HF has their normally $150 welder on sale for 100 bucks.
LINK

I learned AC stick welding 50 years ago and am fairly good at it for a home gamer... (or was in the past when I used it more) won a regional welding contest once, high school level. I have an old copper wound 225 Lincoln AC only welder.

I do struggle with welding light weight stuff, thinner gauge tubing and such.

Do you think this would be a useful addition for light weight work or should I go for a better featured or more powerful one or etc? I thought maybe a flux core wire feed welder might be a good companion.

I know little of wire fed welder's except to add I don't currently see any need for welding aluminum and would prefer not to have to deal with a gas tank for what little I would use it.

I recommend you skip it and find a better quality rig.

It is hardly useful even for panels on 60's cars.

Floors are about 18 and the body about 21.

Floors are really tough to do with that rig, but you might be able to stitch body panels, but the finish is going to be all over the place, since it is barley adequate to penetrate and get good weld.
(I bought it when modding the transmission tunnel, and ended up borrowing a friend's rig to do the job)

You are either going to be too cold and have booger welds, or too hot and blow through. It frustrated me.

I have one, and only use it for tacking/anchoring things, doing whatever work and then separating the welds. Never use it to try and do finish welding.

If I needed to do more welding, I would spend the correct amount of money and get a proper rig.

I have a friend who has it, and I have used it. I am by no means a talented or trained welder. I am self taught.

I would spend the additional $70 and get this one below. It solves the "too cold, not enough penetration/too hot blow through" problem that Monkey describes. I had the same problem welding with the Chicago Electric. This Titanium 125 solves the problem.



My friend who originally had the one you propose replaced it with this one, and I have it as well.

It is easy to use, easy to set up, and has much better variable controls of both power and wire speed than the cheaper model. It's much easier to get good welds.

I used mine to build a heavy steel rake out of commercial mower blades and angle iron to pull grass mat and lily pad roots out of the lake behind my house. I have put thousands of pounds of load on the rake, and the welds have held just fine. I've bent the metal (3/16 to 1/4 thick in places) but not broken any welds.

For an inexpensive welder for farm repair and workshop use occasionally, or as a training tool, the Titanium 125 is an excellent welder. When you exceed it's capabilities, you are ready to drop many hundreds on a Lincoln, but this is an excellent starting point that yields very good results.

Thank you gentlemen! Exactly what I needed to know.
I'll pass for now and look again when my new shop is completed.

Get one that is gas shielded. I have a flux core welder and while it welds they are dirty and not very pretty.

I have a HF flux core welder. It’s ok for sheet metal around 18 ga but it’s pretty much a toy.

I have a small Lincoln, but regardless of which one you get, it seems that a good welder with crappy flux-core wire is worse than a cheap welder and good flux wire.

The cheapest way to get good flux core wire is to let friends borrow the unit and make them bring it back with a brand new spool of name-brand flux wire regardless of how much or little they use on the previous spool!

quote:

Originally posted by kg5388:
Get one that is gas shielded. I have a flux core welder and while it welds they are dirty and not very pretty.

+1000. I have a small Miller 120v unit that I use with Innershield because it is a grab and go and I just use it for little quick things, but if there is any way Ican the the job to the shop to use the SP-200 with gas shielding, that little Miller just gathers dust.

I have the Titanium 125 and it blows away any of the cheap transformer type wire welders I've had.

Think of it like a $150 new gun, and what that would mean.
There are reasons they are that cheap, none of them good.