welder portable for sale?

want cheap welder

Cheapest welders are found at:

Note: "want cheap welder" is rather different from "want to weld". A cheap welder from HF might do what you want to do just fine.

Where are you?

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Most of the welders I know are easy, but not cheap.

The rest aren't cheap or easy, but claim that they can be had!

:-)

Cheers Trevor Jones

Those HF ones are ok if you don't weld with them :) I think they are meant to put on a shelf in the garage for when the wives are in the house having a tupperware party you can take their husbands in the garage and "yea I got me a welder, arr, arr"

Home Depot sells a small 110v Lincoln one for $250, it works great but it limited to only one size of wire and since it feeds the wire quite a ways you can't get aluminum to feed through without jaming. if you got 220 you can get a stick welder or move up to 350 or so and get a nicer wire welder.

A lot of people would probably look down on that little 110v one but I've shown things I made with it to people and they are all surprised at what that little guy can do, a smaller or older quality tool can do better than a cheap brand low quality new one.

I had an Italian-made Duo MIG 110 volt box from HF for a while. It actually did weld, not well, but it worked -- until it broke. I did a fair amount of autobody work with it. I replaced it with a Lincoln SP125+ 110-volt machine that works significantly better. The little

110-volt boxes are fine for up to 1/8" steel. Stick or a bigger MIG (220 volt) are better choices for 1/8" and above. The little boxes can do heavier than 1/8" with fluxcore, but it's very slow going. They're really great for sheet steel .090 down to 24 gage (.024"). My little SP125 is my first choice for that.

I keep an older Lincoln Weldpac 100 out in the service truck, along with .020 and .035 flux core. Works mighty fine on stuff up to 1/4" thick..or a bit more if you multipass.

Id be using gas instead of flux core..but the bottle is a pain in the ass banging around in the truck.

Gunner

"A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences."

- Proverbs 22:3

The diff between flux core and CO2 is not worth it . I make perfect welds with beverage CO2 . Flux core is dirty , especially from the worlds worst

LINCOLN !

HF has a new MIG .... abt $450 ? I need to peek inside see what it is made like ... I've had Century . The GS150 or is it 155 has a split core on transformer , STAY AWAY ! All 60hz transformers must be E and I !! You can not weld the 2 halves together , even a small gap will run the idle current up and create high leakage inductance , ruining the output volts !

BTW aws 6013 and 7014, 7024 are shit . They are made to lay down metal fast , which translates to shallow penetration . Shit , if i wanted that , id MIG it ! I use Atom Arc aws 6011 and get much better penetration . of course its inconvenient , you must grind out the scale ! FLEETWELD 35 does NOT work , toss it .

Gunner wrote:

Well..welding in strong winds makes flux core more attractive..as does not having to drag a bottle and regulator around in the back of a cap shell, along with 800lbs of tools.

At home..Ive (3) full C25 bottles (135cf size) and (2) full 20lb CO2 (plus the one on the MIG machine) bottles..and do nearly all my standard welding with CO2.

I got the bottles cheap at auctions, live where there is only one welding shop..over priced assholes..so tote em down to So. Cal for refills..and I hate running out on weekends..so keep a fair amount on hand. Ive even got a bottle of Tri-mix, though the only thing Ive done with it is fill balloons up for the grand daughter. Im needing another Argon bottle or two for the tigs...got my eye on a couple.

Anyone know if a bottle that has CO2 cast into the neck ring, can have the valve switched out and then use it for Argon?. Larger than a 135cf size. They are date stamped in the mid 1960s...so will need hydro..came out of a restaurants soft drink line. Guy has 3 of them..about 5' tall..."B" size? Wants $50 each for em

Gunner

Running around with gas bottles in the back of a vehicle all the time that are not properly secured - even if they're only inert CO2 and Argon bottles - is a bad idea. It makes you complacent...

And soon you toss Oxygen and Acetylene and Propane cylinders back there with the same reckless abandon - they go -*BOOM!!!*- real good. And the Cops and Firemen have to pick up your remains out of what's left of the car or truck with tweezers and a dustpan.

Go look at some of those "After" pictures at the supply house.

Look at the hydro pressure rating stamped in the codes on the neck - CO2 Bottles are only rated at 1800 PSI, because it's a liquid inside. Pretty sure Argon is pressurized instead of liquefied, and you need a

3500 4000 or 4500 PSI rated cylinder (depending on how much you want to stuff in) like for Oxygen and Nitrogen.

Look first, because in the old days they might have taken a 4500 PSI rated cylinder and changed the valve to use it for CO2, because they already had it. (Even new, the price difference was minimal.) Meaning you can swap it back.

$50 sounds like a decent deal, but check. Some places still use cylinder CO2 because they're too far out in the boonies to rate a liquid delivery into a cryostat. Call around the welding supplies down in the Big City first to see what the trade-in value is.

Make the sale contingent on passing Hydro, just in case.

And if there is a company name forged into the neck ring (even if they're long out of business) be prepared to have a fight getting them filled - or make the markings disappear first... ;-)

-->--

Welders need some leakage inductance so they don't blow breakers when they are momentarily shorted.

Penetrating further than the metal is thick is not always a good thing.

I picked up a Linc. SP100 a while back and have it loaded with fluxcore for now. It came with a gas reg kit on it but I have not sprung for a bottle yet.

I have been looking at making an adaptor to run a 20 oz paintball tank on the welder. While it would result in a fairly low cubic footage of gas on hand, I could store the bottle inside the welder box, and I can get refills on weekends if need be. I also us epaintball tanks on some of my airguns, so there is another use in the background as well.

With the 20 pound bottles at home, you could refill a paintball tank yourself for "road" use, and the weight is not out of hand.

Fluxcore is still the answer for windy conditions if stick is not available.

Cheers Trevor Jones

I strongly doubt it. Liquid CO2 runs about 800 PSIG at room temp, argon tanks are filled to 2150 PSIG here.

I think someone here already mentioned it, But, key to the whole conversion is going to be whether the tank is rated to take the same pressure as the tanks that take Argon are. Then is the thread sizes of the valve body itself.

There is actually some small hope in this. The working max pressure is stamped into the bottle along with a bunch of other info round the neck area.

CO2 is kind of a weird case. As Don says, it's about 800-900 psi and liquid under normal temperatures, when filled to the proper levels. Overfill the tank and get it warm (back of truck, trunk of car, etc) and the pressure can get really high, really fast. CO2 tanks for paintball have a burst disc on them that goes at 3000 psi, and while I have never had one go on me, I know that they do go. IIRC the same burst discs are used on fire extinguishers also.

The same place that can put the valve on the bottle and fill it is the place that will be able to tell you for sure if it can be safely done.

Cheers Trevor Jones