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Hi, Brian Did you get 2 new (or used) welders at the same time? In your previous post you were asking about a problem with your Miller 175A wire feed. Most people who have a wire feed welder don't later buy a stick welder. It's far more common the other way around. I can't hardly think of a situation where if I needed to weld 3/16 plate together, I'd use wire feed rather than stick. I suppose it might be different if the wire feed machine was always available and ready to go, and if I was used to using it for any welding that it could do. Wire feed is much easier to learn than stick, and it doesn't take much extra effort to learn to do it right, either. Stick isn't easy to learn. You might not feel like you can really weld with stick until you've burned a few thousand rods, but after that it's a lot less complicated than wire feed. I have the use of more kinds of welders than most people ever even get to see. How many people who aren't weldors by trade ever get the chance to use a submerged arc welder, or try 50 different kinds of welding rod, or do carbon air-arc gouging with a machine putting out 500 amps? Every type of welding has unique capabilities and will be the best choice in some particular situation. Even so, with a wide range of options at my disposal, what I find myself using most of the time is stick. Once you're past the learning curve, stick seems to offer the best combination of simplicity and versatility. That's been my experience, anyway. Stan
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