In Reply to: For you welders out there... posted by Jason (OR) on December 07, 2013 at 09:45:03:
I was a production welder for about 12 years, with that said....
YOu have to consider a couple of thing to start with.
What do you have for a power source? Will you have to run another circuit for it?
Do you have a clean space to weld in? You certainly don't want to weld where straw/dust etc is present and also not near a wooden wall or posts or???
You can buy relatively inexpensive wire feed welder but even then you don't want to go too cheap. The big issue is the quality of the wire feed unit you end up with and the wire speed vs the current you have available. I would also reccommend getting a gas tank with 75%argon-25% co2 and of course the welder must be able to use the shielding gas. The gas shielding will also be useful if you use flux cored wire. That would be dual shielding.
I bought an inexpensive welder to avoid expensive wiring to hook op a 220/240v welder.
With my welder I found that using the gas I had to drop to .023 dia hard wire with the gas. I was not able to deliver enough amps to the contact tip to get a smooth running weld. But with the .023 I was able to approach what is called spray arch (need 100% argon to reach true spray arch). With this setup I can easily weld 1/4 steel with confidence. JUST DON'T TAKE MY words here as scientific as I have no testing equipment and wouldn't want you to do any welding based on my words on a safety related item.
While I have 12 years of welding experience there are certainly others that can offer a greater wealth of knowledge. Just wanted to throw in my .02
Regards,
Mickey
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