Andrew Robson
Member
- Messages
- 102
- Location
- Colchester UK
hello, new to mig welding and pretty new on this forum.
The choice of welding equipment is to be honest quite bewildering. I restore classic cars and am looking to purchase a new mig welder.
I can and do gas weld but I want to be able to use Mig when required.
I have an older Cebora 130 Turbo which has been OK on thicker metals but I am struggling with it on the thinner metal I tend to work on, this may be due to my lack of experience but rather than keep fighting with it I would prefer to start fresh with a new machine and work from there.
After having done some research I was leaning towards an inverter machine as they are capable of welding at much lower amp ratings and I fairly frequently want to leave as much of the original panel metal as possible and it is often a little thinner than it used to be in places. Reading a few posts on here I had sort of decided on a thermal arc fabricator 181i.
However I also like the look of the Oxford mig maker 180-1 machine which has the big (for me) attraction of being a UK built machine. Obviously they are transformer machines so I won't get the "three for the price of one" deal.
My understanding is that the inverter machines I have looked at drop down to 10A would do what I want them to do, while the Oxford one only drops down to 20A, Just how thin could I practically weld with the Oxford.
Another question on the thermal arc, I just noticed that in the specs it specs 5A-180A, Is that across all three types of weld processes the machine does, if so that's the lowest power mig I have seen so far and may just seal the deal
Cheers,
Andrew
The choice of welding equipment is to be honest quite bewildering. I restore classic cars and am looking to purchase a new mig welder.
I can and do gas weld but I want to be able to use Mig when required.
I have an older Cebora 130 Turbo which has been OK on thicker metals but I am struggling with it on the thinner metal I tend to work on, this may be due to my lack of experience but rather than keep fighting with it I would prefer to start fresh with a new machine and work from there.
After having done some research I was leaning towards an inverter machine as they are capable of welding at much lower amp ratings and I fairly frequently want to leave as much of the original panel metal as possible and it is often a little thinner than it used to be in places. Reading a few posts on here I had sort of decided on a thermal arc fabricator 181i.
However I also like the look of the Oxford mig maker 180-1 machine which has the big (for me) attraction of being a UK built machine. Obviously they are transformer machines so I won't get the "three for the price of one" deal.
My understanding is that the inverter machines I have looked at drop down to 10A would do what I want them to do, while the Oxford one only drops down to 20A, Just how thin could I practically weld with the Oxford.
Another question on the thermal arc, I just noticed that in the specs it specs 5A-180A, Is that across all three types of weld processes the machine does, if so that's the lowest power mig I have seen so far and may just seal the deal
Cheers,
Andrew