[Scrambler]

Hello All,

I'm new here and recently posted this in the Members Introduction thread. I realized the better place for that may be here.

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.

-Jason

[Louie1961]

The Lincoln 210MP is a fine machine. You will do well with that, the Miller Multimatic 215, or the ESAB Rebel EMP 215ic. All good, and the only differences are the same as arguing between Ford and Chevy...not much.

If you are just looking for metal to weld on, and learn with, the JF Lincoln foundation offers an amazing value on cold rolled steel coupons https://www.jflf.org/ProductDetails.asp ... Code=METAL

Order them 10 at a time, and they are pretty economical. Your UPS driver will hate you because of the weight, but these are really good pre-cut coupons designed for learning welding (actually I think they are designed for the Boy Scout welding merit badge). You get two 1/4 inch coupons and six 1/8th inch coupons in each "kit". They do need to be de-greased if you are using them for TIG, but for MIG and stick, not so much. Being cold rolled steel there is no mill scale to remove. Just wipe them with acetone or alcohol, let them dry and weld away.

[G-ManBart]

Welcome! I'm originally from just a bit north of you and still have relatives nearby....my sister and brother-in-law live just a few minutes from Spruce Run off 78.

The 210MP is a nice machine as Louie said, but there are two things to note. One, you'll have to use 230V to get the full output capacity. Two, you'll be limited to DC TIG, so you won't be able to do aluminum with that process. The same is true of the Multimatic 215 Louie mentioned, and likely the ESAB, but I'm not familiar with that one.

If you think you'll want to do aluminum TIG you will either have to get a more expensive multi-process machine or go with two machines, the second one being an AC/DC TIG. You could actually still go with something like the 210MP or Multimatic 215 and then buy something like a Primeweld 225X (AC/DC TIG) and save money over buying some of the more expensive machines like a Multimatic 220...you'd have to just do a little research to see how the pricing all works out.

[Scrambler]

The Lincoln 210MP is a fine machine. You will do well with that, the Miller Multimatic 215, or the ESAB Rebel EMP 215ic. All good, and the only differences are the same as arguing between Ford and Chevy...not much.

If you are just looking for metal to weld on, and learn with, the JF Lincoln foundation offers an amazing value on cold rolled steel coupons https://www.jflf.org/ProductDetails.asp ... Code=METAL

Order them 10 at a time, and they are pretty economical. Your UPS driver will hate you because of the weight, but these are really good pre-cut coupons designed for learning welding (actually I think they are designed for the Boy Scout welding merit badge). You get two 1/4 inch coupons and six 1/8th inch coupons in each "kit". They do need to be de-greased if you are using them for TIG, but for MIG and stick, not so much. Being cold rolled steel there is no mill scale to remove. Just wipe them with acetone or alcohol, let them dry and weld away.

That's awesome, thanks. I figured as much, its mostly a brand loyalty thing. I never would have thought something like a coupon program would have existed.

[Scrambler]

Welcome! I'm originally from just a bit north of you and still have relatives nearby....my sister and brother-in-law live just a few minutes from Spruce Run off 78.

The 210MP is a nice machine as Louie said, but there are two things to note. One, you'll have to use 230V to get the full output capacity. Two, you'll be limited to DC TIG, so you won't be able to do aluminum with that process. The same is true of the Multimatic 215 Louie mentioned, and likely the ESAB, but I'm not familiar with that one.

If you think you'll want to do aluminum TIG you will either have to get a more expensive multi-process machine or go with two machines, the second one being an AC/DC TIG. You could actually still go with something like the 210MP or Multimatic 215 and then buy something like a Primeweld 225X (AC/DC TIG) and save money over buying some of the more expensive machines like a Multimatic 220...you'd have to just do a little research to see how the pricing all works out.

That's a nice area over there by Spruce Run. The voltage wont be a problem. And yeah I figured if I did end up progressing on TIG, I would eventually buy a legit machine. I figure the 210MP should be a life long machine for me in terms of MIG/Flux/Stick though. At least the way I see myself using it, but I guess you never know.
You wouldn't happen to know the deal with scrap yards not selling to the public would be would you? Is it an insurance thing with customers digging through scrap? Know of any places I could check out? Aside from scrap I'd love to buy old motors and equipment to tinker with and repair.
Thanks for the advice.

[G-ManBart]

You wouldn't happen to know the deal with scrap yards not selling to the public would be would you? Is it an insurance thing with customers digging through scrap? Know of any places I could check out? Aside from scrap I'd love to buy old motors and equipment to tinker with and repair.
Thanks for the advice.

It's been a long time since I lived there, and only get back for a few days every couple of years so I'm totally unfamiliar with the steel/scrap situation there. There are some areas where scrap dealers don't/won't sell to the public and I'm not sure why, but it's not just near you. Around here some will and some won't. I honestly think it's that they don't want to deal with the hassle and liability. They'd rather just dump it in a container and ship it overseas...

I used to have a great scrap yard to buy stuff, but they changed ownership and the new place makes no effort to keep useable scrap available. I've found that several of the metal supply places have fairly reasonable prices on drops that they sell by the pound, so that's what I do most of the time now. You might stop in the local welding shop, buy something inexpensive and ask if they have any local sources they can recommend....never hurts.

[Scrambler]

Will do Gman, thanks guys

[SusKatCas]

Good morning,

I live in eastern PA. Neither of my local scrap yards will sell to the public.

The next best option is to look on Craigslist and Facebook for people that sell odds and ends. Those are the cheapest but what you get is often mystery metal.

Then you cost up to buying drops from a steel distributor. My closest distributor is happy to let you walk in with safety glasses, steel toes and tape and thickness gage and rummage through odds and ends. I can generally find what I need for about half what it costs from a hardware store or big box store.

When I get in a bind for a project on a weekend, I find that Home Depot has the biggest selection, but it is a crap shoot what is available.

This all makes me a little sad as I work in a heavy fab industry and we tend to buy most mild and HSLA steel for around 50 cents per pound.

Cheers, Alan

[Scrambler]

This all makes me a little sad as I work in a heavy fab industry and we tend to buy most mild and HSLA steel for around 50 cents per pound.

Cheers, Alan

I hear ya man. It really is a shame. But yeah, I'll ask around at the local steel distributors and see if they'll let me walk through for cutoffs. Thanks

[Superiorwelding]

This is a flat out self promotion but you can pick up practice material on our website, www.superiorweldandfab.com. For forum uses we have a discount code "theforum" for 10% off. Hope this helps those here who said they are having a hard time finding scrap metal to weld on.
-Jonathan Lewis

[delgriffith]

I don't know how a local welding school would feel about letting someone off the street get their scrap, but I managed to get a lot of scrap from them as a student. I could have loaded a truck up and they would not have cared. The students use plate and pipe etc but there's still often good metal left. They might weld a few pipe coupons together but then either end still has a good bevel on it, so you can cut the ends off and then you have a good coupon. They weld two pieces of bevel plate together and that's it, toss it into scrap. So I grab those and cut a new bevel on the other side with a bandsaw and have a new bevel plate.

I asked them if they wanted the scrap back after I was done to get the scrap steel income, but they said it was donated by local companies and they just pick up the scrap so they weren't concerned what I did with it. They seem like the kind of people genuinely interested in people wanting to learn, so if you managed to find the local welding instructor's phone number or email you might be able to talk them into something even if you weren't a student. Midwest vs East coast tho... ymmv

[cj737]

Similar to the prior post, there's a MetalSupermarket in Fairfield, NJ. They too generally salvage their scraps for sale to Recyclers. I have a very good relationship with the branch near me and made arrangements to grab some off-cuts so my boys could learn to weld. After, we returned the scrap so they could "recycle" it for $. It always brought more $ after the welding due to the added weight of stringer beads upon stringer beads.

My boys constructed a palette bin they could just throw their scraps into, then we hauled it home every 1-2 weeks. Welded what was worth using, returned it a few days later. Worked out well.

You might try something similar.