Yes, POS!

It's AC. Pops and smokes, globs on what some might call a weld.

Under perfect conditions and practice, it will weld, but aint pretty.
 
(quoted from post at 22:03:42 11/29/17) That?s what I was afraid of . Guess I?ll have to save up for a welder that uses gas with wire

I would recommend that approach... after messing around for years with cheapies I never could get to work right, I finally bought a "refurbished" (direct from Hobart) Handler 140. It looked brand new to me, and even a new one isn't that expensive, and I found I could actually weld stuff! 8)
 
SVcummins; don't feel bad about it. You'll benefit from and enjoy the quality of a good welder for as long as you own it. If you buy a low quality welder like that one, you won't remember the few hundred dollars you saved for very long, but you'll be stuck with a shoddy piece of equipment that underperforms and makes welding more difficult for you for as long as you keep it. I believe that low quality welders discourage people. Some people never get a chance to see that they could be decent at welding if they had better equipment, and some people give it up altogether. People think that they'll trying welding with low quality, low cost equipment and if they like it, they'll buy better equipment. There are two problems with this: First, low quality equipment can be so difficult to use, or have so many problems that it makes it hard to like the process, so you never get to see that it can be not only fairly easy, but also gratifying and enjoyable. Second, most people have trouble spending good money after bad; it's hard to write off a mistake, take the loss and try to do better the next time.

One other small point to keep in mind, you can't MIG weld with a flux core only welder, but can run flux core on any MIG welder.

Stan
 
I've never seen anyone who liked welding with flux core. I've got a MIG with solid wire and gas, and am OK at welding with it. Friend got a flux core, and neither one of us could ever get a decent weld out of it.
 
I don't have one but assume what I saw in a HF catalog is similar to the TSC Farmhand 85. For light duty with .030 wire it has worked for me when used within it's capabilities.
 

I've burnt quite a bit of flux core simply because I don't have a big CO2 bottle. It's okay for rough work on lighter metals. I still use the stick for heavy stuff. Solid core and gas can make a nice weld, but I haven't quite got the hang of that yet. I'm proof you can have solid core and gas and still bubble gum stuff up! :lol:
 
Bret4207; There are a lot more things that can go wrong with the performance of a MIG welder than people generally acknowledge. I was in charge of a metal arts workshop at the local community college for a few years, and one of the things I had to spend a lot of time doing was troubleshooting the MIG welders and getting them going again. They were high quality Miller welders, not too many years old, but of course they were used every day by students in the college's welding program, so they saw a lot of hard use. If you own a good MIG welder, and you get all the settings right, and you don't have to ever change a setting, and nobody else ever uses it, and you recognize every problem that can degrade performance and correct it immediately, and you spend as much time practicing to improve your technique as you had to spend to become reasonably good with stick, then you might, MIGHT, be able to just pick it up and weld with it whenever you need to. That's why I always chose to stick weld unless I had no choice but to use MIG. I'll bet there were few people in the college's welding program who had put more 16 gauge metal together with stick than I had.

Stan
 

Stan, I've only got 20-25 hours on the MIG unit. I'm still trying to deal with not really being able to see the arc like I can with stick. Finally got an adjustable shade helmet and that helps. Remembering my glasses helps too! Getting the right amperage and wire feed speed is kinda tricky for me.
 
(quoted from post at 01:43:33 11/30/17) I've never seen anyone who liked welding with flux core. I've got a MIG with solid wire and gas, and am OK at welding with it. Friend got a flux core, and neither one of us could ever get a decent weld out of it.

Well now you know at least one... I have a Lincoln 175 and have never ran anything but flux core. Ya it splatters but cleans up OK and I have made welds that look and hold as good as any I have seen with gas.
 
Bret; it's in your favor that you can see the arc when you're stick welding. My experience with students who were learning MIG welding and had no previous experience with any form of arc welding---and many of them were retired people, not kids---was that some people's eyes were just too sensitive for them to ever really be comfortable with the process. If you have to use shade 11 or higher before the arc isn't blinding to you when you're stick welding in the 100 amp range (or the MIG equivalent of that), it's going to be very difficult for you to see the work. Your description makes it sound like your problem is with the nozzle getting in the way so that you can't watch the puddle, but this is a problem you can solve. Not being able to view the arc unless your eye protection is turned so dark that you can't see anything else may not be possible to solve. At the risk of suggesting something that you've already tried, I'd say that finding a better position might help. There isn't much you can do about the angle of the MIG nozzle or the distance relative to the work because those are things you need to be able to change for different situations. But you might be able to position yourself differently in relation to the work, or vice versa, to bring it into view. Students would sometimes complain to me that they couldn't see the arc or the weld puddle no matter how they moved the work, but what they meant was that they hadn't been able to find a successful way to turn the work piece while leaving it on the table at the welding station while they continued to sit in the chair there. I'd ask them if they had considered standing up and bending over the work to get a better view, or had they considered putting it on the floor so they could work on it from any side. Sometimes it made a lot of difference.

Stan
 

Thanks Stan! I'm figuring it out slowly. I think a lot of it my failing eye sight. Have to find a set of glasses that focus right at the 1-3 foot area I need. Tried bifocals and about drove me nuts...or more nuts!
 

My neighbor has one and I've used it once on thin metal.

To be honest, it works just fine and I'll the new 125 amp works even better. There's a little spatter and only high or low as to the selector for amperage. You can tweak her a little more by changing the wire size, but that's about it.

The key according to my neighbor was ditching the el cheapo HF wire and running good Hobart wire. Yes, its 2x the cost and according to him works 2x as well. I patched up some rust holes in my mower deck just fine with it. Just spanned each hole, let it cool, then came back and filled it. Worked great on that thin metal.

Obviously, this is not a pro machine and we all know that penetration is limited. Most of us can look at a situation and know if it's a job for a small, light duty welder or not.

I don't see how you could beat these for the price. If the machine fits the job you need to do, I see them on sale all the time for $99. Lots of videos online, watch and make up your own mind.

Grouse
 
(quoted from post at 01:43:33 11/30/17) I've never seen anyone who liked welding with flux core.

Well, now you have.

I have a Lincoln MP210. Love the stick function. Love the flux core. I can make some real nice welds on the flux cure.

MIG is driving me batty. No matter how hot I run it, or how fast or slow I move, the thing just lays "worms" on top of the metal. No penetration whatsoever.
 
(quoted from post at 15:14:36 12/04/17)
(quoted from post at 01:43:33 11/30/17) I've never seen anyone who liked welding with flux core.

Well, now you have.

I have a Lincoln MP210. Love the stick function. Love the flux core. I can make some real nice welds on the flux cure.

MIG is driving me batty. No matter how hot I run it, or how fast or slow I move, the thing just lays "worms" on top of the metal. No penetration whatsoever.

IIRC, don't you have to reverse the polarity from flux to solid core to get penetration? Just a thought...
 

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