Anything welding

Let's just say that fence energizers have many uses...

 

You need to grind the dirt/rust/paint away where you weld. It has to be clean for any kind of wire welder.

 

Does that model have the provision to add a shielding gas? If not, take it back and opt for the next model that allows that feature.

I think you have handle on making decent welds, you just need to spend time on prep work and think about getting shielding gas.

Edit: I just checked, you need to grab the Titanium

$279 MIG140 140A MIG Welder Advanced Auto MIG Synergistic Setting, Voltage Fine Tuning, Gas MIG Welding & Gasless Flux Core MIG Welding - Brown, 120V, Without Aluminum Spool Gun

MIG140 to have the gas feature. It's $400 vs $200 that you paid for your present unit. With the holidays coming up, I bet a 20 percent coupon would appear for those welders.

 

Oh ok so like down to bare metal on both pieces, or just make sure there's no dirt, rust, or paint on it before I get started?

Also, is it bad if I see little dots coming through the exhaust tube I'm welding the tip to? No holes, just wondering if I'm running too high of voltage or something.

 

I can answer the first question,
Down to the bare metal, some even like to rub a little acetone on it before welding. I never do, but then again I'm just messing around in my garage. You want the metal to be clean clean clean!

 

Ok sounds good, thanks. Do you think that weld around the exhaust tip should be strong enough? It's got a decent bead all the way around it but I never really cleaned the pipe up beforehand.

 

If you are seeing dots appear on the inside, that means you are very close to burn thru. back off the heat just a bit.

 

As clean as you can get it. The exhaust pipe bubbles are from dirtiness, the pipe may be aluminized and a combination of dirtiness don't help that especially with a flux cored wire. Flux cored wire doesn't give the best looking weld anyways. You started good, keep it up!

 

FYI - This site collects HF coupons, so it's a great place to watch for deals: hfqpdb.com

Looks like $349 for the Titanium 140 - https://www.hfqpdb.com/best_coupon/TITANIUM+MIG+140+WELDER

Thoughts on being worth it to spend the extra $100 for the 120/240 volt version - Titanium 170?
Room for future growth without having to sell / re-buy? $449 via https://www.hfqpdb.com/best_coupon/TITANIUM+MIG+170+WELDER

Like Ccrames2018 I'm looking to buy a welder for some minor around the house stuff -- but I've been around long enough that I've learned it's sometimes far better to spend a bit extra for a tool that'll handle anything you need to do for years. Buy-once-Cry-once.

 

I'm on the fence. There is nothing on a Toyota that needs a 240 volt welder to ensure a quality weld.

If you plan on welding every week and plan to sell some other projects, the efficiency of a 240 volt machine might make it worth it to spend the extra money.

 

The problem with 140 welders is they don’t like positional work, are more likely to give you cold starts when in the higher end of material thickness they can handle. And if you’re doing tube work they start to run rough once you get a decent amount of stick out

 

Thanks. In my case I have no truck-related welding in mind.

I do have some dock (steel) related work I need to do at a lake place, as well as random household stuff likely to come up, but none of that is very thick stuff either.

 

Which lake? Metal dock almost sounds like a Cor managed lake. Lanier, Allatoona?

 

Please clarify this. I'm not following.

 

Ok makes sense. Thanks!

 

it’s pretty simple. Trying laying down some clean welds on coped tubing. Once you get into the insides of the coped tubing it can be really hard to keep a steady arc when you get into the corners of coped joints that require more than your standard wire stick out. And pray you don’t need to restart one of your welds with that much stick out. The 120
Machines lack the power to get your wire flowing smoothly quick.

as far as positional work. It’s easy to get decent welds in the flat position, but you’d be hard pressed to turn out a professional job welding something like a leaf spring hanger to the frame when you get into the overhead position. A little more heat can go a long way when working out of position. Especially if you aren’t already a proficient welder and understand exactly what the puddle is doing while your welding.

if you’re just sticking stuff together it can be done with the 120volt welder. If you goal is to lay down professional quality welds it will me much easier to do with the 240v machine.

 

Also the difference between what a person who can already weld can pull of with and underpowered welder will be far greater than a beginner that is just starting out, they already generally run colder welds and don’t have the experience to know about planning your start stop locations or things like wrapping your corners which will add a lot to the quality of your welds and strength of your product.

like you said it can be done with a 120v machine, but as someone who backhalfed their first truck with a millermatic 135 18 years ago, I’m very familiar with were they make sense and where spending a few hundred more on a 240v machine make sense. Hell I even notice these same differences between running my millermatic 180 and 252 when welding things like tubing and spindles. I will use both, but their are times I’d prefer to have the 252, and times the smaller gun of the 180 is of benifit

 

Hartwell

 

Burton boy myself

 

Nice, that's a pretty lake.