which mig welder would you buy?

[zebrabeefj40]

If I had to guess you're looking at the base of a forging hammer or very large stamping press. The crack would have been where the material has already been gouged out with a thermite lance or really big cutting torch. The crack was blown out and then rewelded to repair. Nice piece of work...would love to see a few other pics of the process myself.

Nick

 

[Pin_Head]

Looks suspiciously similar to this job.

http://www.hobartwelders.com/weldtalk/showthread.php?t=17241

Weld Talk Message Board and Online Forum - Hobart Welders


Check out the size of those "sticks".

 

[serenity]

Ha! I'll go get the old 150 amp stick caddy from work. Get that hole filled up in no time!

 

[zebrabeefj40]

Thanks Pin_Head...



Nick

 

[bullbars45]

Hey Serenity how is ya Mig going have ya made ya folder yet ? If it was me i would of picked lincoln too im sure ya would be happy with it

 

[serenity]

Hey Serenity how is ya Mig going have ya made ya folder yet ? If it was me i would of picked lincoln too im sure ya would be happy with it

I'll get back to on that one after Wednesday, I haven't even had a chance to get some argon yet. Between work and fixing mine and other people's junk I have been flat out. My weekend starts Wednesday so I Plan on hiring a bottle of argon and spending the day learning all the settings, and starting on a few little projects.

 

[serenity]

so can anyone confirm what these controls are? they aren't in the manual which is rather silly.

is the top one for swapping to a spool gun?

second one down i have no clue about. gas purge maybe?

third is back-burn im guessing.

and forth is spot timer?

anyone with a similar setup know roughly where to set the back-burn at?

 

[serenity]

ok so spent a bit of time today running practice welds. worked out all the dials by trial and error. i was correct about all of the ones i knew, but the second one is the spot weld/ auto weld switch.

set the back burn at around 3 and it seems fine. i did buy the wrong gas though, i bought straight argon when i should have gotten a mix of 77% argon and 23% co2 aka argo-shield.
this meant it wouldn't give a clean weld at the lower volt, feed and amp settings.
you live and learn though, i will be heading back to the gas supply store to swap it over tomorrow.

for australian readers argon is around $160 to fill an E size bottle at BOC plus 39c a day for hire of the bottle.

oh and the price tag for the welder, again in australia for me was $1540 with a roll of wire included. not cheap, but i wanted a quality welder i would never have to replace.

 

[crushers]

i have had the 255 for a while now and i can't see myself with anything else. beautiful unit.
<but it sucks that the spool gun attachment is so bloody expensive.>

finally bought my welder after much procrastination. i ended up buying a lincoln 255c for what i was expecting to pay for the 215c which is great, it has 100% duty cycle at 120A so its certainly got enough juice for my purposes.

i'll try it out next week after i've hired a gas bottle and see how it goes. the first weld job planned is building a sheet metal bender to help out with my 40+60 series project, if that turns out well i'll throw some photos of it up in here.