sen2two

i taught myself to weld on a Lincoln 110v welder like dac was refering to... you quickly outgrow that kind of welder. they leave spatter everywhere.



i moved onto a 220v MIG. its a 180EN Clarke. very nice welder for the price. check out weldingdepot.com it will do steel and aluminum with a change of wire. also do flux cored with switching the electrode cables around, and a wire change. no gas needed there.



but...as i figured out. you can only get so far teaching yourself. i thought i was a good welder. until i started going to welding school. now im becoming a good welder/fabricator.



eberything else i would of said was covered already... good luck. welding is fun.

cairns_boi

stick welder - dont get one for wat u want it wudnt work for a beginner wanting to do wat u wanna do.

TIG - u wud only get frustrated with, although it wud be the best option for wat u want.

MIG - this is wat u want my friend, eay as **** to learn and use just setting it up will be ur biggest hurdle and also u will need to be able to identify mistakes and know how to correct them otherwise u will be wasting ur time. with MIG its not hard, most of the time its no gas, too hot/cold and wire speed too high/low. all problems easily fixed.



iv never wleded aluminium or stainless with mig as tig is much more efficient so i cudnt tell u how those welds wud come out.

fc3s4utnv

English is not your first language is it?



Stick to mig.. take it slow, remember that you are not going in a straight line that you need to double back you can do "o's" or "c's". C's seem to work better for me and the weld will turn out cleaner because you are not doubling back on a weld that has already started to cool, that is if you are using gas... flux you really need to do c's instead of o's because you don't have the shielding gas.

Lynn E. Hanover

Take a welding course at a local trade school or college. Usually not expensive. They will have all forms of equipment and you will get instruction on all of them. There are worlds of difference even in any one of the forms of equipment. Wire feeders used to be straight down welding for trailers and rusty farm equipment. Now computer controlled wire feeders do nearly all fabrication welding on cars, and almost all mass produced products. Wire feeders use the filler wire to sustain the arc, and are called MIG welders, for Metal Inert Gas. For metal arc in Inert Gas. I have a 600 amp Hobart TIG welder that can do AC stick welding. DC straight and reverse polairity stick welding. All can run with a high frequency riding on that current for easy arc starting, and of course, AC,DC and DCRP, TIG, with inert gas curtain. The TIG means the arc is from the work to a Tungsten electrode. You control the arc heat with a foot pedal. Once you have gas welding experience, TIG welding comes easy. Mig is even used to weld very thin walled tubing in airplanes. This requires great skill, and 4130 filler wire, in a gas curtain.



Only TIG is used on the pro built race cars. It limits the area being heated, so distortion is minimal, and the weld quality is the very best available. You can weld mild steel, alloy steel. Usually 4130 Cromally or Moly in street talk. Race cars are made of SAE 4130 alloy. If you must overheat a joint, you drape it with a ceramic cloth, so it cannot air cool too fast. Otherwise it can get overly hard and loose strength.

It can also crack if allowed to air cool. I use gas welding on 4130 and drape everything. I have never lost a weld.



TIG comes in two general forms. One is the gas cooled torch, where the curtain gas flow rate is high enough to absorb excess heat from the tungsten, and gas cup. Used in light applications, where long runs of weld is not done, and duty cycles are short. Welding thick material is difficult without a pause between welds. This system uses a lot of expensive curtain gas. Usually CO-2 for steels, or Argon for aluminum and steel. Water cooled torches can be used continously and are found in production shops and on robot welders. A pump and coolant tank sits beside the welder and the water is pumped through the torch head to maintain low temps in the tungsten. I had both systems, but now have just a gas cooled hand set as I no longer build race cars, or repair parts for them.



There is nothing like sitting in a room and being taught how to do it right. Go to school.



If you can, buy a new welder or welding set for gas welding. You can weld aluminum with gas as well as steel. You can also form metal and bend tubing with a gas set. And the gas set is the lowest price way to start.



Lynn E. Hanover

defprun

The only problem with brazing is doing it upside down! I love brazing it's easy, affordable and I got started on like 50 bucks without having to rent giant gas containers...but that will be the next step for me. You really can't go wrong with brazing once you get it right its easy to keep pretty beads going.

defprun

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wanglerrx7

110 is fine for welding thin metal. you can get away with welding thicker metals with it if you bevel the material at the joint. as far as a 220 goes yes there better. you would have to run 220 to your work area and the wire needed for 220 is extremely expensive. look at a welding supply company (airgas. praxair. ck supply) they will useally have demo models for sale or used units. my advice is this. if you want to buy a welder that will do just about everything you need get a miller 250 series. the reason i say this is the wire roll is contanded in the machine leaving you with more room. you don't have to worry about a seprate wire feeder. the other reson is if you would like to work on aluminium which most of us do considering weight is allways a issue you can get a spool gun atachment. the spool guns for the miller machines are way way better than the lincolns. trust me on that i built paint platforms for the air force with a spool gun and the lincoln units gathered dust in the corner. but remember just buying the welder isnt the whole cost. welding machine+220 wire+gas bottle rental and fill+the welding wire(try esab x series)+spool gun . your looking at a pretty hefty bill. btw i am a welder by trade.