I'm looking for a good beginner's welder to do small projects. The floors are way above my skill level (none), but I do have to replace the battery area and fill in some holes. Any suggestions on the type of welder I should buy?
I have a lincoln pro mig 135 that I bought on advice of people that know about welding. I havent done any car work with it yet but it was the main criteria to buying a welder.
Welder,cart& gas gauges 435$ @ lowes.
I have a Lincoln series 100 which is a 110vac mig welder and it works great for panel welding. I tried flux core wire which is a waste of time. It pops too much. I perfer gas, argon/carbon dioxide and .025 solid core wire. I have replaced both floor pans, battery apron, tail light panel with this welder with good results. It only has a 20% duty cycle, but thats good so you don't get too much heat into the panel. When you reach the 20% mark the switch in the handle open up so you are forced to stop welding until the handle cools down.
woa, OPPS... sorry man, i'm completely misread that. my fault sorry, i'll delete it.
I thought he ment because i need to do alot of body work and i very extreamly little experiance and all everyone (minus a few people) is telling me is that i shuldn't do it, even though i have no choice in the matter. anyway, sorry man.
as for the welder mig is the best to start out with, just make sure to practice a lot though. as for the duty cycle you want a high %, generally 80-90% is the highest u'll find, but 60-70% is great. there are a lot of "cheaper"15-25% cycle too, there good but you can only weld for about 2 min out of 10min! i dunno, thats just not enough for me. anyway good luck man!
Don't get too caught up in duty cycle, especially if you're just starting out. You'll find that you only spend 5% of your time actually welding. Most of it will be in fitting, checking, adjusting, more checking, a few spot welds, more checking, and finally a bit of welding...
You also don't want to do alot of welding at one time on sheet metal, because you'll warp the panels.
I'd recommend you search local pawn shops for a nice wire feed/mig welder. You'll save some money. The small 110v units at Lowes's are also good starter kits.
That 135 mig unit that Lowes sells is what I went with, and even with the 20% duty cycle it has proven to be a great little welder. I rent the gas bottle to mig weld with and have used flux core too. It is a little messy!
The best thing I found about having the 110v welder is that a very heavy drop cord and you can move anywhere around the shop to weld!