OT: Welder?

Look at a Miller ( or Hobart which are Millers IIRC) MIG. My bro just bought one and it is the Cats Ass and makes my cheapy unit look...well...cheapy! I'll get the model number off it. I gave him my CO2 to use but it came with Flux core wire and he said it worked sweet without the gas. The unit has a lot of charts for Amps to metal size on it which takes a myriad of guess work out of it also. He's a good welder but he says the good tool makes it much easier. StuK

MIG is decent but extremely hard to get a nice weld when doing 'overhead'..... the real meal deal is TIG..... nice finish.... a touch harder than MIG to get good at but easier than stick (IMHO) - especially if you're trying stick with a buzz-box.... additionally, stick is no good for thin materials such as body panels.

Look for a MIG welder with high duty cycle numbers.... a 40% duty cycle will have you waiting a long time between passes. BTW, every elecctric welder needs a ground clamp. Choose your shielding gas carefully...... straight argon works different from 'MIGmix' (IIRC 75% argon 25% CO2)... there is a third choice but, since I have never used it, memory eludes me.... much depends on the material you are welding.

tool makes it

I've got the smallest lincoln with the flux core wire. But I can't weld all that well yet. I really should practice more. It's pretty good for $300 welder. The bad welds are more my skill level than anything else. When I go slow and have good access to what I am working on, I get good welds. But I think this one is too small for what the op is looking for.

Additionally I would throw Lincoln into the ring as well.I use a Lincoln here at home as well as one at work. The work unit gets ALOT of abuse and it still works well. Both machines run on the flux cored wire 95% of the time.

Wire feed welders make most novice welders welds look pretty decent with alittle bit of practice and are perfect for doing roll bars and general welding.

TIM -aka- MUSTTANGUY "at" AOL "dot" COM

Carl Saiyed wrote:

If you want the real skinny on good welder choices, cruise over to the sci.engr.joining.welding newsgroup and ask a few questions. Good folks over there, and they're generally quite happy to help. I'll lend what I know to the discussion at hand, though.

It was most likely a MIG then. From that description it could also be TIG, but chances are you'd remember if it had been TIG. TIG welding usually requires a lot more practice, and as such if you were having much luck with it you likely would have spent enough time with it to have the notion burned into your brain. TIG welding seems more like meditation to me.

The general rule is to buy as large a machine as you can afford. Go for

220 volt machines if you can, it's well worth it for the increase in capacity and duty cycle that generally follows those machines. At that price range you're pretty much locked into a MIG setup. TIG way exceeds that in price, plus they're far more unweildy machines. Unless of course you purchase an inverter TIG unit, but then you're looking at starting in the $2500 range or so.

Again, it sounds like MIG is what you want. Flame isn't a good option for automotive work on later model cars due to the type of steel used in their production. The flame affects too large an area and weakens the entire area around the weld to the point of it being dangerous. Also, it's tougher to control warpage with a flame setup. TIG will exceed your price range rapidly, and stick welding has no place in automotive modification. I'd suggest MIG (also called GMAW these days), which implies the usage of shielding gas. Steel generally uses the argon/CO2 mix (a 75/25 blend, seems like most folks just call it "MIG gas"). With MIG you would use straight argon for welding aluminum, but with the smaller machines welding aluminum isn't as pleasant a task and you probably won't end up doing it. Gasless wirefeed (i.e. flux core) is known as FCAW, and while some people like it, I hate it with a passion. Unless you have some compelling reason to use it, I'd avoid it. I find that MIG makes cleaner welds and requires less brushing afterwards to make the weld clean enough for finishing. Also, as I recall, the polarity is different for FCAW than it is with MIG, putting more heat into the work than into the wire. It makes it harder to not blow holes in the workpiece. I don't think I've ever seen any serious fabricators suggest FCAW over plain old MIG for automotive work in 99% of the applications.

MIG uses a wire spool to feed metal into the weld puddle. Basically, you point the weld gun at the work and squeeze a trigger to start welding. Move the gun around and the weld puddle moves with you. It's fast, works well, and is considered to be among the easier techniques to learn. TIG is similar to flame welding in that you have a torch which puts heat into the work to create a molten pool. You then manually feed filler metal into the puddle and create the weldment. TIG uses electricity, flame uses heat from combustion of a fuel that is generally enriched with oxygen. TIG is probably the most versatile welding process and can be used to weld just about anything. Steel, stainless, aluminum, titanium, copper, magnesium, whatever. It's also slow and costly. Flame can be used to weld steel and other forms of iron, but that's mostly it. It can do aluminum, but not really in any practical manner. Stick (arc, SMAW) welding is generally reserved for larger structures, like bridges and farm implements. It literally uses a stick of metal covered in a shielding flux that you touch against the work to start an arc. It's really not intended for building cars or anything like that.

This was my same logic, and now I have a garage full of equipment. MIG, TIG, flame (oxyacetylene), and recently I added a plasma cutter to the arsenal. The MIG gets the most use. I have a Miller 175, and do lots of auto work with it. It'd be sufficient for doing the type of work you describe. I'd consider it to be the bare minimum for doing roll cages.

While on the subject of roll cages, considering how new you are to this I would STRONGLY suggest against doing your own roll cage at this point. Roll cages are the kinds of things that, when done wrong, help contribute to a very painful and messy death in the event of an accident. It requires you to know both correct welding techniques as well as proper cage design. I've got quite a few years of welding experience, some formal but mostly informal, and I still hired someone else to do the cage for me. At the very most, if you're dead set on doing it yourself, build the cage (which incidentally requires a rather expensive tube bender, those ones sold at Harbor Freight and the like WILL NOT work correctly as they are pipe benders, and pipe is not the same as tube) and only tack weld the bars in place. Have a professional welder finish the job. It won't cost too terribly much, and the price is worth it if it means having correct welds versus anything else.

Then don't buy from Harbor Freight. Go to an actual welding supply store and pick up a unit there. I like Miller, others like Lincoln. There are other good brands as well, the people on sci.engr.joining.welding could likely fill you in on whether or not someone like Thermal Dynamics makes a better option. Miller and Lincoln are two big names, and you'd be fine with either one, but there are some better deals to be had if you talk to the professionals about it. Don't be swayed by the guy at the sales counter.

Get an auto-darkening hood if you can. It makes life a whole lot easier. And get a good book on welding as well... it'll cover all the safety concerns, plus give you pictures to help determine what your welds should be looking like. If you have the time, take a class on it as well. The lab time is the most valuable part. After one semester of a MIG welding class, you'll be quite far along in the process. It's a good investment to make if the classes are available in your area (usually through a community college).

Most everything you'd need to weld for the dune buggy project could be done with MIG, a standard 75/25 mix gas, and .030 ER70-S6 filler wire. Consider switching to .024 for doing body panel work, though.

I've been wanting to learn how to weld for a couple years now... and all of what you just said truly fascinates me. I think I might end up tossin in a welding class or 2 this summer.. even though I'm an IT major.

-Mike

On Fri, 14 May 2004 07:40:27 GMT, wrote something wonderfully witty:

From a guy who has never ever done anything else other then IT for the past 30 years, it is a good idea to have a manual work related hobby. I have been told I am not allowed to use a broadsword to disprove ?The Pen is Mightier than the sword?.

Mike,

There are tons or books on welding in your local library. I found some "Farm Welding" books that are in the self improvement areas. Very detailed with lots of pictures:) Stick welding is not as bad as most people are telling you, but it's no good for sheet metal. I have a small MIG welder and it's handy as sliced bread. And it runs on 120 volts so I can weld anywhere. I just used it to weld some gates at a friends house on a 100 foot extension cord. Not the best idea but it worked.

Al

Cool.. I'll see if I can find some.

-Mike

Thanks to all for the help. I'll be heading down to a welding shop when I am all set to "get my weld on" I don't even have the Celica yet, I was just trying to get as much info as possible.

Looks like ill be going with the biggest MIG set-up I can get.

Thanks again,

Carl

modification.

"investment",

This is not an answer to Carls original question but something that may interest some of you. This gentleman made a home made tig welder from a 130 amp alternator, pretty clever guy.

I too would stick with a MIG welder for your project and for general use for pretty much everything. Miller Electric and Lincoln Electric both have pretty good web sites to research your equipment and to learn a little about MIG welding and welding in general. Here is a link to the Miller web site. Also if you consider buying from home depot or other retail stores that do not sell only welding equipment make sure you carefully compare apples to apples. Some of the equipment they sell looks similar to the models that you would get in a welding supply store but may be stripped down versions with a slightly different model number.

Dennis

I've been working in IT since 1998, and before that was an art major... welding has always been a nice diversion from both, although I did end up doing some small amount of welding here and there in art. As a field, IT tends to be full of people who do some interesting "other things." Like at my current job, everyone in the department has a lot more to them. One guy's a fairly serious motorhead who wants to build a turbo Mustang, and we sit around discussing cars and fabrication throughout the day. Plus it seems like everyone there is in a band. That guy plus one other IT guy are in this band:

And one of the other guys in the department is in this band (which is rapidly gaining notariety since a former player on the TV show "Survivor" just joined):

They all make me and my welding habit seem downright mundane and boring! IT is a good field to be in if you like to do other things on the side. It usually pays pretty well, and just so long as you don't have a really long commute or a position that requires tons of after hours/weekend work it'll make working on your vehicles that much more appealing since it's something entirely different.

Thanks. I'll be sure to buy from a welding store.

Carl

I agree with that statement 100%

It may look like the model that's rated at a higher duty cycle and amperage, but made lower for the mass merchandisers.

If you can afford a big enough MIG, see if you can afford a combination MIG/TIG unit. They are nice and use two separate bottles. As an added plus, when you learn to weld well enough, you can make income on the side rather than just let it sit for projects.

Refinish King