"Andy Dingley" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 23:33:48 +0100, Heds
wrote:
My budget is limited to around the £50 mark,
That's just not enough. You need the angle grinder, the box of disks,
the automatic hat, the gas bottle hire/disposable and all the rest of
it. You _can_ get a S/H MIG for 50 quid, but they're less than
wonderful. IMHO a decent MIG is 250 and a real one is 500.
Agreed - even many MIGs around 250 ish are pretty poor, and you have to pay
500 ish to get a good, reliable machine with decent power, a wire feed which
works all the time and a "EuroTorch" connector to allow easy replacement of
the torch when you break the one which comes with it.
I battled with a cheap machine for years and hired a pro machine for bigger
work. Eventually I gave up with this arrangement and bought a decent pro
machine and have never looked back.
Also factor in hire of "Argonshield" from BOC - the disposable cylinders are
a waste of time as expensive and only hold a tiny amount of gas.
On a budget limited to £50, I'd get a S/H natural draught gas torch
from eBay, some tinsnips, hammers and mallets, a half-empty propane
cylinder (2,50 from the council dump) and an immersion heater (tenner)
from the same place. Then take up coppersmithing, which is just as
much fun as welding steel and a lot less demanding on tooling.
and it will be used for
mostly artistic work & small repairs, nothing requiring any perfect seams.
MIG rather than stick. Stick is certainly cheaper to pick a machine
up for, but it's just not a practical tool to use for almost anything.
I used to weld years ago with an Oxy and Mig, although I found the
plasma cutter to be the most fun,
Yes, well it would be 8-)
this was at the Edinburgh Sculpture
Workshops so I had access to all of their equipment.
So go back there, or local equivalent. Whereabouts are you ?
I have seen an 185 Amp Oxford Arc Welder locally. Would this suit my
needs?
It would eat up your budget and leave you with something that's
useless on anything less than 1/8" plate and only really useful for
over 1/4". Neither sort of metal being the sort of stuff you can cut
witht the tools budget you'd have left over.
Yup - MIG will weld thin plate, ARC (stick) won't.
Alan.
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