Nearly finished a welding course at the local college and looking for a (maybe gasless) MIG budget welder for home/DIY occasional use on car panels and other odds and ends. Seen lots out there on ebay in the £100-200 range. Any recommendations? Been told Clarke are good budget ones. I appreciate they won’t be as good as the top end ones I have been using at the college.

Just kidnap one from outside barrow ship yard. Feed it a couple of rustler’s a day and itll be fine. Just be aware it’ll weld everything upside down.

I’d be interested in this too. I had a cheapish one about 10 years ago and it was pretty poor. I’m sure it’s was mostly my skills but I could produce much better welds with a friend’s pro welder. I was wondering if the cheaper ones had got better.

I have a Clarke 135TE that I’ve always been pretty happy with, it’s not as good as a professional quality welder but does the job just fine. If you can avoid a gassless welder I would as they are harder to get nice welds with. I think my welder was closer to £300 but you could wait until machine mart have a 20% off day.

I served my time as a plater (heavy steel fabrication) so I’ve been welding for 30 years.
I bought a sip set for about £250 and it was a pile from the day I got it.
Last year I bought a second hand snap on set off eBay for £350 and it’s bloody great!
I’d imagine the clarke to be in the same league as the sip.

Redstripe..
I’m interested in doing one of these courses. How did you get on with it? Could you do any welding before you started , or did you go into it blind ?
I’ve been in the structural steel game now for over 25 years but in a draughtsman role, so I know a fair bit of the theory etc, but have never engaged in the practical side.
Do you get a certificate at the end of it, or do they offer further courses to get you up to coded welder standard ?

Cheers

I’ve just been out in the garage and realised I’ve recommended the wrong welder, mine is actually one of these https://www.machinemart.co.uk/p/mig160tm-welder/. The cheap Sip welders do seem to get bad reviews, it might be worth looking at the forum on http://www.mig-welding.co.uk.

Whatever you do don’t buy a budget welder from the likes of clarke and especially SIP. For fun I learned to weld at work on big powerful expensive professional machines and fancied having a go at home building a kit car chassis. I borrowed a SIP gasless which was pretty much unusable and I borrowed a Clarke which was so under powered again it was unusable for what I wanted. The small gas bottles worked out so expensive and didn’t last 5 minutes.
In the end I bought a second hand oxford 160 mig. It cost £100 from the local classifieds. I then bought a large (4foot tall) co2 bottle from a local fire extinguisher supplier at £8 and a regulator for about £35. I could weld up to 6mm plate quite easily and the 2.5mm box section I was using was a doddle. It could also be turned down far enough to do 0.5mm steel but i didnt do much of that. Co2 is not as clean as a proper mix but easier to get hold of.
I found http://www.mig-welding.co.uk a really useful web site and forum and the general consensus is to not buy a cheap budget machine. It seems most of them are the same rubbish internals in a different outer shell. Aside from second hand I don’t really know what price a decent welder will cost. I would probably go to a dedicated welding supplies shop and ask some questions. I think Clarke and sip do produce some better quality machines higher up the price range.

Thanks for the info.
revs1972 – the course I’m doing is one evening a week for 6 weeks at the local college. Just basic intro to welding, not certificated but you can go on to do this. 6 of us on it, great tutor and plenty of good kit to use in their workshops. I only did some basic stick welding donkeys years ago so would say I’m a novice. Some people on the course had never done it before, but all are keen and getting on well. Some are hobbyists restoring cars, a couple of sculptor/artists too. Been using MIG, TIG and doing oxyacetylene and plasma cutting too and learning all about safety, set up and maintenance of kit. I’ve really enjoyed it and hopefully it will be handy for what I do, just need to get the right machine now…..

Snap on and BOC welders are made by cobra you will just pay for the badge. Sip are crap unless you by the pro ones look for something that will go down to 30amps for car body work if that’s your bag , do you think you will ever weld more than 6-8mm plate?
Not a fan of gas less wire unless your outside all day, and the cheaper welders will have trouble with the wire feed tubes locking up if you twist the gun even by the smallest amount but this can be sorted with bike brake cable believe it or not.
Best tip a proper masks bin the one that comes with the welder. Have fun

Out of curiosity, which collage? All the courses near me that I’ve found are for certificates and usually over 6 months and aimed at apprentices doing 1 day/afternoon a week.

List of things to do:
Braze bikes
Weld stainelss sheet into tanks

In all probability the latter is probably quite advanced and beyond an evening class even if all I need is it to be waterpoof!

I have also done one of these courses at Brooklands in Surrey. I was already fairly experienced with Mig and used the course to get aquatinted with the black art of Tig welding. With regard to buying a Mig welder, just don’t buy gasless as they’re useless. Utter cack. Spend what you can, try to get one with a regulator for a proper gas bottle and buying a decent second hand professional one would be a good bet (Murex or Cebora).
Just don’t buy gasless .
Good Luck !

We’ve got a GYS Smartmig 162 and it’s been flawless. Ok without gas, brilliant with it. Handles everything on a Defender and a 2CV, so that’s down from 6mm to tinfoil.
Hobbyweld do cylinders of argon/co2 that are rent free and last ages.
Have a look at weldequip.co.uk

thisisnotaspoon – Bournemouth & Poole College http://www.thecollege.co.uk/courses/basic-introduction-welding-mig-short-course

And as soon as you get it swap the earth clamp for a better one