Buying a 10 year old MIG Machine

I checked today, as I thought it was bigger but my small MIG is a SP100 from back in the mid to early 80's at least. I bought it used in '92, from the 2d owner who had it 7 years. And its a good'en, still in great shape even though the paint has faded to a kind of pinkish color instead of the original bright red. It will handle .035 hard or flux cored wire easy. In fact with this size wire I can easily get burn through on 1/8" steel, if I don't keep it moving. This is on "D-3" setting. It won't feed aluminum wire worth a damn even with a Teflon liner, and new rollers, but it makes some hell of beautiful welds with mix and stainless wire or CO2 and flux cored. Heck I have used it with CO2, and flux cored wire to bridge some big gaps using old 1/8th and 3/32d, 6010 and 6011 rods with damp flaking flux on them for filler.

Of course the secret is to have a good power source. I have 440v ran to my shop, then break it down to 220v going to five outlet boxes, each with its own run of 8 gage wire. At the outlet boxes I have one 220v 50amp, one 120v

20amp, and one 120v15amp outlet. My lathe, mill, band saw, grinder and air compressor are all hard wired to a different circuit. This keeps voltage drops to a minimum. Of course I have to pay a little extra for three meters. (House, boat/wood/welding shop, and machine shop w/central Air.) But it is worth it, with good power everything works like it is supposed to.
Reply to
Diamond Jim
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Reply to
RoyJ

The transformer is on the side of the building. We are members of a very small electric co-op.We didn't get electricity until 1960, and phone service until 1965. Up until about 15 years ago all of our electricity was generated by diesel generators. The first two were surplus from some kind of navy ship. Power used to go off at 11 pm and come back on at 5 am for the first few years. In 1990 they finally laid a cable to the island and hooked the co-op up to the power grid when they built a bridge. Before that everything came by boat. And then we had to threatened them with lawsuits, as they said the co-op wasn't big enough and we would have to sign up a individual customers and they wanted a young fortune, saying that everything had to be re-done to their specs. Heck we just got cable TV (after the first week there is nothing on worth watching) and our first cell phone tower.

Reply to
Diamond Jim

The last CdnTire flyer I saw (think its valid right now) hada Lincoln WeldPak 150 for $ 599.00 Last month the 100 was on sale there for $ 349 IIRC

Reply to
Rudy

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