Discussion
rfisher said:
DonkeyApple said:
shalmaneser said:
Can anyone ping me over a referral for this? I've wanted a welder for ages to mess about with and this looks cheap enough to go for!
I would also be very grateful if there are any spare. Thanks. shalmaneser said:
Can anyone ping me over a referral for this? I've wanted a welder for ages to mess about with and this looks cheap enough to go for!
I've bitten the bullet and bought this and they've given me a code. As you were the second person on the thread to ask would you like me to PM it to you?
Learning with it will be okay but just don't try learning by trying to weld a Quality Street tin that's resting on the garage floor..
Set up some clean-ish steel box or whatever, clamped or weighted down and good work piece lead connection and it will be a lot less frustrating learning.
Also don't forget you'll need some electrodes. 1.6-3.2mm 6013 should be okay for most mild steels and you'll be within the machines capabilities. Get some quality ones if you can, Bohler, EWM, Esab, Sif etc but Screwfix ones actually get a good rating. When learning it can be useful to cut them in half to get better control, just don't smash all the coating off doing so.
I've bought one for the lolz just to see how it compares to my sub £1k machines so will put the voucher code up tomorrow.
Set up some clean-ish steel box or whatever, clamped or weighted down and good work piece lead connection and it will be a lot less frustrating learning.
Also don't forget you'll need some electrodes. 1.6-3.2mm 6013 should be okay for most mild steels and you'll be within the machines capabilities. Get some quality ones if you can, Bohler, EWM, Esab, Sif etc but Screwfix ones actually get a good rating. When learning it can be useful to cut them in half to get better control, just don't smash all the coating off doing so.
I've bought one for the lolz just to see how it compares to my sub £1k machines so will put the voucher code up tomorrow.
DJFish said:
I've been thinking about teaching myself to weld for a while, also I need to make a canoe rack and there's nothing available to buy that's the right size.
Would this be a good machine to learn with?
Depends what your canoe rack is to be made of; tubing with wall thickness of less than 2mm is somewhat challenging to weld with stick, MIG, TIG or even OxyAcetylene are more suited to thinner gauges of metal. It can be done, but it's not straightforward.Would this be a good machine to learn with?
Work bench frames are bread and butter stuff for stick welding unless you want a very lightweight/portable table with thinwall tubes; get some steel offcuts and get practicing!
21TonyK said:
Looking at the quality of the welds they used something cheaper than the Aldi 
dfen5 said:
21TonyK said:
Looking at the quality of the welds they used something cheaper than the Aldi rfisher said:
DonkeyApple said:
shalmaneser said:
Can anyone ping me over a referral for this? I've wanted a welder for ages to mess about with and this looks cheap enough to go for!
I would also be very grateful if there are any spare. Thanks. 21TonyK said:
Theres some hope then!
Hehe. Trouble is the cost of the stainless box section, say 50x50x3 even 304 grade, thick enough to weld with stick would be very high, we're talking hundreds for that frameSomething like that would normally be Tig or a decent Mig but then there's cutting the stuff too..
dfen5 said:
21TonyK said:
Theres some hope then!
Hehe. Trouble is the cost of the stainless box section, say 50x50x3 even 304 grade, thick enough to weld with stick would be very high, we're talking hundreds for that frameSomething like that would normally be Tig or a decent Mig but then there's cutting the stuff too..
hidetheelephants said:
Depends what your canoe rack is to be made of; tubing with wall thickness of less than 2mm is somewhat challenging to weld with stick, MIG, TIG or even OxyAcetylene are more suited to thinner gauges of metal. It can be done, but it's not straightforward.
Work bench frames are bread and butter stuff for stick welding unless you want a very lightweight/portable table with thinwall tubes; get some steel offcuts and get practicing!
I was thinking 40mm box section in 2mm....Work bench frames are bread and butter stuff for stick welding unless you want a very lightweight/portable table with thinwall tubes; get some steel offcuts and get practicing!
Then again you can pick up a 2nd hand mig welder for peanuts, but since the only welding experience I have is watching other people do it I don't know if it's better to keep it simple or to buy something future proof in case I get a taste for it.....
DonkeyApple said:
rfisher said:
DonkeyApple said:
shalmaneser said:
Can anyone ping me over a referral for this? I've wanted a welder for ages to mess about with and this looks cheap enough to go for!
I would also be very grateful if there are any spare. Thanks. 
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