Lets talk welders...

nosaj122081 said:
WORTH: Thanks for the tip, I'll shoot him an email. You got a steal on that one though, if I found one that size for that price it'd be hard to not snag it. Considering my welding shop tried to sell me the 135 for 200 more than that, I couldn't pass it up.

Honestly, I think AirGas is somehow affiliated with my local shop, maybe their parent company (their name is Valley). They sure haven't adopted their pricing though.

I am not only a beginning welder, I'm a never-have-welder... I have only watched, never participated. I've been reading online and seen that Hobart is owned by Miller and alot of the newer machines developed are lighter duty than previous.

he's very bad with communication, but he did come threw with the welder, it showed up today. He said 4 weeks and I ordered it on the 2nd.
 
I looked at one of the Lincoln Handy welders tonight '73, and wasn't too impressed with it... Felt like a toy, and the gun looked kinda cheap, and honestly, it looked (the controls at least) EXACTLY like the cheapo CH I saw later this evening at Wal-Mart. The bigger Lincolns (100 and 135) were nicer, but it seems like ALL the small migs now have finite voltage settings. The 100 and the 135 at Lowess looked to be pretty nice, I'm thinking about the 135, it was a little over 400 and it came with the regulator. The 100 was only about 100 bucks cheaper and didn't come with the gas kit, so in the end I figured it would cost about the same. I'm still looking at the Hobarts, the 140 can be had for about the same price, makes the same power, plus has a 20% duty cycle all the way up at 100A and is 100% by 40A. I just wish I could get away from the 4 position voltage selector on the 400ish dollar models.

I went to Sears, their selection was awful: a Lincoln 135, a Lincoln stick, and a oxy-acy setup... Disappointing as I really wanted to see a couple of their Craftsman models, their website is weak and they look to be not too bad welders.