David G

Well-known Member
I am confused, it looks like I can get a TIG or MIG welder for about the same price.

What is the difference?
 
MIG is wire feed. TIG is like gas welding but with electricity. TIG is generally used for precise, thin high quality work.

There are also multiprocess machines that will do it all, but are usually overkill for the average tinkerer.
 
(quoted from post at 01:00:48 11/11/18) I want a wire feed, so looks like a Mig.

Yep, if you do not know the difference between the two definitely start with mig. Much easier to work with for the novice.
Tig is an art that might be mastered after you are very very good with the mig.
 
David, here's another wrinkle for you. A "[i:63f833565d]wire feed[/i:63f833565d]" welder and a "[i:63f833565d]Mig[/i:63f833565d]" welder are generally considered to be different things. Wire feed uses only flux-core wire, so needs no shielding gas. A Mig welder (if I'm not mistaken) can use either type of wire, plus the gas where needed.

I have a Hobart wire feed, no gas. Don't use it much but it does a nice job on thinner metals. For everything else I use my stick welder.
 
Mig (metal inert gas) would be a good choice for home shop, general use.

It's easy to learn and operate, will weld steel, stainless, and aluminum (won't be pretty, but effective). One of it's limitations is it won't work well outdoors in the wind. The air needs to be still or the gas will blow away from the weld before it cools.

I would go with .035 wire and a bottle of CO2 or CO2/Argon.

For aluminum you will want Argon.

The need for bottled gas is a considerable expense for MIG welding, but it is a much better choice than flux core wire.

As for the welder it's self, go with a name brand. You will be glad you did. The aggravation of a cheap machine, and difficulty finding consumables in a few years will make the name brand a plus.

There are tons of videos on Youtube, articles on the web. Do some research. Most welding shops can give reliable advise, but there is a chance they will be pushing the product that makes them the most money, or could be clueless. One thing for sure, you will pay more at a weld shop than buying online or from an individual.
 
It depends a lot on what your're going to be welding. You can weld just about anything with TIG: steel, aluminum, stainless, even copper. TIG is capable of producing very high quality welds, but it is a fairly slow process.

If you are only welding steel, and you don't need aerospace-quality welds, MIG is a good choice. It's fast and easy to learn, and can produce decent welds. It's possible to weld aluminum or stainless with MIG, but TIG is the preferred process for those materials.

The reason you don't typically see TIG and MIG capability in the same machine is they require different power sources: TIG and stick use "constant current" sources, while MIG is "constant voltage". Also, MIG is DC-only, while TIG machines run AC for aluminum and DC for everything else. You'll find inverter machines with both TIG and MIG capability, but these tend to be smaller machines. I think you said in a earlier post that you were looking for a pretty big welder.
 
My br-in-law has a Miller wire feed with gas, and although I am a poor welder, even I can tinker with it a while and make good welds. I want one like it, but it is nearly a $3000 machine and I don't weld that much.
 
There are lots of videos on you tube about welding and the different processes. In a nutshell. TIG is for small thin pieces and is a slow process, but when mastered does a beautiful job. MIG is a production process, very fast where a lot of welding needs to be done, such as fabricating a truck bed. They are two different processes. You need to watch the videos and figure out what you need before you buy. You cannot push aluminum with any success through a conventional MIG gun. You need a spoolgun. It takes roughly twice the amperage to weld Aluminum as it does steel or stainless. You are not going to do a lot of serious welding with either process on aluminum with less than a 300 Amp machine. People come to my shop all the time asking me to teach them to TIG weld. The first question I ask them is can you gas weld? 99% say no. I tell them , when you learn to gas weld come back and I will teach you TIG. Most never come back. TIG is a 2 handed process that takes lots of practice and coordination that few people can master.
 
Which you get depends on what you will be welding. For farm work mig is what I would suggest. If you want to do aluminum get a spool gun to go with it. You can weld most aluminum with that, you just have to use the right type and size wire for the job, and that is a lot more fussy than steel so you may need to stock several depending on what you will be doing. A tig will do more precise work and fancier welds and can do some things mig can't, but it's also slower and more expensive. Unless you intend to do a lot of precise work or go into the welding business a tig should come later.
 
May i add this to your looking for a welder , Duty cycle , these potable migs have a vary short duty cycle , that is the length of time you can weld before it needs a coffee break , then look at the out put as in the amps and the size of metal it can weld in a signal pass . If your just going to be doing small patch jobs on 1/4 inch and down then a GOOD 140 amp will work. Notice i said a GOOD one . The ones sold at lowes , homer depot and others are the cheaper ones usually with only five heat setting . The ones you get from a welding supply house cost more but you get more . Myself i have and ancient Airco and it is not portable but it was and all in one welder , i have the mig, i have the spot weld i have A C and i have the D C for stick welding and had i bought the high freq. unit with it i would have had tig . I can run alum. thru my gun just by changing the liner drive rollers and tip. Mine uses the big spools of wire and i run for the most part .035 wire but with out much hassle i can drop down to .020 just by changing tip and rollers. for some reason at this time there are a lot of small portable mig's on the used market . My one friend bought a Duel voltage Lincoln 180 to add to the welding ability at the farm , i tried to get hi, to just get and LN 25 wire feeder to go with the Lincoln 250 portable as this way we would have had the best of both worlds , but it was his bucks not mine , i just do 99% of the welding .
 
I stick weld and have for decades. I have also done and worked doing Mig welding and have also done Tig welding.

Mig is a wire feed type set up for steel or aluminum.
Tig is a electric torch type of welding mush like soldering or brazing. Back when I still worked at Tracker Marine which is owned by Brass Pro shop I did tig welding and could cut a beer can in half and weld it back together and fil it up and it would hold the liquid I put in.

I'd love to have a Tig welder. I have Mig and stick and almost never use the mig. The flux core type mig you want to stay away from unless your just doing junk welding
 
TIG will require more skill to learn .MIG almost anyone can pick up fairly fast. If you gas weld you can TIG. If all you do is steel then probably go MIG.
 
Mig is a wire type welder Tig is using a tungsten arc with a filler rod/wire like brazing only electric arc.
For welders you will get what you pay for the cheap welder will be like buying oats, good clean oats at a fair price or those through the horse come a little cheaper. The bitter taste of cheap will last much longer, than the joy of the lower price.
Friend of mine has a century 140 wire/mig welder he left here for me to use since he doen't use it much. Welds fine if it is thin or preheated if over 12 gage material.
 
Don't immediately eliminate any three-phase machines you come across. Used industrial three-phase MIG welders can often be picked up for a song, and SOME can be re-wired for single phase.
 
We have a Miller 200 amp. Mig. With room for the bigger wire roll. Also a spool gun for Aluminum. One thing not mentioned is a extension cord. We have a 35 ft. A must to weld on machinery.
 
David G; Several here have noted that MIG is much easier to learn and to use than TIG. That's not incorrect, but it's not the whole story, either. MIG welding is easy to do, but it's less easy to do well. By its nature MIG welding makes it easy to lay down good looking welds that have little penetration and therefore little strength. Besides getting yourself a good capable MIG welder, there are a couple of other things you should consider getting. One would be plenty of steel scrap (if steel is going to be the main metal you work on) of different thicknesses so that you can do a lot of practice welding and destructive testing. Spend time cutting test welds apart so you can see what you're getting, and beating them apart so you get a real feeling for how strong they are. The other thing I suggest that you get is a good video about MIG welding and study it. I would recommend one by Wall Mountain Welding which is both simple and comprehensive, but it's hard to find. I thought it was featured in its entire length on YouTube but it's mis-titled. It says MIG welding, but it's the one from the series about flux core welding.

I hope you find what you're looking for.

Stan
 
One thing to be considered:

Aluminum will weld great with a mig, albeit on a small scale you will want a spool gun.

However aluminum is very averse to any carbon in the weld and just a speck will ruin a weld. Personally I have a set of 'tools' for aluminum with stainless steel brushes for cleaning the surface and the weld in progress.

Also you can't really see the glow of the 'puddle' and you should have a good quality helmet and lenses to see what you are doing.

Good luck,

Brad Buchanan
 
(quoted from post at 15:42:20 11/12/18) David G; Several here have noted that MIG is much easier to learn and to use than TIG. That's not incorrect, but it's not the whole story, either. MIG welding is easy to do, but it's less easy to do well. By its nature MIG welding makes it easy to lay down good looking welds that have little penetration and therefore little strength. Besides getting yourself a good capable MIG welder, there are a couple of other things you should consider getting. One would be plenty of steel scrap (if steel is going to be the main metal you work on) of different thicknesses so that you can do a lot of practice welding and destructive testing. Spend time cutting test welds apart so you can see what you're getting, and beating them apart so you get a real feeling for how strong they are. The other thing I suggest that you get is a good video about MIG welding and study it. I would recommend one by Wall Mountain Welding which is both simple and comprehensive, but it's hard to find. I thought it was featured in its entire length on YouTube but it's mis-titled. It says MIG welding, but it's the one from the series about flux core welding.

I hope you find what you're looking for.

Stan

Well said Stan. Something else no one mentioned in that MIG wants CLEAN metal to weld. If you are doing farm welding through layers of rust, paint, manure, grease, dirt, etc. and the cleaning is limited to a wire brush or maybe a needle scaler (or maybe just a putty knife!) MIG isn't going to work real good. I learned that the hard way. That's were that cheap old stick welder earns it's keep. MIG is great on sheet goods, nice clean new metal stuff, up to maybe 1/4". After that I get the stick welder out and weld things together so they'll stay. Maybe a real good MIG guy can get deep penetration in metal over 1/4" or so, but I can't seem to. And stuff up around 1/2" or more is definitely in stick territory.
 
Bret4207; Your point that MIG requires clean metal is important. The metal should be bare and bright (if possible) where it's going to be welded and also where the ground clamp is placed. One thing that always puzzles me is what you bring up about the thickness of metal that a welder can weld in a single pass. It's a useful reference for comparison of different machines and different processes, but it's often treated as if it's an absolute limit. In a commercial setting, or in production, being able to complete the weld with a single pass is important. As a tool for occasional use in a home shop or on a farm it shouldn't be seen as so limiting if you have to make a second weld (or more) to complete the repair. I'm not familiar with every welding certification test, but the ones I've seen require multiple passes to completely join the test pieces. That's one of the uses where MIG outperforms stick. Every pass of stick has to be carefully chipped and wire brushed before the next one can be applied over it. There's no such requirement with MIG---each pass can go right on top of the previous one as soon as you're ready to do it. That's why it's also about fifty times as easy to patch a hole using MIG as it is using stick.

Stan
 
To say mig gets less penetration is
missleading at best, and
missinformation at worst. Penetration
is achieved by the welders setting and
is limited by the welders max output.
If he buys a 200+ amp welder it will he
perfectly capable of welding 1/2"
material. Most who have trouble with
penetration have bought a low output
welder. And the concern over needing
clean material for a mig is way over
blown. Just because you can burn
through rust and paint with stick does
not mean that the weld isn't
contaminated. Poor prep is poor prep
and the results are similar with just a
small advantage to stick. Where weld
strength is not critical I have welded
lots of dirty metal, including burning
through paint with mig.
 
(quoted from post at 14:52:56 11/14/18) Bret4207; Your point that MIG requires clean metal is important. The metal should be bare and bright (if possible) where it's going to be welded and also where the ground clamp is placed. One thing that always puzzles me is what you bring up about the thickness of metal that a welder can weld in a single pass. It's a useful reference for comparison of different machines and different processes, but it's often treated as if it's an absolute limit. In a commercial setting, or in production, being able to complete the weld with a single pass is important. As a tool for occasional use in a home shop or on a farm it shouldn't be seen as so limiting if you have to make a second weld (or more) to complete the repair. I'm not familiar with every welding certification test, but the ones I've seen require multiple passes to completely join the test pieces. That's one of the uses where MIG outperforms stick. Every pass of stick has to be carefully chipped and wire brushed before the next one can be applied over it. There's no such requirement with MIG---each pass can go right on top of the previous one as soon as you're ready to do it. That's why it's also about fifty times as easy to patch a hole using MIG as it is using stick.

Stan

I make multiple pass welds with the MIG all the time. It's getting the penetration that's the issue. MIG is a lot easier to use, but you still need to get the heat down deep.
 
(quoted from post at 15:10:58 11/14/18) To say mig gets less penetration is
missleading at best, and
missinformation at worst. Penetration
is achieved by the welders setting and
is limited by the welders max output.
If he buys a 200+ amp welder it will he
perfectly capable of welding 1/2"
material. Most who have trouble with
penetration have bought a low output
welder. And the concern over needing
clean material for a mig is way over
blown. Just because you can burn
through rust and paint with stick does
not mean that the weld isn't
contaminated. Poor prep is poor prep
and the results are similar with just a
small advantage to stick. Where weld
strength is not critical I have welded
lots of dirty metal, including burning
through paint with mig.

I agree that penetration can be done with MIG, but it's a different game than with stick. I'm using machines of about 170 amps. Maybe I'm just not getting things set right, but getting deep penetration with the MIG is a lot harder for me than with stick. As far as prep, I've yet to see a MIG machine that will do decent job on dirty metal. I guess you are probably a lot better at it than I am with MIG, so I'll never give up my stick machines.
 
Then you need a more powerful welder. I
can burn through 1/2" with mine, and if
the op buys what he said he will be
able to as well.
 

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Back
Top