Finally got a new mig welder

[YakkoWarner]

I use a Hobart 140 and get decent results, but I know I'm not great at welding. I look at welders like musical instruments - if you buy the cheapest junk guitar (or sax, or violin, whatever) you'll have a hard time fighting the instrument, but unless you are already a master you won't really gain much from buying an absolute top shelf $10,000 instrument when a $500 instrument will perform just fine. And someone who is a master can make a $500 instrument sound like a $5000 instrument through skill.

A really good welder can get good results with a "decent" machine and absolute perfect results on a top-end machine. I can get "OK" results with a decent machine and might get "OK" results with a top end machine as well.

Of course my own words may come back to bite me because I picked up an affordable Primeweld200 TIG welder to learn on, I havn't even had the chance to plug it in yet (just got the gas bottle last week) so once I grab some scrap and start making sparks we'll see what happens. It may be terrible, or it may be a decent machine. Never used one before so no previous experience to reference from.

 

[legopnuematic]

Primeweld200 TIG welder

The Primeweld machines seem to get very positive remarks. I was strongly looking into the Tig 225 machine, ended up with a ~50 year old Miller. That was simply because I got the Miller with water cooler and some other goodies for the price of primeweld’s water cooler.

Had I not got the deal on the miller I would have likely gotten the primeweld.

I would recommend, if you have not, to purchase a stubby gas lens and cup kit. I much, much prefer them over a standard collet body/cup setup. They provide better gas coverage and use less gas. A kit can be had very reasonable from Amazon. I find a #5 cup size to be the best all around. I have also had very good success with CK’s LaYZr tungsten.

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