I have been looking at welders to weld some stuff for my car like holes from the spoiler, rust holes and few other things, I have come down to these three welders and dont know what one would be the best one. So I hope someone on here could help. Here are the links.

http://store.weldingdepot.com/cgi/we...WE6523P-7.html
or
http://hobartwelders.com/products/handler140.html (for $419 at local farm store)
or
Lincoln Weld Pack 10 for 419 at Menards MIG ready (cant find a link for it)

 

Any of those should be sufficient, remember, you get what you pay for. I'd go with the Lincoln

You most likly want to use gas and a solid core wire for a cleaner weld

 

Yeah I was most definatly going to use gas but didnt know what welder to get....I was kida leaning more towards the Hobart because I know they are a good brand and so is Lincoln.

 

I have the Hobart 180 which is bigger than the ones your looking at, but can at least say that I am pleased with the Hobarts performance. Before I bought it I barrowwed a Lincoln 110 volt wire feed and it did great for a small welder. Definately get the gas setup. Either one of the big 3 ( Lincoln, Hobart, or Miller) would be great for what you want.

 

my first welder was the weld pak 100. Did a ton of welding with it. Last night just bought the weld pack 3200. If u are going to get a welder go with that one. From home depot its 459.00 and comes with everything to hook up a tank.. the weld pack 100 u have to buy all that stuff. I have never used a hobart. And that other one I would stay away from.

 

Miller makes THE BEST welder out there

If I were you, Id watch local schools and welding shop surplus sales

Get a nice mig/stick combo welder REALLY cheap

 

yeah miller the best if u wanna spend 800 bucks. All the milllers i have use I don't like. But I learned on a lincoln. So that why I think i like them better

 

We have a Miller MIG at school and I like it, we also have a Lincoln MIG but it is a little bigger and I like it a little better, We also have new Miller TIG and I love it, I just have to get the hange of using it. We also have a few more MIG welders and a Lincoln TIG, I will have to ask the teacher what they do with them when it is time to get rid of them.

 

We have all three where I work. If you compare similiar models from each you can narrow it down to a cost issue. Our hobarts are pretty much bullet proof, our millers will over heat if you run them past the duty cycle for long (but they always reset themselves in a couple of hours), and I would say our lincoln sst (synergic) mig would be my least favourite, but they are all good products. Look at duty cycles, and cost.

 

i also picked up up the weld pack 3200...very happy with it..

 

Wow, OK… weird responses.

First, Miller = Hobart, they are the same company. My Hobart handler 135 (what is now called the 140) came with a miller gun. Parts are similar or interchangeable, but their lines are good in different places. Don’t waste your money on a miller for a sub 200A welder. Get the Hobart, easily the best in that class, by far. >200A, well, then the blue one makes a lot more sense (I’d love a MM251…). FWIW, on the smaller welders Miller sort of out tricked themselves. They overdid the additional features to the point w here they’re actually more difficult to use, even for an experienced pro, then the others.

Lincoln… my biggest gripe with them is the wire feed, it’s like something a 3 year old built using a set of tinker toys. If you get used to any of the other welders you’ll spend a good deal of time pissed at the Lincoln (I use a friend’s SP135 A LOT, I literally spent all of my first day with it trying to get the wire feed to act consistently, and it still does weird stuff every once in a while).

Power supply wise it’s actually pretty decent. The infinite power settings give you absolutely NOTHING over 4 set taps like the Hobart and probably the Clarke has, when you actually figure out what you’re doing, you’ll adjust your technique more to adjust for welding conditions then you’ll change power settings, and you’ll find that a series of taps is more then enough control. When I use my friend’s SP135 I just sorta turn the power **** about the right range (usually thinking something like ½ way up, ¾ of the way up… I never bother with futzing with it), and just go with it. Infinite settings just makes getting wire speed optimum a bigger hassle and it makes it much more confuseing for the beginner to learn with (they start wondering if they need to adjust the power a little bit to get a better weld where it really doesn’t matter as long as you’re close).

I suspect that Lincoln blew their wad on the infinite control (I’m sure it sells more welders then it should with people thinking that they’ll need it) and didn’t do wire speed tracking at all. Hobart does moderate wire speed tracking, and miller does the most. I like how Hobart does it, but I don’t know that I really miss it that much on the Lincoln, but miller’s wire speed tracking is so aggressive that it is actually confusing to deal with, I don’t like it.

As far as the Clarke… I’ve never used one but I keep hearing good things about them. They used to be much cheaper then the bigger names and were considered a great budget alternative. From what I’ve seen I’d probably pick them over the Lincoln, but I’d give it a good hard, serious look before I did it.

 

I have the Clarke 180, I've had it for about 1yr so far.... No problems what so ever. I pick the Clarke, because when I started looking I saw a write up comparing like 6 differnet welders, and the magazine picked the Clarke as there favorate.

Ray

 

I have a Miller 210 and love it i have been rebuilding a 1928 dodge body and building all the new body panels at my shop and welding the 20 ga cold rolled steel with no problems useing 75% 25% mixed gas and .023 wire with it you can weld 24 ga to 3/8 inch steel and can get an alum spool gun for around 1500 in arkansas at welsco have had no problems with its duty cycle it beats the **** out of the wal-mart 140 flux core i had but it just cost 100 new so couldn't complain welded exhast well with it but thats about it