Mig welding.....

no, the wire is much thicker, so the machine feed rolls and liner and tip are different

The message from "Shengis" contains these words:

It's thicker so nozzles for it may not be available for that particular welder.

Cheers guys. Next question is, any idea on the price of gas bottles, and where to look for them. Searched the net and drawn a blank. The welder in question is a sip ideal 160 thats a bit old and a bit of a beast. Judging by the size of the welding torch/gun I would imagine the disposable bottles lasting all of 30 seconds lol. Is it even possible to fit a disposable bottle to a welder that size? Forgetting the practical angle for a moment as I just want to test the thing and see if I can get any sort of result out of it.

The volume of gas used is not relevant to the size of the machine, so a disposable will last as long on a big machine as on a little one. Get a disposable bottle and a flow regulator and work out a leak free way to connect to the hose on the machine, then try it out.

Your cheapest way to get a real bottle is to get a co2 bottle from a pub. The other way is to go to a larger car shop and buy a bottle outright, my local car shop has a dumpy cylinder at about 60 quid and a refill is 12 (approx off the top of head) The only downside to these approaches is that you will only have co2, this is not nearly as good for producing nice welds as something like argoshield, however if you need to, there is nothing to stop you getting a BOC account and a real bottle if you feel the need, but you are then involved in yearly rental.

HTH mrcheerful

Looks like a trip to halfords then for a bottle and regulator. At the moment I just want to have a bit of a play around and see what I can actually do with the thing. All I know for sure is that if I try to use it with no gas it just produces blobs, oh well its a start and i'm quite a patient person :-). Only problem I can see is actually connecting a small regulator to the gas pipe. At the moment its got what looks like a small dumpy PCL connector on the end. From looking at pictures of the small bottle regulators it looks like the pipe will be way too big. All this trouble just because I fancied learning how to use a mig welder lol.

I can't see why not. Should be simple enough using appropriate adaptors to connect a disposable bottle to the existing gas line. Either use the existing gas regulator, if it has one, or fit a regulator designed to fit disposable bottles. 'Sealey' do small refillable bottles, about the same size as diposables, but containing more gas, that have the same bottle connection as disposable ones. Around £25-30 to buy initially, but with refills being much cheaper than disposables, and no rental. The initial outlay on a couple of refillable bottles soon make it a cheaper alternative than diposables. Mike.

The polarity is normally reversed on gasless (for flux cored wire) too, so that the tip is -ve and the clamp +ve. Someone did explain the reason for this - but I've forgotten ;)

Lee

If you buy the right ones the pipe from the reg has a tiny pcl coupling in the end .

And I bet those regs cost 70% more LOL. I'll have a look in the thompson and see if theres any welding suppliers locally and see what they've got. Just looked like it was going to be difficult to get one as I dont think its an actual PCL connector, it's more like a mini euro connector one if you know what I mean? When I bought a compressor for some spray work it came with the euro style connectors, could I buy them? Yeah right, ended up fitting standard PCL connectors to everything.

And I bet those regs cost 70% more LOL. I'll have a look in the thompson and see if theres any welding suppliers locally and see what they've got. Just looked like it was going to be difficult to get one as I dont think its an actual PCL connector, it's more like a mini euro connector one if you know what I mean? When I bought a compressor for some spray work it came with the euro style connectors, could I buy them? Yeah right, ended up fitting standard PCL connectors to everything.

So with all your help we're getting somewhere, in theory LOL. Still looking for websites or failing that a good book on mig welding. Was going to get the haynes welding manual but i've heard its a bit useless as its more oriented to industrial welding etc?

I don't know about all welders, but I recently started to use gassless flux wire in my Clarke 150TE after struggling with getting good welds outside on my old Camper Van. I found that Halfords were selling reels of Sip 0.8mm flux wire, so I could use it with the standard set up. I am very pleased with the results. I was using Clarke 110l Co2/Argon disposable bottles, but had trouble getting an adequate flow of gas from the regulator even with it turned up to max. All my welds are on 0.8mm steel, patching rust holes underneath the van & one of the major benefits I found was that I didn't have to use the shroud which makes it much easier to see what I doing. My advice is to buy a reel & see how you get on.

As for learning the basics, try your local Library, I found some very good books. Also Try this website:

For Videos: You may (if you're lucky) find courses at your local college, tho' most of these seemed a bit overkill to me as they are aimed mainly at professionals.

Bit of pipe with the right adapter & a jubilee clip works lovely :-) Most SIP small welders just came with a 1/4" push fit adapter so if you've got a PCL on the end someones retrofitted it.