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I bought and used the Chicago brand welder you described. It works great for 1/8" steel and thicker steel with multiple passes. I still own it but now I also own and use a Hobart Mig with gas. Here are a couple of items you will want to know. The low cost brand has a very short duty cycle, as I recall, it's about a minute or so. I had exceeded that several times and have to wait 15 minutes for it to cool off and reset itself. One reason for the low duty cycle is that there is no cooling fan. As a novice welder, I did not mine the low duty cycle. Another thing is that even though it advertises that you can use gas, you will discover a myriad of obstacles including, finding the right parts and the excessive additional cost. So plan to use it with gasless wire. The weld will seldom look smooth (or was that me?). Despite the wire and amp controls, I found it next to impossible to weld sheet metal. Again, I didn't mind in lieu of the low price. I would not recommend buying that unit for auto body work. On the plus side, it is easy to pick up and move to a job site with one hand. The stinger is only 6 feet long instead of 12 feet but I did not mind that in light of the low cost. The Chicago brand is good for general 1/8" utility welder when a smooth finish is not required. The same size welder in the Hobart brand cost me $600. It has the longer cords, long duty cycle, comes with gas for smooth finish welding of sheetmetal, etc. However, I would not hesitate to use the Chicago welder for 1/8" steel if my Hobart broke down. Mark
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