Well another years passes and our Vicky has come up trumps (again) I was having a winge that my little Mig was a bit under powered for chassis work she comes up trumps with a turbo cooled 160 watt arc set hands up who got socks for a prezzy Derek (making a list of fabrication work to do)
Ha! It just so happens that I have been looking at welders today as well. Haven't bought one yet but am looking at the SIP catalogue in front of me now. Unfortunately the 'summer sizzler' catalogue appears not to have all the models, just ones on promotion, but I am drawn to the 'inverter 150' 130 amp at £334.99+VAT, down from a list of £502, or a Merlin 210 turbo at £115+VAT. It must be nice to have a lady choose for you.
Huw
Inverter stick welders are very easy to use, no faffing about with bottles or wire feeds, and light. Having said that I'd go for the biggest I could stick on a 240V 1ph supply (16 amps with a yellow plug?) otherwise they don't do much that a mig won't.
I'm pretty fed up with cheap mig wire feeds but the decent ones are all on machines I cannot lift, why not a mig+inverter-stickwelder in one machine. I guess its because you need the coils and iron to give the right droop characteristic. BTW the cheap CO2 bottles from the civic amenities site seem to work fine.
AJH
Just noticed in the small print that the promotion ended 1/9/05. Oh well, you never know, perhaps the new promo is better than the last.
Huw
Huw
Simply the best thx Huw we are having a few beers and chillin online she's got a downhome US rock web- radio station on. Have you looked at
Go for the inverter - DC is much nicer to weld with. I can recommend the WECO 150 inverter - I've had one for a couple of years and it's been faultless (and they're an industrial rated machine so should last well).
My WECO 150 will happily burn 4.0mm low hydrogen rods with decent penetration and is fine on a 16A supply.
If you've got a spare 1000 pounds or so you can get a WECO to do exactly what you want. Buy the 150A torch - the 250A one's are too big for panel work.
Looks interesting and only 12kg, still a bit low current for heavy stuff but the 200amp welding genset will do that with ornery rods.
If it all works well it does look decent value for money.
Oh and I think I meant blue plugs for 16amp. the yellow ones are
55-0-55 for site work.AJH
Am I missing something? but at close to a grand it looks pretty expensive to me?
More than a thousand when you add in two euro torches (mig and tig). You get a MIG able to weld continuously at 110 Amps and in bursts up to 160A. A stick welder with the smoothness of an inverter supply and rated at 140A peak 100A continuous and a TIG (for aluminium or ss)
140A peak 100A continuous. All in a package that weighs only 12kg.With conventional copper coil and iron core machines each would weigh more than this and each would be designed for only the electrical characteristic for the type of welding (MIG has very low open circuit Volts stick has a higher open circuit Volts but then drops as the arc is struck IIRC). This device looks like it handles the characteristic electronically with semiconductors and little or small hf transformers.
So for someone that has to travel to fabricate things on site it would pay quite quickly.
I was on a site a couple of weeks ago where a 16 gauge pneumatic duct had to be shortened (mig), a channel section had to be welded in to an auger (stick inverter) and a ss pipe leaked water at a bend (could be done wit tig but we cut the section out and replaced with copper and compression joints).
I couldn't justify the expense as I have stick, mig and Oxy Acetylene which covers most things but the wire feed on the mig, which I rescued from a skip and grafted a new euro torch onto, drives me to distraction. I'd love to try a "professional" model just to see how good the wire feed may be.
AJH
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