Inexpensive Welding Solution?????

[Sully2]

I would love nothing more than to buy a really nice welder and get really good at welding. Unfortunately, with young kids and a fairly tight budget, I need to get what will do. $100 is about my budget. I don't see the need to do a lot of welding. I simply want something that will enable me to do the occassional project at home (99% of the time will be 1/4" stuff max).

I would love to meet my full potential someday, but that is sometime from now. For now, I want something that will do the job. I have a grinder, so cleaning up the ugly welds after the fact is noa problem.

Lets figure it this way then...
A FULL $300 on a VISA card..paid over a full 12 months...even with the extreme rate of 24%..( yearly) ...is going to cost you a whopping $25.03 A MONTH. If you "already have" $100 to put down on it..????..its going to set you back a whopping $16.69 a month..if you drag it out the full year!

The new Hobart is going to last you a LIFETIME!!

 

[river rat]

You're getting some good advice .... a welder is a tool that lasts and lasts - easy to find a good used one. If money is critical, look a little more and get a REALLY UGLY one ... it'll weld just as well as a pretty one, and a heckuva lot better than the cheapies, FOR THE SAME MONEY! Welding's fun (drilling's not), and you can turn a pile of scrap iron into some neat stuff; don't hamstring yourself by starting out with cheap junk. That's what I did, years ago, and I've never been sorry.

 

[montejw]

I would love nothing more than to buy a really nice welder and get really good at welding. Unfortunately, with young kids and a fairly tight budget, I need to get what will do. $100 is about my budget. I don't see the need to do a lot of welding. I simply want something that will enable me to do the occassional project at home (99% of the time will be 1/4" stuff max).

I would love to meet my full potential someday, but that is sometime from now. For now, I want something that will do the job. I have a grinder, so cleaning up the ugly welds after the fact is noa problem.

Can't say enough about Craigslist. Not sure where you're at, but here's a 230 amp AC buzzbox for $100 in Croydon, PA. I stopped looking after that, might be others.

Welder

I just noticed it's only 110v, you'd be better looking for a 220v unit.

Monte

 

[kwolfe]

How about this one. I was thinking about offering the guy $150 and see if he bites.
LINCOLN AC-225C 220V Like new ARC Welder

 

[patrick_g]

Not having extra money is a very good motivation for not WASTING any by buying something that everyone who knows anything about the topic tells you NOT TO BUY. How is buying something that will NEVER make you happy and will have to be replaced, a money saving idea?

Recall a comment about burning a $100 and then buying a welder to save wasting time and gas going to HF?

Surely if you shop around you can find a used AC buzz box for $100 or close to it. You will congratulate yourself on your WISE DECISION and your good money management.

If a welder just doesn't have the poop to weld 1/4 inch stuff then it doesn't and you can't make it OK with a lot of chipping and grinding. If what should be a welding bead looks like bird s--t laying on the surface of the workpiece then you aren't welding.

Pat

 

[wushaw]

Sounds good if he bites.

 

[patrick_g]

How about this one. I was thinking about offering the guy $150 and see if he bites.
LINCOLN AC-225C 220V Like new ARC Welder

Too much $ asked. Might be worth $150 B U T I'd be looking for a more capable if uglier machine for $150 or LESS.

The shiny new paint doesn't effect the welding performance but it effects the price, especially with newbies.

Pat

 

[Inspector507]

How about this one. I was thinking about offering the guy $150 and see if he bites.
LINCOLN AC-225C 220V Like new ARC Welder

I have the same welder, works great for me.

 

[kwolfe]

Inspector,
Is your rig capable of welding 1/4 to 3/8 stuff (more 1/4 than anyting)? Would it be OK for a beginner?

 

[gemini5362]

. If what should be a welding bead looks like bird s--t laying on the surface of the workpiece then you aren't welding.

Pat

I tried my hand for the first time last night at welding aluminum with a tig. This quote sounds like you saw the results.

 

[Berniep]

I tried my hand for the first time last night at welding aluminum with a tig. This quote sounds like you saw the results.

Hey, me too only it was last weekend.
Actually I don't think you could find a bird to claim it.

 

[patrick_g]

I tried my hand for the first time last night at welding aluminum with a tig. This quote sounds like you saw the results.

In my free lance consulting days I hooked up with an outfit trying to develop a battery operated stick welder that could do TIG also. I put a slide "volume control" on the TIG torch tungsten electrode holder under where your thumb position. You could turn it down to under 5 amps or way up over 100 with the help of an aux control knob on the welder enclosure. I got good enough to fuse some stuff together and to add fill rod in from the side on steel. A real TIG artist could repair a razor blade with it with it or a tin can.

Their sales potential would receive a great boost if they could weld aluminum. I worked with an actual TIG whiz (another consultant) but we could never make their machine do aluminum worth beans. Even with a REAL TIG I couldn't weld aluminum worth beans. About the time I think the piece is hot enough to add some filler a great chunk woiuld slough off and I'd be further away from the desired result than before I tried.

The only success I ever had with aluminum was a cast aluminum fancy scrolled outdoor table. A leg broke off (cast in Mexico out of beer cans and who knows what.) I welded it back on with flux coated aluminum electrodes. I also used some scraps left over from building some aluminum window screen frames as filler. Used the trusty Lincoln AC/DC tombstone.

For me the next step after leaving a trail of bird s--t looking filler rod melted on top of the aluminum substrate is to overheat the substrate and have big chunks fall off (it seems to me) with no warning or indication of the impending doom.

My little 120VAC Lincoln Weld Pak 100 MIG unit has only been used with flux cored wire (steel) but it has provisions for controlling a gas bottle so it can be used on steel with a shielding gas and solid wire or with aluminum or stainless wire with shielding gas. I keep thinking one day I will set it up for aluminum and give it a try. I'm hoping that the wire feed MIG with aluminum wire and argon gas will be easier to do than TIG. I find the MIG wire feed Lincoln way easier to weld with than stick welding. IF the MIG won't make aluminum easier then I either need some professional instruction or a resolution that I will not personally be welding aluminum. I fear that to do aluminum of much thickness that my little MIG is not powerful enough.

Once you have a weld that looks like no birds were involvedthen you need to stress it to see if it is a GOOD WELD. I used a large vise and a sledge hammer to get feedback on my first steel welding attempts with stick. I quickly learned what it took to make a weld that would hold and beauty isn't always an accurate point on which to judge a weld. There are ways to produce a good looking weld in aluminum that won't take abuse due to embrittlement at the margins of the weld area. If the actual center of the weld holds but the adjacent metal is peeled away from the weld by stress on the finished product then it is still useless.

Good luck to you with aluminum, it is more of a challenge than steel, for sure.

Pat

 

[AlanB]

Random, Haphazard and dangerous thoughts.

Thingy, as far as multiple beads, at some point I agree with you, but in these forums we are normally speaking of basic home welding equipment, things are done with very minimal prep time. Most folks will not go through the steps to make it work. Another example that came to my mind is that I could paint my house with a 1" paint brush, but I would'nt

Patrick, what I tell folks trying to weld alu with the baby migs is that yes, it works, but if you have never experienced a bird's nest in a mig, you are about too...
The example I use is that when welding steel, you are pushing a 6' spaghetii noodle through a straw, now when you are doing aluminum, you have cooked that noodle, and are tapping the end of the straw on the ground while pushing the cooked noodle through. Yes, it works, but again, another of those things I just would not want too do.

Did the battery powered TIG you worked on have AC and HF capabilities? Without that, Alu TIG is extremely tough at best. Get on a decent TIG with HF and AC (wave balance is even nicer) and you will probably do fine on Alu.

Gem, take a weekend and come up sometime. We can sit down and TIG away, There are plenty of projects at my place to practice on.

To the original poster.

Put your $100 in your pocket and keep looking for that used tombstone that everyone is telling you about. They really are out there. Put up a sign and tell the welding shop guys, ask your freinds etc.

That $100 welder will get you started in the right direction and they have done a tremendous amount of work. The little torch kit you are looking at will frustrate you to know end, and I bet the welding shop will give you one if you agree to buy all the overpriced gas from them

 

[thingy]

Alan,boy I'm glad you straightened me out there,,got any more advice for me ? thingy

 

[mschech]

From my limited experience (done it once), to weld aluminum with a TIG, I'd think it would be a great help to be experienced in torch welding to get the hang of it.

I had no problem doing aluminum with TIG after 2-3 min instruction - this was butt joining 1/4" thick curved sculpture sub-pieces I had cast - it had to both be strong and look good. (and luckily could be rotated so the weld area was always horizontal)

Then again, it was a "real" TIG and I had plenty of torch experience, and back then, no stick or wirefeed experience at all.

If i had only done stick at that point, I'm can see how a TIG would have been something weird.

 

[AlanB]

Alan,boy I'm glad you straightened me out there,,got any more advice for me ? thingy

Nahhhh,,,, well, maybe one thing, but they say it here better then I.



Paragraph - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[thingy]

Alan,,we can all learn thats for sure,,,course didn't click on that link,,,got a pad and pen ready here,,thingy

 

[Inspector507]

Inspector,
Is your rig capable of welding 1/4 to 3/8 stuff (more 1/4 than anyting)? Would it be OK for a beginner?

It has tackled 1/4" and 3/8" no problem. 3/8" could need two passes. I loaned it to a buddy who shortened a driveshaft and welded the rear end gears solid in several demolition derby cars. He's never reported any broken welds, just busted radiators.....

 

[patrick_g]

Did the battery powered TIG you worked on have AC and HF capabilities? Without that, Alu TIG is extremely tough at best. Get on a decent TIG with HF and AC (wave balance is even nicer) and you will probably do fine on Alu.

Alan, the battery operated welder output was full wave rectified, i.e. DC pulses. The pulses were fast rise time nearly square wave with lots of higher order harmonics not like rectified sine wave AC. The open circuit voltage was relatively constant. The duty cycle of the pulses was varied to change the heat (amps.) Full OCV let you start the arc very easily. It had properties of high freq, sort of. You could start the arc and back off a rod so far it wouldn't melt the rod but would keep the arc going, resuming welding when you moved in closer. The pulses were output at a rate of a few thousand pulses per second so the arc had an audio whine to it.

I'm not a welding engineer and didn't have the background to understand what was needed or the time and budget to determine it as regards why the thing didn't like to weld aluminum. It did steel very well indeed with good control (in the hands of a honest to goodness welder, not me.)

About your baby MIG comment... I had thought that if I were serious about aluminum welding I'd need a more powerful MIG, probably a 240 VAC unit with considerable more power than the little 120VAC hobby type Lincoln lunch box.

Pat

 

[gemini5362]

Alan thank you for that vote of confidence if I get a real tig I should have not problem I almost hate to admit this but it was a real mig I was working with. A Miller 250 whachamacallit rig. maybe that is a miller 250 synchrowave tig welder. I have seen one of the guys at work that can weld but weld a couple of pieces of aluminum together and I could not draw a bead that good on a piece of aluminum with a magic marker. The welder can do it just fine it is the weldee that is the problem. Although it looks pretty bad and I melted a chunk of the plate I was trying to weld onto the cast aluminum I was welding to ( i think i forgot to mention that part of it was cast) The weld is holding fine and I am sure that a lot of things will break before that weld does. It just does not look very pretty. I sure dont want thingy to see it if he does welding inspections he would probably have a stroke if he saw it. But it is a good learning experience. It is not a big deal if it does not work. We are trying to take a starter and make a dc motor for a hydraulic pump out of it. We cut off the nose and welded a piece of plate with a bushing in it to the top of the starter to hold the armature in place. My friend did point out to me after I got done that maybe I should have tacked the plate in place then disasembled the starter to finish welding but after we got done it still works so the smoke that was coming out of the starter was probably just old grease. When I get home from houston I am going to make a mount and then hook it up to the pump and see if the pump works.