Hi,

Can anyone recommend a good mig welder, I'm looking at buying the Clarke 151TE, Does anyone have experience of this?

What is the minimum ampage I should be looking for to safley weld a chassis?

Any advice appreciated.

Steve

Ive found that the ykey thing on MIG welders is tio get one that has a good quality wire feed mechanism. sadly, the only welders ive used with a really good wire feed are ESAB ones (£700 or so!!). The trouble is that the wire tends to slip on the rollers slightly, which leads to a spluttery weld.

You might do well to buy one (theyre cheaper then ESAB), and investigate the possibility of getting a steel wire feed spool made up by a machine shop, and have it diamond-knurled, or slightly roughened in some other way such that it grips the wire: constant feed.

Amps wise, errrrrm, probably about a 150 or so amp welder should do the trick: better to be turning the amps down than wishing you'd bought a bigger one and getting weak welds!

HTH

Ed.

A good point I read somewhere, (maybe on here) is to use the small wire spools on budget welders. Although a more expensive way to buy wire, the feed mechanism is more likely to be able to cope with the lower inertia of smaller spools.

Mick

damn right there mix, i bought a huge reel and it leaps and jumps badly. the small ones (3 or 4 inch) were fine.

im using a clark 135 i think, its fine for my chassis.

we have been using a sip mig mate 150t for welding stainless steel reinforcement cages for concrete, pretty much full power all day for ages and the only that has gone wrong is one of the many tips weve gone through fused itself to the swan neck, so had the replace that, which wasnt expensive.
also, i made trolly whereby we mounted a 15kg wire reel under the machine, fed in through a bit of airline through a hole in the back and it works fine.

mint machine.



Russ.

I'd say go for the smaller reels as well. If the build drags out (as they tend to do) the wire can go rusty which is no good. Better to use the small reels or if your not going to weld for a while take it out and put it somewhere is less likley to rust

and another thing, i've used at least 10 bottles of gas, probably more. Get a refillable one from the beginning!

I spent quite a while looking at migs and although I haven't used it yet I bought a Mig Mate 130T from Parker Tools

£129.99 + vat but has free delivery. This was the best price I found. Otherwise look out for a better unit secondhand in the local rag or free ads papers.

Cheers,

Ben