Single Phase heavier duty-moving up

[ostosix]

Hi folks,
I want to do some smaller beams for my garage and wanted to move up to something with more power and duty cycle. Appreciate your thoughts?

Currently run a 180amp Cemont Maxistar bought new in 2005, and more recently thermal arc fabricator 200 s/h for anything from car panels to hobby fixing and making in my garage. Also a couple of decent DC Inverter stick machines. 16amp in garage but next garage will have power correctly sorted.

Welding one of my main hobbies so looking for some good pointers, thanks in advance. I like a good weld and happy to call myself serious but obviously recognise nothing like this brings me near a day2day pro.
Cheers

 

[Nick DV]

Hi folks,
I want to do some smaller beams for my garage and wanted to move up to something with more power and duty cycle. Appreciate your thoughts?

Currently run a 180amp Cemont Maxistar bought new in 2005, and more recently thermal arc fabricator 200 s/h for anything from car panels to hobby fixing and making in my garage. Also a couple of decent DC Inverter stick machines. 16amp in garage but next garage will have power correctly sorted.

Welding one of my main hobbies so looking for some good pointers, thanks in advance. I like a good weld and happy to call myself serious but obviously recognise nothing like this brings me near a day2day pro.
Cheers

If the machine is for workshop only, you can't go far wrong with Oxford. Good range of machines and go low enough for car stuff. Give @Tom Orrow L a shout on this forum and he'll sort you out and give you a discount.

 

[ostosix]

Hi yes will be workshop only, i have previously thought about big oxford machine for when my new garage is built as it’ll have high power line big socket etc.
For medium term i might go up to around 250amps, second hand.
Any thoughts?

 

[Nick DV]

I have the Oxford 240 amp and it’s a great machine

 

[Rrobson]

You need to decide what your budget is and what thickness you want to weld first then go from there.
I wanted to mig up to 10mm so I bought a 250a set to cover it. Mines a fairly old and abused Tec arc 251 but it works well, is nice and simple being transformer based and has a good range of settings. It was very reasonably priced so I’d recommend one if your on a tight budget but modern welders have loads more features. I can’t (very easily) swap polarity so can’t run gas-less wire for example where as most modern welders support this but in this situation I’d just get the stick welder out.

 

[ostosix]

I presume you all agree the transformer models are timeless and very little to go wrong so thats defo where im at.

Im surprised how they don't hold value very well considering the cost of new machines.

 

[Tom Orrow L]

I've got a Technical Arc Prof MIG C251 in stock that'd be suitable for you

 

[ostosix]

Hi Tom thank-you for coming back. I have actually just got hold of a s/h cemont compact 265. Can’t wait to have a play