Gas Welding or MIG welding.

I have done already 3 hours of Arc Welding and 3 hours of MIG Welding.
It was really insteresting.

I have made my mind, I will spend about 15 hours in total in MIG Welding, and 12 in GAS.
So i will get a sense of both

Thansk a lot for your advice.

Get a MIG for goodness sake!

Cheap as chips and you'll get good results straight out of the box and excellent results after 12 hours practice at school, when you decide you want to go further and do other stuff then consider investing an awful lot of money in an Oxyfuel setup.

You'll get a Mig for the price of an Oxyfuel cylinder trolley

Good luck with the welding course superfly and have a load of fun


All the best, Jim

Hello Jim,

basically you get what you pay for, so a cheap MIG gives limited welding capability.

It entirely depends on how much work you need to do and for how many years.
I have used gas for very many years and would chose that over any other machine if I had to have only one type of welder. In view of the length of time, how long do these cheap machines last? I seem to see quite a few posts about faults with wire feed for instance?
Relative to that, I think I'm on my second acetylene regulator and just a few replacement nozzles in over twenty years use.

Alec
PS I fabricated my own trolley :-)

If cost is not an issue and, you have safe premises to store Oxy-Acet (safe as in, not stored to garage attached to house). Oxy-Acetylene is the way I would go for car restoration, as Hotrodder stated, with O&A you get a better eye and feel while welding, heating till weld pool is suffice, then continuing till weld is complete, if to hot, you can flick flame away to control weld pool.

Of course mig has its own benefits, for a newbie, there is very little control while welding thin material, point and squirt hoping not to blow through. There is also the added problem of getting a decent current return if material is rusty, then there is the problem of trying to weld rusty material. No such problem with O&A!

Cheers............

Hi superfly , I had both Gas and Mig but found at the time having to rent three bottles a bit expensive and after considering the positives and negatives of both I went for Mig , I can relax a little now knowing I haven't got a possible ' Acetylene Bomb ' in the garage also I found the Mig safer to use around cars as you don't have that Gas flame burning anything within a couple of feet of the torch With Gas you weld , do a bit of shaping , bit more welding and so on but the gas torch is on most of the time which is wasteful whereas with Mig it's only working when you pull the trigger.
Also generally you need 2 hands with Gas but only 1 with Mig ( providing you use a head shield ) and it is so handy to be able to position panels with one hand and tack with the other , the Mig is much more ' user friendly ' but I do miss the versatility of having Gas around .

Hi Alec,

Your points are all valid, I completely agree.

My reasoning is that someone completely new to welding will achieve better results faster with a MIG set. Good gas welding takes a lot of practice.

Incidentally did you know that you're supposed to bin oxyfuel regulators after 5 years now! I tried having a pair serviced recently and BOC wouldn't touch them. It took me ages to find a replacement gauge for one.

All the best, Jim

Hello Jim,

that's news to me, my acetylene is virtually new so I'll need to get a new oxygen one then?

Alec

Originally Posted by piman Hello Jim, that's news to me, my acetylene is virtually new so I'll need to get a new oxygen one then? Alec

If you ask the people who make regulators it would seem so, personally I'm sticking with the ones I've got as decent two stage regs are about £120 each, that's a lot of cash every five years

Here's a thingy about it, the bottom of the page is the 'five year rule'

http://www.proactivegassafety.com/co...ulator_fitting


Mine are of an unknown vintage and I haven't blown myself up yet, when I do I'll be sure to buy new ones. I do have decent flashback arrestors though and I can run like a stabbed cat.

All the best, Jim