Oh, I'm pretty good at sharpening tungsten. Spend more time doing that than welding..
Oh, I'm pretty good at sharpening tungsten. Spend more time doing that than welding..
MIG, without a doubt. Use flux core wire and you won’t have to worry about a gas bottle till after you get good welding.
Id say that depends on which one you think you will use the most. What are you hoping to be able to weld when you learn how to? If its welding up pipe fence or other forms of heavy wall outdoor welding, arc welding would be the most beneficial. Welding steel indoors or in a place you can effectively block the wind from, go for MIG. Fancy fabrication stuff indoors or various alloys or aluminum, go for TIG. Its not hard to learn any form of welding if you have a good mechanical aptitude and hand coordination, but it will be hard to get really good if you learn a method you dont use very much.
Actually, flux core MIG welding is recommended for windy situations. I’ve welded outside in a good breeze with flux core with no issues at all.
Good to know. I have only every MIG welded with gas. The only arc welding I ever did was 5G certification many moons ago and building pipe fence using a huge trailer style arc welder/generator.
So taking that into account, MIG may be the most flexible for a hobbyist welder. Starting with flux core would let you focus on your welding pace and torch movement along with the feed speed without having to tinker with gas flow rate or blowing through bottles and having to wait to get them refilled. MIG is also great for about any kind of sheet metal fabrication and industrial or farm looking furniture and whatnot. Outside of exhaust and intercooler piping, Ive done mostly MIG for automotive stuff too.
MiG is the most useful as far as a garage shop type environment and tig but fo any heavy duty welding I would use stick you can use tig with a breeze blowing with a Juno cup and your gas pressure turned up. Tig welding is just as easy to do as the others and makes a pretty weld without much or any cleanup
For working on rusty things covered in cow crap outside, I prefer a stick welder. I don’t wanna fool with hookin a mig to an engine drive and dealing with the shuffling of everything to stay in range of a mig gun. For most everything else I prefer mig. It’s nice not having to keep a pocket full of rod. I am becoming quite fond of the tig for precise welds and the fact that you can control how much and when/where you put the filler. Another great thing about tig is no sparks
I will say I learned on a stick machine and I believe there’s less variables and stuff to mess up. Like mig tips and tig tungsten
I will say I learned on a stick machine and I believe there’s less variables and stuff to mess up. Like mig tips and tig tungsten
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loads folks start on lowly 220 AC lincoln stick welder
new retail is $340 .. so craiglist should be about 1/2 of that if one digs
look for the AC/DC version .. new retail $630 .. if you can find one for 1/2 that jump it.
then sell it, get your $$ back when you are ready to move on.
what you really want for a keeper an original Lincoln Tombstone Idealarc 220amp ac/dc
which used to pop up for $300 range .. have lost track what they are selling for now
ebay at $700 range .. amazing how smooth these old Idealarc stick weld .. some run high frequency units on these old tombstone and tig.
new retail is $340 .. so craiglist should be about 1/2 of that if one digs
look for the AC/DC version .. new retail $630 .. if you can find one for 1/2 that jump it.
then sell it, get your $$ back when you are ready to move on.
what you really want for a keeper an original Lincoln Tombstone Idealarc 220amp ac/dc
which used to pop up for $300 range .. have lost track what they are selling for now
ebay at $700 range .. amazing how smooth these old Idealarc stick weld .. some run high frequency units on these old tombstone and tig.
