- Thread starter raycas
- Start date
irondarren
Member
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First thing is what are you willing to spend, the more your willing to spend the better the machine you will get. Second how thick material will you be welding, the thicker it is the more power you need a 180 amp machine will do 5-6mm thick, i guess military vehciles will be thicker than cars. Bear in mind with your budget you will need a welding helmet, glooves, grinder, safety glasses, those extra bits if you dont have them will set you back another £100, for anything of reasonable quality
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Surely you'd need a pretty serious machine for restoring military vehicles? I have a Portamig 361 which goes from 40 to 360A and runs on single phase. It wasn't cheap though, cost me well over £1000 but is an awesome machine. What is the thickest steel you need to weld? Really you need to take the manufacturers claimed max thickness and add a good 50% to it.
Weldingartisan
Aiming for retirement
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If you are likely to be welding armour plate and thick sections, MMA is probably the best way to go as you can buy small quantities of special electrodes. An inverter set will give you DC TIG as well. If it's mainly Landy type vehicles MIG would be better. W/A
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What are you welding at home woz to need 360 amps, Rare I ever run my machines there??? just curious..
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I do the odd bit of fabrication for a mate, brackets, post shoes etc. mostly in 6mm plate. A while back i was asked to make several quite large post shoes out of 6mm plate and pretty much ran my butters 211 flat out in the process, getting very frustated with the thermal o/l cutting in all the time so decided it wasn't suitable and that I needed something bigger. The Portamig seemed like the right choice and I was in a position to afford to spend that sort of money at the time. Now I have a machine that will cope with everything I'm ever likely to throw at it 
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How longs a piece of string really... prep plan, wire size, wire type...position, blah blah blah... Normaly Mig welding figures are quoted in OCV which is the voltage across the torch before an arc is struck.... TBH with a couple of the sets I own, I have little idea of what there even top end on, but as a genral rule on much of the plate work im at around the 36/ 37volt mark, in the flat..less with flux cored wire..and uphill(vert) which Id guess would be 220-230 amps...The big set has an huge setable choke which really grunches the weld in... much diffrent to a light industrial or hobby machine which figure's, cycles and approx amps seem to be on a whole diffrent chart...1" plate up and I still like to run in with the stick.
