No gas mig - any good?

Hi,

I bought a cheapo B&Q mig unit recently, one of the gas/gasless ones, which ought ot be comparable to what's on ebay.

It's been a while since I learnt mig welding: being cheap, I tried the gasless wire first. It was extremely messy - metal blobs, oxides and fluxy stuff sprays all over the work & I couldn't get a neat weld. So I switched to gas/plain wire and found it much easier to handle... I'd recommend gas if, like me, you're short on experience.

Quality on the cheap welders seems quite adequate, as long as you don't expect too much. I found the wire feed motor on mine feeds erratically at low current settings; probably need to use thinner gauge wire >:)

hth Guy

One thing to watch out for with them is that the wire is seriously expensive compared with non-fluxcore wire. I have used fluxcore on a couple of occasions and got acceptable results with it, but I wouldn't use it by choice in circumstances where MIG was ok.

The price difference between the gas and gasless welders is small enough that you would soon recoup the cost of the gas type from the lower cost of wire.

HTH

Mark Rand RTFM