recommend me a welder

[Cannyfixit]

Time has come to jump in and buy a welder,i have no experience with welders so i would need a machine that's forgiving to a DIY newbie
My budget is £200 that would have to include a mask (i have already have gloves courtesy of a mate),I could maybe stretch the budget a bit but will need a few more months to save up the extra,I can live with second hand if i new what faults to watch out for

at the moment i am thinking about making a few odd bits of tools like this for eg

maybe with practice move onto repairing car bodywork,so i would like a machine that will be a bit future proof so to speak

[Joelc]

For that kind of money I would be looking at a decent second hand welder - otherwise your in the realms of the cheap Chinese clarke gasless stuff.

I would reccomend sticking with gas as you get much better welds, gasless from my experience has mixed results.

For second hand, ask if you can see it working, check that the wire spools cleanly and make sure there are no nasty noises.

[mikew1972]

Get a MIG welder. It is much easier and quicker to pick up than ARC welding and far more versatile in the hands of a DIYer.

I've had one of these for 15 or 20 years. Still going strong, can't fault it. Spares readily available but a bit above your budget?

http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/produ ... mig-welder

This ones lower down in the same range. Not as versatile, not able to weld the same thickness of metal but certainly able to do what you say you want it to do.

http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/produ ... mig-welder

Only a touch over budget. Will almost certainly come with a face mask. Highly recommend you pick up an auto darkening welding helmet for £20 at JTF. Had one for a couple of years and wish I'd got one sooner.

The problem with the smaller welders is the size of wire reel they take. A 0.8KG reel of welding wire costs £5.39. A 5KG reel costs £17.99. I'll let you do the maths. They also tend to have problems with duty cycle if you are doing a lot of welding at one go. You may only be able to weld for 20mins in the hour. The rest of the time you are having to do other jobs while waiting for the welder to cool.

Then next problem you will run into is gas. Small disposable bottles cost £20 each and don't last long. Pub CO2 works OK for rougher welds but the welding will seem so much easier and come out so much neater if you use specialist welding gas - an argon/CO2/O2 mix. You're looking at an additional £100 plus for your first bottle of this and a regulator (not the same regulator as the PUB bottle uses.)
You'd probably want to be set up to use both types of gas - 2 bottles and 2 regs. Either way it quickly works out much cheaper than disposable bottles.

This still leaves you over £100 over budget?

[Hitch]

Canny, have a read through this site when you get 5..... just about everything you need to know about DIY welding on a budget has been covered, at least 20 times....
At the top of the page there is tutorials, if you arn't familiar, use them to have a look to see what the different types are like.

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/index.php

Id be looking toward a MIG personally, on hobbyweld gas, or similar. The Clarke machines tend to get half decent reviews, compared to SIP and cheapo junk.



On a side note, id hate to have to pay £17 for a 5kg reel, a 15kg of premium branded isnt much more