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I am looking for a arc welder.


kyotie11

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I have 2 machines that I have been eyeballing 

Pro-Grade Ultra-Portable 100-Amp Electric Arc Welder - 110V , from amazon

270-amp-arc-welder Chicago Electric, from Harbor Freight

 

Are these welders reasonable for my price range (200$ max)  What is the difference between ac dc and dc+

 

Anyone know a good helmet?

 

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Always think long term when buying power tools. upgrade/buy better than you need today. It pays long term or you will soon replace with what you should have bought. Fall classes are now starting in jr collage and most area have night classes in welding. This was the cheapest welding course I could find (tax funded) Your questions will be answered there by teachers that can guide your learning curve and help you with your projects. The night welding courses I took were fun,cheap, and educational plus I met a lot of nice people.

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I would shy away from the 110-115V class of arc welders if you plan on doing much welding in the future or will be doing heavy welding now.  They have limited capabilities compared to the 220V types.  You will save $ initially on the 110V types, but the majority of folks find that they eventually have to move up to a more powerful welder, i.e. 220V, and then have to spend more $ for another welder.  Search craigslist where you can usually pick up a used welder in good shape in your price range or a bit more.

 

AC/DC welders will weld in AC or DC mode.  In DC mode most will do DC- or DC+.  DC+ is electrode positive, ground (work clamp) negative.  DC- is opposite.  DC+ usually gives you better penetration with most rods than DC-.  For more detailed info, I suggest you cruise over to a welding forum,  sign up and ask questions.

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Homedepot and Lowes both have a Lincoln Electric AC225S Arc Welder for $299 BRAND NEW and in the box. 3 year warranty.

 

Full range 40-225 amp selector switch quickly sets the welding current
225 amp AC output - Is enough for 3/16” (4.8 mm) diameter general purpose mild steel electrodes

 

You will need welding hood, welding cables, welding gloves, chipping hammer, wire brush, electrodes, etc. No matter what you purchase, get the FULL PRICE so you can compare.  

 

If you are tight on money, go to the welding supply place and ask about a used machine. You may be surprised what is available and at a reasonable price.

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I bought an old lincoln tombstone welder that's probably older than I am; still welds great. Cost me US$40

I'd strongly suggest a used NAME BRAND (Miller, lincoln, etc) over a new ??? brand.

X2 on the name brand!!



Homedepot and Lowes both have a Lincoln Electric AC225S Arc Welder for $299 BRAND NEW and in the box. 3 year warranty.

Full range 40-225 amp selector switch quickly sets the welding current
225 amp AC output - Is enough for 3/16” (4.8 mm) diameter general purpose mild steel electrodes

You will need welding hood, welding cables, welding gloves, chipping hammer, wire brush, electrodes, etc. No matter what you purchase, get the FULL PRICE so you can compare.

If you are tight on money, go to the welding supply place and ask about a used machine. You may be surprised what is available and at a reasonable price.

Those welders are AC only, no DC. For AC/DC on the Lincoln 225's, they will set you back close to $500 depending on where you buy them.
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Greetings Kyotie,

 

Do yourself a favor and go with Glen and the boys say...  Here in Michigan on any day you can buy a good tombstone Lincoln for 150.00 and an AC-DC for 200.00 .   110 welders offer very little unless you buy a quality  one.     Take some classes and learn to stick weld..

 

Forge on and make beautiful things

Jim

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Take some classes, and play w their equipment, see what you like. Love my Lincoln tombstone which I got off Craigslist $30, it's paid for itself countless times and will likely outlast me. I really would like to learn how to use oxyacetylene when I get the time, see lots of those for sale on CL as well.

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I am in a metals class at the local high school and out of all the machines they have arc is my favorite and what is a tombstone someone post a pic also do you use different rods with different currents? And the one at harbor freight comes with a chipping hammer a helmet and a brush

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The least expensive welder will double the cost of a welder. The least expensive (cheap) welder will either fail or not do the job required, which will cause you to purchase another welder that will do the job.

 

The least expensive (cost) welder is the one you won't have to replace within 20 years, maybe more $$ up-front, but amortized over 20 years it will be the most cost effective tool.

 

Neil

 

 

 

edited see ( ) 

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The questions you are asking is the very reason I recommended Jr college night school. All of those questions will be resolved there. Your parents and neighbors are paying taxes to support these schools. And soon hopefully you will also with your property taxes. Jr college is cheap.

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I was looking up the specs on 6013 for a project and got the following. Your search for the term 6013 returned 76 results. Took a bit of reading but I found the information.  Another search found the exact post, dated 2003. The information is on the site if you look for it. 

 

Kyotie, have you done a search of IForgeIron in order to answer some of your questions?

 

Did you find

>

>

>

 

Did you find the rest of the discussions on the site, There are several as in a lot. This is why we suggest you pack a lunch and a cold drink when you go looking for things on IForgeIron.

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As a welder, I can't more highly suggest to look for a good used before getting a cheap new one.

 

When I wanted to get a welder for my shop, I shopped around or a couple months, and found a Lincoln 250 AC/DC stick welder (when looking at stick welders, go for DC capable if you can, then you can easily add scratch start tig) for $200.  Found a used tig rig to go with it, and now I can do nearly any welding I want in my home shop, except tig aluminum.

 

 

 

Also, for general "rough" welding, where I'm not worried about looking very nice, I just use 6010 or 6011. Both are good for basic welding, and offer good penetration and strength. What current I use depends on what I'm doing, thought typically I use DCEP. It offers less splatter, and the best penetration. If I'm doing something thinner, where I want low penetration, I'll use DCEN or AC (Ac will generally splatter more).

 

When I'm doing nice welds (with stick, not tig) I use a 7018 rod, and once again the current depends.

 

 

If you have a smart phone or something, look up the Miller weld calculator app, it's a handy reference.

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If my Lincoln 225 AC hadn't been so dirt cheap off of craig's list I would say I regret not picking up a Lincoln AC/DC instead, still it's a great box.  If you have the choice between the two get the one that does DC. 

 

Glenn posted some great links there.  You'll read lots of opinions on which rods are better.  The class you're taking should give you a good background on them.  Don't shy away from 6013's just because they're called bambi rods sometimes, still very useful on clean, thinner metal.  If I'm welding something critical and thicker metal I'm going to use either a 6011 or 7018.  These are the main rods I use, read up on them and then practice with each to learn how to apply them.

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If the welder weight very little...there is generally a reason. It take a big iron core  transformer with multi-staging to give you all those different power settings. Cheap most likely does not weigh much...which convers to NOT GGOD QUALITY...which also means something you cannot get rid of economically!

 

Buy a reputation ..like the ones stated above...or you will have pure junk.

 

What do I have? Lincoln...MIller...and an old Hobart.  Several multi-tasking units ...even aluminum gun...mig..tig..stick. Been working for years and I have seen enough young guys purchase junk to be capable of warning others.

 

Good used big name should be your beginning...after some proper schooling.

 

Carry on

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I am in a metals class at the local high school and out of all the machines they have arc is my favorite and what is a tombstone someone post a pic also do you use different rods with different currents? And the one at harbor freight comes with a chipping hammer a helmet and a brush

 

 

 

 

"tombstone" has become sort of a generic term for a transformer based stick welder Most use it to refer to a Lincoln machine, but I've seen that term applied to Millers, Craftsmans, Monkey Wards and many others. The original Lincoln Idealarcs were in fact shaped very much like a round topped tombstone, hence the nickname. Lincolns cheaper stick machines also have the clipped corner tombstone look.

 

 

As several have mentioned you can locate a nice used on on CL fairly cheap. Transformer based stick machines are very simple and almost bullet proof. The Ac only ones have almost nothing electronic to go wrong on them usually beyond the switch, and the AC/DC units usually only have simple diodes that on rare occasions fail. All these things are simple and easy to fix. You might also try Searchtempest.com to expand your CL search area if you are having issues locating something used. I use "welder" as my generic search term and then sort the list manually.

 

As far as HF welders, I'd avoid them if at all possible. A suggested go with a decent name brand, Miller, Lincoln and Hobart are usually the big three, but you occasionally see other quality name brands like Essab, Ltec, Airco, Thermal Arc, and HTTP. Many companies like Sears and Montgomery Wards  had one of the "name brand" companies build their units and simply stuck their sticker on them.

 

Besides the links listed above, you might try looking at a welding site like Weldingweb. Your questions on AC vs AC/DC and rod selection usually gets asked almost weekly, if not more frequently. Again searching and reading will provide you with a lot of reading material to go thru.

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My .02 cents.    Avoid anything from harbor freight.  I've seen old AC/DC arc welders around me at swap meets for less than $100.     I'm using an old Forney AC only arc welder.   Got it for free,  or at least the boss let me have it after a long day of hard work.   Solid welder.  And has done all that I've asked it too so far.  It sticks metal together.  Limited to using 6011, 6013 and 7018 for the most part, but that's all I really need anyway for my home projects.  Got the welder for free, but then I spent $40 on a cheap welding helmet, $80 on leads and connectors,  $200+ wiring my garage for 220v just cause I wanted power on both sides of the garage, $40 for the initial rods, and I'm sure a few other things like gloves, etc.    So I say take whatever you can get. Them older machines are rock solid and don't consist of much more than a large chunk of copper wiring.  I've seen pro machines for $3000+ and Mig setups for around $400.   All depends on what you are doing.   My view is that if you can arc weld well, then anything else should be easy to pick up.  Sure some machines are nicer than others, but if you just need to stick metal together, can't go wrong with an old AC/DC machine.  Will probably outlast you.  Check out swap meets if there are any in your area.   A good welding course is also advisable.  The safety information you would gain is worth whatever price you paid for the course and might save you a hospital stay.    I have a Praxair Supplier near me.  They have everything I can ever want and much of what I can't afford.   If you have the cash and lots of welding to do, then by all means go all out and get the best you can afford.  Otherwise an old Arc will serve you just fine I think.  Also, I can weld thin stock with my Arc. Not easy.  Just gotta turn the power way down and be very slow and careful.  Thin stock heats up real fast and you'll blow a hole through it in no time if you try to maintain a bead.   Better to Tap and let cool, tap and let cool.  Takes practice as does anything.  But then again, if I'm welding thin stock, 1/16" or less, I don't expect much from the stock, much less the weld.  So it's usually for prototyping or non critical applications.  If you want to weld forged leaves onto a forged stem or something like that, then a Mig would probably serve you better.

 

Maybe that was more like .04 cents ?  Got any change ? :P :)

 

-Bruno

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For thinner stuff DC- puts less heat on the metal, the electrode burns down a little faster if I remember right. Get a couple of big cheap magnets from HF and make a bracket to attach a piece of copper tubing to. You can put these on the other side of the sheet metal and weld on the opposite side, very short welds.

 

Here the magnet/heat sink

 

post-34362-0-12924000-1380158350_thumb.j

 

I was patching up the firewall on my old truck.  I'd rotate the two heat sinks around the area until it was completely welded.  I admit, I was using a cheap HF 110 inverter welder since the my Lincoln tombstone, a 220 AC, no matter how low I set it using the heat sinks I still burned thru w/ 1/16 6013's. 

 

post-34362-0-92680400-1380158368_thumb.j

post-34362-0-28882800-1380158372_thumb.j

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DC- doesn't work with all rods. Usually it works best with AC/DC rods like 6013 or 7014 vs some pure DC rods.

 

 

Also fast freeze rods like 6010 or 6011 are often used for thinner sheet IF you are skilled enough to run them well. Down side is these rods are also deep penetrating, so many people have issues doing this unless they have the skill level to freeze the puddle without opening up a big keyhole. Running smaller rods  like 1/16" at lower amps helps.

 

Joint design also helps greatly. Lap joints work best with thin sheet so you have more material to help soak up the heat vs a thin edge. Places like Eastwoods sell panel flangers designed to put a "step" in sheetmetal auto body panels to help facilitate these types of welds in thin sheet. I think Harbor freight also sells an air flanger as well.

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What size 6010 or 6011 rod are you running DSW?  The smallest I've been able to find is 1/8".  Whatever method you choose to do I'd highly recommend getting some scrap metal the same gauge you're going to be working and practice with it until you're comfortable, kinda goes w/o saying but sometimes you might forget and then mess up a piece that mattered. 

 

I also found that using a 1/4" carbon rod at the lowest setting, 10 amps DC- could get an arc and then feed in a 6013 rod to fill in holes that I'd previously created.  Silicon bronze rods can be used in the same fashion, just make sure you've done all the regular welding you're going to do before doing this as it melts at a lower temp.

 

I tried the panel flangers that HF sells.  They didn't work for me, the gap was too large at least for my setup.  Maybe if I had been using a MIG w/ gas.

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