[Scrambler]

Hello all,

I'm new to welding as a hobbyist. I'm an Electrician by trade, work in a data center, building customer rental cages. Work on design of customer layouts and such. I use CAD on a near-daily basis, and started tinkering with Fusion, mostly to cheat on laying out odd ball cuts. Currently have a lincoln handy core fcaw, outgrowing it much faster than I expected, but I didn't wanna spend a ton of money on a hobby I wasn't sure I was going to take to. I do have a few questions for the community, which I'm sure I'll be directed to the proper forum threads but here it goes:

Would the lincoln 210 MP be a good official starter welder for someone trying to get into true mig, and dabbling in stick and tig (tig interests me so much but I'm not sure if or when I will get there)? And if not, then is there a comparable priced reliable welder with the same functions and abilities?

I live just on the north side of Route 78 in New Jersey and I'm having a hell of a time trying to find a place to BUY scrap metal so I have to waste money on fresh steel for practicing. But as I call around to local scrap yards I'm finding that none of the ones I've called sell to the public, seems to be a trend. Not sure if it's just a NJ thing or what, but I always hear people on YT talking about stopping by their scrap yard and buying metal to weld with. Am I searching the wrong thing, is it a semantics thing? Should I be searching salvage yard, or junk yard instead? I would love some guidance on this.

Now that it's finally spring, its warm enough for me to weld in the garage with the door open and a fan on. So the fumes arent so much of an issue. However in the winter what I've been doing is using my shop vac, without a filter, and installed a couple metal screens on the inlet hose to keep slag and embers from entering the vacuum. Seems to keep my fumes down a little bit but I certainly don't wanna spring for a fume extractor. So I guess my question is, what do all of you entry-ish level hobbyists do to combat flux core fumes, and will true mig be less of an issue for nasty fumes?


Thanks for you're future support.

[Louie1961]

Now that it's finally spring, its warm enough for me to weld in the garage with the door open and a fan on. So the fumes arent so much of an issue. However in the winter what I've been doing is using my shop vac, without a filter, and installed a couple metal screens on the inlet hose to keep slag and embers from entering the vacuum. Seems to keep my fumes down a little bit but I certainly don't wanna spring for a fume extractor. So I guess my question is, what do all of you entry-ish level hobbyists do to combat flux core fumes, and will true mig be less of an issue for nasty fumes?

Any season I weld with the garage doors open and wear a respirator.

[Scrambler]

Any season I weld with the garage doors open and wear a respirator.

Thanks, yeah I was thinking that, I'm just going to need to find a nice helmet that'll fit my 3m respirator underneath. Any suggestions? What ppe setup do you use?

[Louie1961]

I am using a Lincoln Viking 3350 4C helmet https://www.weldingsuppliesfromioc.com/ ... et-k3034-4

I use a 3M 7500 half face piece, down draft exhaust respirator with the 2297 "pancake" filters...the downdraft is super nice for keeping your helmet from fogging up

https://www.amazon.com/3M-Facepiece-Res ... 178&sr=8-6

https://www.amazon.com/3M-Advanced-Part ... 168&sr=8-5

I also use a fan if I am stick welding, to be sure to blow the excess smoke and fumes out the door.

[Scrambler]

Thanks Louie,
Yeah I have the same respirator. I was using the OV cartridge filter combos. I'm assuming the filters you linked are adequate for the welding? The pancakes would def fit better under there.