OT: slightly -- any advice on automatic welding helmets?

don't buy it unless you are lazy.

If you have experience with welding, stick to your standard helmet...

problems I've had with a friends:

battery dies... geeze, this arc sure is bright... take helmet off... wow, I see white spots everywhere.

forget to turn on helmet. same as above

standard helmet:

difficult to see through before starting arc.

flip it down, strike an arc on something. You can see.

The standard's are foolproof. You don't wait for the lens to darken, you light up your work piece so you can see. You don't have to turn it on. You don't have to worry about it not turning on. You don't have to worry about battery going dead.

I know that the lens darkens in 1/20000 of a second, but that is only if you've turned the helmet on, battery is good, lens is operating correctly.

my opinion is stick with standard.

Harbor freight has the auto's on sale for $40

Thanks for the thoughts.

I am not really lazy, but find that sometimes it is hard to nod the helmet closed (like when laying on the floor or am in a more confined space). The helmet I tried seemed to work really well for that.

On power couldn't one just make it a habit to press the power button when you start?

My puddle does not start until I press the button on the gun, so a conventional helmet works ok but the extra movement created by my big giant head tends to move stuff around. :)

I was under the impression that the truly dangerous wavelenghts of light, IR and UV, are filtered even with the helmet turned off -- that's according to the standard the better helmets go by. (The $40 harbor freight helmet actually does not seem to comply to that standard).

......I've tried both kinds of helmets and like the self-darkening one best. Most of the guys who don't like them started out back when the standards were all that was available or maybe they were taught to weld by someone who had always used the standard type. I have to wear drugstore style reading glasses inside my helmet and its a big advantage for me to not have to move the helmet after it's flipped down. I was in a Honda dealer's body & paint shop about a month ago after my oldest kid hit a deer and I noticed that the guy who was getting ready to start working on wrecked Honda (not mine) was wearing a self-darkening helmet. Maybe he still flipped it up occasionally since he wasn't half blind like me and didn't need reading glasses under his helmet.......lol

Thanks, Tim -- That's an advantage I have not thought about. I am supposed to wear glasses, especially when my eyes get tired at the end of the day. While welding, I don't but probably should at some point..

What make/model do you have, if you don't mine me asking?

welding supply stores(IE not harbor freight/et al) carry magnafying lenses for you tim...they take place of the inside clear cover that you use in a "normal" welding lid...

..........Now that's something that I didn't know about and it sounds like the perfect solution for me.

...............I don't know except that I bought it from the HTP catalog about six years ago.

I have had my lower end Lincoln auto darkening helmet foe 4 or 5 years now and its been great. mine requiers no batteries. I have sat and welded for hours at a time and havent have any problems with vision. Mine was alittle over a hundred dollars norm $80 on sale and has been worth every penny.

Thanks, Mario -- that's a great recommendation, because you use this thing to make a living. I think I'll get a Lincoln too.

I bought one of the auto darkening helmets from Harbour Freight about 5-6 years ago. It was one of the more expensive helmets that went on sale for a hundred bucks just once in one sale catalog. It runs on a lithium battery and has a small set of solar cells to keep it charged. It has no on/off switch, just a "check" button. It's been great.

--

'64 sunroof Beetle '55 semaphore Beetle

years ago. It was one of the more expensive

It runs on a lithium battery and has a

"check" button. It's been great.

Thanks -- I was frankly a little apprehensive on buying the harbor freight model because I didn't see a reference to ANSI Z87.1 (spec for protection agains UV and IR). Yours may be different since that's the more expensive model. I ordered the Lincoln - figured you can't really go wrong with one of the major brands (Lincoln, Miller, etc). Having a good rep, they usually can't afford to sell you total crap. I'll be off the last week of December so can't wait to try it :)

I have an auto-darkening one from harbor freight. If it has batteries in it then I haven't found them yet. I don't use it a lot... have gone through almost 4 bottles of gas in the last 3 years, so you can figure out how frequently I use it (just got some oxy-acetylene equipment to try out, as a side note... almost blew myself up the day I got it playing with that stuff out in the garage and haven't gotten up the nerve... uh... I mean "time" to go back to messing with it some more yet...) but anyway... the harbor freight helmet... I have no complaints about it. It won't make your welds pretty, though. That much I can guarantee. :-D

I don't think that helmet will protect your eyebrows either :) Thanks!