Welding Tips and Tricks

​I bought a mig welder last weekend. I've been looking for a while to get another welder. I had my qualificaitons set early on which where:

• 2nd hand + cheap (for a home shop)
• Brand should be Kemppi, ESAB, Wallius (finnish brand, not well known, but quality machines)
• Transformer & Diode based rectifier switching
• 3-phase driven
• 250-350 amp range

Don't need any fancy digital features or too modern inverter based technology. The last thing I want is a board or component that gives out and that's all she wrote. I want to keep the technology primitive enough that I can repair and replace broken components myself, or with some help anyway.

Anyway this is the model I settled on, a Kemppi Kempomat 2500. I am really a Kemppi man, my two other welders are also Kemppis:


This model I got was infact a decade or two newer than I was aiming for, but it's right at the point where the technology is still old fashioned enough that it's possible to do home service and hopefully keep it working for many, many years.

The machine is a Kempomat 2500 and was manufactured some time in the 2000s, it's the replacement for the Kempomat 250 which was what I was originally looking for, which I believe goes back to the 1980s. A good all round welder for anything from car body work to mild/medium fabrication, has the same functions as it's older cousins has had since the 80s, which includes a tack weld function, a type of pulse weld function (not a modern pulse as I understand it) and continious welding. Other than that it's a basic welder, just high quality parts and design. Perfect for my home shop I believe.

And home in the shop:

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The shop is a bit of a mess, on the welding table I have a bunch of plasma cut 10mm plates are for a 2x72 grinder build. I moved the machine around again and put it in aother place, it will probably get moved about more yet.



Had 32A 3-phase plug so we could not test it since the norm in most garages here are 16A plugs (still plenty for this machine), seller had not tested it himself. The guy was someone who deals with buying machines from places that gone out of business and reselling them on the local equivalent to cragislist.

When I said I really wanted to test it we came to an agreement and loaded it in my car and went to his friend a short distance away who had a professional workshop with 32A outlets and test welded it. It worked without problems, I even got a full 15kg spool of .8mm mig wire that was in the machine, think it is Lincoln wire.

Now I don't have any welding gas at home yet so can't show any welding.

Kempi is a fine brand, you're going to be very happy with that mig for a long time. My 250 mig is also a basic transformer power source - wire speed, coarse & fine volts step adjustment, burn back control, squeeze hot glue. I often think it would be nice to change up to a modern pulser but then I remember I weld just fine with this blue box so and forget about it. I mostly tig so that's where I deposited the big bux.

I hope it serves you well.

I also have an older Transformer MIG machine that is perfectly adequate for all the Mig work I do. If I was to make one recommendation, it would be to start looking on eBay and buy all of the discontinued consumable parts that you will need for a long time. I have a Hobart that everything is discontinued for, so I've been buying up all of the consumables that I can find. It's a lot cheaper than a new welder. And I know I will not be happy throwing away a perfectly good welder when I can no longer get parts for it.