Hi, hope someone can help…I’m in the market to buy a new mig welder, any info on make to avoid, best amp setting for bodywork etc would be really welcome. I’m edging towards a Clarke 135TE, machine mart £234 or internet £215, is this machine any good??
Cheers
I have had a Clarke 160 for about 15 years , good as gold , Ideal for home use , built a few race cars and a trailor with it so taken quite a battering over the years.
As for settings , they come with experience as wire feed , current , material quality and thickness , plus a few other variables need to taken into account. I would suggest plenty of practice on old bits of tin before you do anything that really matters to you.
Oh and if you blow holes in turn it down a bit.
Make sure that the machine you buy will take a large gas bottle, you get through the small ones very quickly.
I own a fabrication workshop .If you are going to be welding mostly body work go for 0.6 mig wire .you will find you dont have to use as much current.
0.8mm is the most common for general use and tends to be a liitle cheaper.
best to use an argon CO2 mix .pure CO2 can be used but you have to purchase a heater to stop your gauges freezing up .
Finally think of your mig/mag welder like a car ,try to keep the surfaces rust free (remember first contact is only 0.8 or 0.6mm wide) .
This will give you a good earth.And the more current the more wire or wire speed.The rest is just like driving the more practice the better you should get.Best of luck at learning a new skill.
I’ve got a Clarke 150 and can highly recommend it. I had a SIP 90 amp Migmate and it was a complete waste of time but I don’t know if that had anything to do with the make or the current.
I have found with the welding I’ve done with other people’s machines that bigger machines tend to be better at more delicate stuff (I know this seems odd). So the biggest you can afford would be my recommendation.
Something with a cooling fan is a must - even on hobby stuff I find I hit the thermal cutout on “hobby” machines and it’s a pain having to wait for it to cool down before you can carry on welding.
You also find that hobby machines try to automatically vary the wire speed with the current you’ve selected. In theory this is OK but they tend to do it by driving the feed motor from the output stage of the transformer. Problem is that as you start welding there are big voltage surges and variations so the motor speeds up and slows down seemingly at random.
Iain