Hi all,
has anyone here had much experience with gassless mig welders, looking at getting a welder and like like th idea of not having to muck about with gas bottles.
cheers.

I've used the gasless wire (it has a core of flux) and it worked ok for odd jobs.

The down-side is that it generates a lot of smoke when welding, covers the work with a dusty brown deposit that is a pain to remove, and it doesn't produce as neat a weld as conventional MIG with gas.

The smoke can be quite unpleasant...

Welds aren't nearly as neat and tend to be more porous than gas shielded migs.

Having said that I've found that using cored wire gets a bit more heat into the job so allows better penetration when welding thicker jobs.

Stu

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Don't do it, it will have your heart broke.

Seem to remember the wire was fairly expensive too...

Tho suppose it all depends on where you buy it.

Moved over to Gas MIG and wouldnt go back

Gassless welders, any good?

imho No.

Didn't like it myself.

Bought an older Clarker with a roll of wire the size of an oil drum and managed to procure a cylinder of pub gas.

Have done 3mm thick angle for my hoist, 1.5mm for my engine mounts, 0.9mm for my exhaust all with this setup. I'm no welder at all, but I get a result shall we say.

i have never used a gasless mig, but have had friends how have, and the welds look horrible, and i think they are weaker. and the welders are normaly taken back from here they come from pretty quickly, and they get them selfs a proper mig's.

stuart

Horrible things, They give you more work aswell having to clean up the weld after.

mostly negative then, ok, thanks for the feedback fellas and have a good new year.
Cheers.

Gasless is actually better if you have to weld outside and it gives better penetrtion.
It is also easier because you don't have to learn how to set the gas flow.


Although not as pretty as proper Agron/Co2 mix welds the welds are fine --- but you must wire brush the weld properly between runs and you get more spatter which tends to be more difficult to remove than spatter from a CO2 mig weld,

The big difference between Gassless and true Mig welding is that the polarity is reversed, if you try gasless welding with the polarity set for true mig welding the results will be crap.

handy for tacking jobs i think. not keen on them for full welds.

horrible things, they spatter something awful and make your welds look like something a 6 year old would produce.

some say they are better if you are welding outside but personally i would just turn the gas flow up to keep the sheilding going or wait till its less windy.

only benefit is they take up less space and are more portable. quite handy for banger race meetings where bodged repairs between races are the norm. rubbish for anything else.

Works perfectly well, and is a godsend if you have to weld outdoors in a breeze.

It does leave a flux residue on the weld as mentioned, and the resulting bead isn't quite as nice as is possible with gas, but it's still possible to produce decent welds. Remeber to set the polarity corectly on the welder though, having this set incorrectly makes a surprising difference.

Utter crap