A few months ago I bough an Eastwood 175 mig welder. Paid $499 shipped. I looked at a number of smaller welders, I have a small garage with limited space and don't really need a heavy duty welder with heavy duty cycle. My use is primarily things like hitches.
I also didn't want to spend a lot of $ and was originally looking at a trying to find a nice used model of the big 3. Didn't find one that I thought was a good "deal" so I ended up ordering this one.
As a side note - if I planned to use it for a living I like Miller and Esab welders and would have bought one of the two. Of the 250 amp size welders I've used I think Esab is the most user friendly. (my dad has a metal fab shop and he's had a number of different small welders incl. Lincoln, Miller, Esab, and Panasonic).
So, the welder was dropped off by the shipper. Can't remember Fedex or UPS. It was well packed in a good quality box and had no shipping damage.
On first appearances, the unit is heavy. Much heavier than I had anticipated. Probably about 100lbs. It comes with both a mig gun and a spool mig gun. It also has a regulator and hose. It came with two small spools, a 2lb spool of .030 steel and a 1lb? spool of aluminum wire. Don't recall what alloy. Also had a couple tips. Plug is a 50amp 240v.
I bought a bottle of C25 shielding gas. The gas regulator is a cheapo unit. The first one functioned as a flow regulator, but the flow guage wasn't functioning. I emailed Eastwood and a new one was in the mail. No return necessary.
Setup of the mig gun was easy. The gun and hose seem to be good quality. The small 4 pin control plug on the front is super cheap. It's the one part that really is cheesy and should be improved. I had intermittent wire feed at first. I took apart the plug and soldered the contact pins in. Works flawlessly since then.
Welding is as expected with a small mig. Not sure what I'd say the limit is on actual size material. I believe I could butt weld 1/2" plate with two passes, possibly with a single pass if I went slow. I re-built my snowplow push frame, which involved 2x2x1/4 square tube and 2x2x1/4 angle along with some lighter materials. I generally tack and mock up the whole unit then weld it all at once. The welder handled with no issue, never tripped up. My friend also built a front receiver while I was doing that, and some pics are of that.
After going through the first 2lb spool I switched to a 10lb spool of .035. One thing I noticed was the plastic spool carrier for the 10lb spool is a bit sloppy. I cut a slice of 3" tube that made a nice washer and fit nicely.
Here's some pics and a video:
Steel:
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-XfW6nQAtYE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Aluminum:
If you're considering, feel free to ask any questions you'd like.
Jetboy
I also didn't want to spend a lot of $ and was originally looking at a trying to find a nice used model of the big 3. Didn't find one that I thought was a good "deal" so I ended up ordering this one.
As a side note - if I planned to use it for a living I like Miller and Esab welders and would have bought one of the two. Of the 250 amp size welders I've used I think Esab is the most user friendly. (my dad has a metal fab shop and he's had a number of different small welders incl. Lincoln, Miller, Esab, and Panasonic).
So, the welder was dropped off by the shipper. Can't remember Fedex or UPS. It was well packed in a good quality box and had no shipping damage.
On first appearances, the unit is heavy. Much heavier than I had anticipated. Probably about 100lbs. It comes with both a mig gun and a spool mig gun. It also has a regulator and hose. It came with two small spools, a 2lb spool of .030 steel and a 1lb? spool of aluminum wire. Don't recall what alloy. Also had a couple tips. Plug is a 50amp 240v.
I bought a bottle of C25 shielding gas. The gas regulator is a cheapo unit. The first one functioned as a flow regulator, but the flow guage wasn't functioning. I emailed Eastwood and a new one was in the mail. No return necessary.
Setup of the mig gun was easy. The gun and hose seem to be good quality. The small 4 pin control plug on the front is super cheap. It's the one part that really is cheesy and should be improved. I had intermittent wire feed at first. I took apart the plug and soldered the contact pins in. Works flawlessly since then.
Welding is as expected with a small mig. Not sure what I'd say the limit is on actual size material. I believe I could butt weld 1/2" plate with two passes, possibly with a single pass if I went slow. I re-built my snowplow push frame, which involved 2x2x1/4 square tube and 2x2x1/4 angle along with some lighter materials. I generally tack and mock up the whole unit then weld it all at once. The welder handled with no issue, never tripped up. My friend also built a front receiver while I was doing that, and some pics are of that.
After going through the first 2lb spool I switched to a 10lb spool of .035. One thing I noticed was the plastic spool carrier for the 10lb spool is a bit sloppy. I cut a slice of 3" tube that made a nice washer and fit nicely.
Here's some pics and a video:
Steel:
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-XfW6nQAtYE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Aluminum:
If you're considering, feel free to ask any questions you'd like.
Jetboy
