Why did I wait so long?

[Mr Fro]

I thought I'd have a "quick" go on my new CWS machine last night. It was only MMA as I'm still struggling with BOC.

20 or so rods later and I was cursing myself for waiting this long to upgrade from my buzz box. The rods are soooo easy to start and lay a superb bead that the slag nudges off of with the lightest of touch. All those tricky fillet welds that were a pain previously are an absolute dream now.

Spatter is minimal, penetration is great and I had zero thermal cut outs in the 20 odd rods I munched through pretty much continuously.

the only down side is that I looked at the welds on my newly fabbed trailer and thought "Hmm, I can do so much better now" so I'll probably grind all the old ones out and re-weld the lot.

This is genuinely the first time in my life where it has been the tool that let the workman down!

 

[Badger1bear]

You get what you pay for

 

[Jim Davey]

Buzz boxes can be ok, but so many are a complete waste of money.

 

[I'm getting on a bit]

Well I think people should be banned from using an inverter until they have done 5 years on a buzzbox.

 

[Mr Fro]

Well I think people should be banned from using an inverter until they have done 5 years on a buzzbox.

Ha! True - I think the agony of achieving a reasonable weld with a buzz box has translated to a good weld on a decent machine. That doesn't claim back the hours of my life I wasted waiting for it to cool down though... ;-)

 

[Bill Edwards]

Ha, very true!
I do think that using a buzz box has probably done a lot of my welding, but the cooling down times...

 

[Karl Cockburn]

I think you were right to upgrade when you did from a buzz box, as long as you were confident to and had sufficient experience