wire feed or stick welder?

[arcticcat400]

i am looking into buying a welder to use for everyday repairs and occasional projects i was wondering which one would be the best one for this and maybe a few heavier welding projects

[Eric Wettschreck]

1. How good of a welder are you?

2. 110v or 220v?

3. When you say "Wire feed" do you mean flux core arc or Mig?

These are important questions you should ask yourself.

Wire feed Mig is, to a lot of people, the easier of the 2 ways to weld. It has it's upside and downside.

Upside- easier to weld. Makes a good looking weld. Fairly strong if properly done. Can weld thinner steel. Works great for many around the shop repairs.

Downside- You need a bottle of Argon or CO2. You don't get the penetration you will get from a stick weld. The 110v Mig units don't have the amp capacity.

Stick welding is more difficult and will take more practice. (I'm not knowing how good a welder you are)

Upside- Way stronger than Mig. No gas bottles. You can combine with a tig rig or arc stabilizer and TIG weld.

Downside- Difficult to weld thinner metals. Harder to learn. Like the Mig units, the 110v units don't have the amp capacity.

Flux core wire feed is just a wire feed arc weld. They work great for things like auto body work and thin metals like that. Hardly any strength by comparison to arc or Mig.

Hope this helps.

[Shack]

Boiler said it very well.

Now, once you master this, we can start talking Hardfacing . Oh, brother. I have a quote going at work that includes a ton of #6/gas hardfacing. Plus I have another that includes Thermal Spray welding.

I assume when you say "stick", you mean the traditional arch welding. Like Boiler said, this a very good way to weld, but takes a while to learn and get right. I have chipped my fair share of slag over the years. I feel now a days, wire feed will suit your needs better (IMO).

I will say at home, I have a flux core Hobart Handler 135 that has suit me very well. From mild steel app.s to exhaust repairs, it has worked very well. The price is right also. I know now it is known as the 145, but same machine. I have a Argon and the gauges, but I want to burn threw this roll of flux core before I switch.

Good luck.

[ishgood]

I rented a Millermatic 135 and it seemed a little cold so when I bought one I got the 220v Millermatic 175. Glad I did. Built a small trailer with it. Really welds well. Does gas or fluxcore. Get one that does both. Gas is for the light gage stuff, flux core is for the thicker stuff. The polarity is reversed when you switch from one to the other. The polarity determines if heat is being poured into the workpiece or the wire. You want the heat poured into the workpiece if your welding thick stuff, you want the heat going into the wire if you are welding thin stuff, melts the wire quicker, keeps from burning thru the thin metal. This is appearant in the charts you look that tell you which wire to use for a given thickness of metal.

I also like the looks of the small tig welders they are selling. You might want to consider a tig if you want to build stuff out of aluminum or stainless. Some Migs will do it but the tigs do a much better job. Kind of wish I went with the tig so I could build aluminum or stainless stuff for the boat. The quality of the arc from the tig is pin point compared to a mig. The awesome control is what makes them weld alum and stainless better, but, they don't feed wire so they are slow. You feed the wire in by hand, like gas welding.

When you need extreme quality in small amounts use a tig. If you got miles of bead to run, like building a trailer, you want a mig.

Stick welders: Only benefit I see is they have less moving parts, and cheaper. I thought stick was what I wanted til I drove a mig.

If you've never driven one, stop into a welding supply and rent a mig or test drive it there. You'll probably never go back to stick.