MIG Welder....

[rmgill]

So, a pawn shop near me is going out of business and they have a wire feed MIG welder for sale. Interestingly it has a pair of the usual outputs for switching welding handle and ground AND a SECOND set of connections for wiring it up to a 24 volt battery source. The idea of having a welder that I can hook up to the slave connection on the truck is, to say the least, interesting.

The shop wants $295 for it WITH the tank. I couldn't find a MFGR on it.

The model is listed as a MUlti-Mig/Flux Model 90430. Is this a cheap chinese unit that's going to die or a decent mid range unit. the lower settings had it rated as 100% duty cycle. It's Only a 15 amp input at 120 AC so it's not a hot shot welder, but seems like a useful thing to add to the kit on the truck.

 

[rmgill]

And I just checked around, here's one for sale, purchased new for $300. So $295 is WAY too much for one that's used and somewhat beat up.

Italian made apparently, Triple-A Specialty Co. Anyone have idea on quality on these?

I need a welder, I'd LOVE one that I can toss in the back of the deuce and take on the road and have useful on the road.

 

[nickd]

ryan,
I bought a Lincoln mig welder. It is a 240 volt unit, they make 120v unit also but it is not as "hot" as the 240v unit. I do use a shielding gas its an argon mixture and I recently purchased an aluminum spool gun and another tank of 100% argon for shielding gas. Buy a good machine and it will out last you

 

[MilitaryRestoration]

I just broke down and bought a Miller 252 got a great deal on it via craigslist.... 4months old not a scratch on it and 1000.00 dollars less than what I was going to but it for, plus came with a full bottle and a new spool of wire. Welders are not a place to go cheap on especially when welding things that you need to trust

 

[jimk]

I got a new Lincoln Weldpak 125 (220V) added a gas kit and bought my own bottle ($350/$80/$250). Gas is 75%Ar/25%CO2 ($55 fill). It might be close to 20 Years old now. I use it MIG 99% of the time. I have a small Argon bottle for light Al work. The innershield (flux core/gasless) can do more for less but never seems to get used because MIG make nicer welds. I also have a new(06') Lincoln 215MIG ($1350) and old Lincoln AC stick welder($50 used w/ jumbo cord) and a fat 60' extension cord for use with all these.

The Chinese stuff I once used (long time ago) seemed to have less capacity than claimed and a poor duty cycle. It's better to extra capacity than not enough. If you want quality work get a quality rig. Get one big enough for the task at hand and big enough for anything that may come along. JimK

p.s. The MIG I used in the mid 80's was Italian not Chinese.