Looking to get a welder to help with jobs around the farm like gates, hinges, maybe some sculptures! and most importantly the land rover!

I’ve done a fair bit of research saying a gas mig is the way to go.

I thought I’d have a check on here with the wise guru’s before splurging on a 160amp clarke gas mig.

Any advice appreciated

A Gas MIG is a damn good welder but maybe a traditional ARC welder would be the best do-it-all welder. Especially if you will be welding outdoors – the Gas shield on a MIG maybe blown away from the weld.

It depends on what you’re trying to weld – how thin/thick is the material you anticipate welding?

Ark for dirty but strong. Mig for clean and strong. But not gasless it’s pants. If you go mig buy slightly bigger than you need but make sure the fuse board will take it.160 amp is fine.
If your on a farm your electricity supply should handle that.

It will all be done in a garage and the gas’d versions where what I read as being much cleaner.

When the specs say about the thickness the welder can work to is that it’s penetration? for example if it says 4mm … can I penetrate 4mm into a 10mm thick sheet of steel? or is it what it sounds like… it won’t work on a sheet any thicker than 4mm in total?

Any advices for brands that are around the £300 mark?

Thanks

Stop that, it’s ‘gassed’.

Buy as big as you can afford and house cos you’ll always find something that needs more poke to weld and the more powerful ones can be used to make a mess of ally as well.

Generally if it says it will weld 4mm/5mm/6mm/whatever, it means that it will give a good weld on that thickness material. You could tack thicker stuff togther using it though.

R-Tech do some useful stuff, we had a 160A AC/DC TIG from them and the customer support was very good.

http://www.r-techwelding.co.uk/welding_equipment/Mig_Welder

I use both mig and tig/arc in work, mig is 300 amp and good for anything you throw at it.
Arc/tig unit is a chinese special but very good, up to 200 amps i think.

Get bigger than you need imo, will come a time when you need to crank it up and with a 160 the option isnt there mate!

Thanks for the link and advice 🙂

The issue with going above 160ish is that you start looking nearer 500/600 for something that has the lower end being suitable for thin metal no?

Arc seems a lot cheaper to get started – is my budget maybe better suited to an arc or tig setup?

I wouldn’t like to use an arc set on car bodywork.

I’ll second R-Tech for decent kit and good customer services.

Our mig has taken over the arc/tig for pretty much everything and can go down in power to weld 1mm or just under if needed, our tig is used for stainless and alloy really.
Arc is still the strongest weld available if done right so is used time to time when a critical joint is needed.

Mig with cougar argon for all round stuff is the best, hope this helps!

When the specs say about the thickness the welder can work to is that it’s penetration?

some manufacturers can be very generous with their specs and when the say “4mm” or “6mm” for budget machines these will be at the very outer limits of what the machine could maybe do if you prepped the metal as much as possible – bevel the edges etc

Some examples here – where a reviewer compares a machines capabilities to the manufacturers claims

For 300quid i will recomend what i got ….

Clarke 151turbo.

Not yet met anything it cant cope with and its been well used.- see the i am man defender thread 😉

Get rid of the poxy small gas bottles and get a hobby weld or a adams gas cylinder ( or if your using it heavy get a boc account ) and get 5% argon unless your doing exclusively thick plate weldimg in which case get co2

Keep it simple and go for stick (MMA). I would only recommend MIG if you’re doing lots, have long runs, or for speed. With MIG you’ve to bother about the tips, gas and making sure the wire doesn’t rust. It can be a faff if you want to use different size wire too.
For the kind of jobs you mention, nothing’s simpler than switching the machine on, picking what size rod to use and getting on with it.

Where can you get welding bottles from? Not the machine mart little ones but the bigger sized bottles.

R-Tech supply welding gas in various size bottles with no need for a contract (unlike BOC). No, I don’t work for them.

Here I come with my two penny……I’ll start by telling you that welding has been my profession for the last 16 yrs since I finished my city and guilds. From my experience nobody in their right minds would want to weld thin sheet with MMA. It’s very hard to control, especially for the inexperienced. So if you want to weld car panels you really want a proper mig set with an argon co2 gas mix. If you can stretch to getting a set with an inverter and a torch with a euro style connector (not hard wired to the machine) the experience will be much less painful. As has been said get the biggest and best that you can justify, you won’t regret it.
Boc or air liquide are the main choices for gas. Their should be a dealer nearby, prices vary massively so try to get them to compete.
As a side note: no one type of welding is any stronger than any other if properly executed.

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask, cheap welders are just like cheap bikes. You could race dh on a £99 bike but would you enjoy it? Would you expect to get good results? Would you take the same bike out on a sportive?

Bigdean look up hobby weld or adams gas

Farmer here and Land Rover enthusiast so I know where you are coming from. I have both a good quality Arc welder and a good (old green Oxford) Mig too. I have done a lot of welding over the past 30 odd years!

First question. Do you have 3 phase electric?

In any case if you are going to tacle anything less than 3mm (and you will be if you have to weld a Landrover bulkhead of chassis) then you will NEED a mig. The great thing about the MIG is it will also do all those other jobs around the farm that an Arc might be marginally better suited to. The secret is to go big and to get a good duty cylce. The latter is very important. If you get a 160 amp welder and the small print says it has a 5% duty cycle at 160amp (many cheap ones do) then it will onbly weld at 160 amsp for 5 minutes before it needs a 95 minute rest to cool down. To be anywhere near useful for farm work you will be wanting something that has at least a 50% duty cyle at 160 amps. Trouble is that costs! You will not get much of a welder worth having for under £500 unless you buy second hand. And here is the good news if you answered yes to the question above about 3 phase. There are some fantastic bargains to had on 3 phase welders that will be far superior to a cheap single phase machine and probably cost less.

And whatever you buy make sure it has a Euro torch (the cheap ones won’t)

And finally there are good deals to be had for welding gas (Argosheild type) from your local motor factors (Adams Gas) or, I am led to believe, from BOC as well now. You should be able to get a bottle on a deposit but without an annual rental fee and simply exchange it for a full one when needed. Do not get hooked into a rental contract with BOC whatever you do.

Hope this helps.

PS on the last welding job I was on I got the use of some new inverter migs. They were excellent, powerful, and lightweight but I bet they are expensive!