been happy with the machines. I will say though that a recent thread here where a guy had a very bad experience purchasing a new Miller 255, along with the path I see the company taking with consumables, has me very apprehensive about buying another one.

As to getting a machine with all the whiz-bang features, I don't know if that means anything to me anymore and I have a pretty feature-rich machine. What I would say matters most to me is an interface that's intuitive, the ability to change modes with the Press of a button but not using any wrenches or swapping equipment. If it's a multi-function machine I want one with multiple gas tanks for the various processes and I don't want to swap anyting other than settings on a control panel.

In spite of them generally being a little pricey, I really like buying a machine with the manufacturer's cart that was made just for it. Some guys like to make the cart as a project and that's cool, it's just not for me. I'm very partial to inverter machines but you will get the number of opinions on that here.

After counting all my shekels and figuring out what I REALLY want, it turns out I figured I should forgo the do everything units. Boy, it sure adds up quickly, all these little trinkets, Argon bottle, gloves, helmet, welding table materials, welding cart materials, filler rods and the list goes on.

The cost of the welder wasn't overly bad, but it's like buying a Ferrari and not having the cash for the fuel.

Considering that MIG is at the bottom of my interests (and I was only thinking it would be nice to have, just in case), I think I'll refocus on an AC/DC TIG and stick machine . That should drop my total down to an acceptable level and leave me with enough cash to get the sundry items I need. Not having MIG also lets me drop the second bottle of gas which is a nice savings all by itself. I'm fairly confident my stick welding will come back with some practice and TIG should be enough of a challenge to keep me occupied. And when I come to grips with TIG, it should be able to handle anything that MIG would have offered, except for the speed component, and as I'm not entering production of anything, speed won't really matter. With stick and AC/DC TIG, I don't think there is anything I can't handle.... well.... once I figure that TIG thing out.

Thanks for putting up with me.... I do tend to go on and on with analysing things.

Christian

I have a nice tig welder, so I rarely use my migs. Either of them. If I were to guess at the ratio of usage, I'd say I do 98% : 2%, and the 2 is only because I did a job with it a few weeks ago, or that would have been 99.5/.5.

I've decided.... Everlast PowerTIG 210EXT.

Going this way, I won't be tempted to take the easy way out with MIG, but rather will need to practice and use TIG skills. It's true I would have preferred a blue, red or yellow machine, but there's so much other stuff to buy that I felt that I needed to save a bit on the machine for now. I can't say I'm thrilled to have an always on fan in the welder, but at least I'll hear if it's still on when leaving the shop!

If I find that the 210EXT just isn't good enough, I'll have enough funds accumulated in a year or two to buy whatever machine I desire and the cost of the Everlast can be written off without causing me concern.

You'll be happy with it, and you'll be glad you got an AC inverter machine.

As an owner of a Neverlast 255EXT, I strongly suggest you buy something else. They claim a 5 year warranty, but I challange you to find anybody that got real support after 6 months. Mine tried turning into a boat anchor after 16 months or so. The company blamed it all on my methods. Nevermind that it worked great for over a year. By their story, I started doing everything wrong. Including causing high resistance by letting the Tungsten get hot! I have a very solid electronics background, and was able to fix the unit myself.
I will NEVER buy anything from NEVERLAST again.

VA-Sawyer wrote:As an owner of a Neverlast 255EXT, I strongly suggest you buy something else. They claim a 5 year warranty, but I challange you to find anybody that got real support after 6 months. Mine tried turning into a boat anchor after 16 months or so. The company blamed it all on my methods. Nevermind that it worked great for over a year. By their story, I started doing everything wrong. Including causing high resistance by letting the Tungsten get hot! I have a very solid electronics background, and was able to fix the unit myself.
I will NEVER buy anything from NEVERLAST again.

A bit late now.... it's already ordered and on it's way.

As for the 5 year warranty, that's a USA only thing.... Canada is 3 years on most and I think one of the units is a 1 year warranty.

If I can get a year or two light use out of it, I'll be able to buy something else if the need arises. Sadly, it seems most companies are outsourcing their sub component manufacturing to other countries and the bean counters figure that customer service costs too much money. I worked for a national company that always prided itself on service, but the last 2 years I worked there, all they could talk about is just being middle of the road and not worry about the individual customer. It used to be that companies would try to outdo each other... Now, if one starts cutting corners, all the other companies say hey, if they can do it, we can do it too! Just think of all the money we'll save.......

I had to get out..... I couldn't take that attitude anymore.