New to welding - what to buy?

[YODA]

Greetings, First post so please be kind. How do I get started?

An old retired guy here wanting to learn how to weld. It would be all hobby stuff and possibly some hay equipment fixes, I know Miller has some dual voltage mig equipment.- But here is a problem - where to get training? The closest is a college 2 hours away. Are there good training videos available? As for power available my garage is on a 100 amp circuit and I am fairly good at wiring a new circuit.

Any help appreciated

Thanks
Keith

 

[dave_dj1]

youtube has a lot of beginner welding stuff. Get a welder and some scrap steel and practice, practice and practice some more. I will tell you this, preparation of the steel is half the battle. Most welders have a chart inside the spool door with settings for different thickness and types of steel.

 

[Russ207]

Like you, I finally had a chance to do a bucket list item, learn to weld. After I retired, I overbought (spent $2000) buying Miller 135 mig and plasma cutter. In GA, seniors can "audit" college or tech school classes for free. You get knowledge but no "credits". I attended 3 semesters and learned a lot, (made the Dean's List for academics) but still couldn't weld.
I recently bought a Harbor Freight Titanium 125 flux core welder for about $170 on sale. I watched a lot of You Tube videos on using the Titanium 125 and other flux core welders then went out in the shop and started welding. Pretty shameful welding started to become less bad. Now I am able to do a decent job. The hardest thing is learning to find the pool. And, stay in the joint. You will become a proficient grinder before you become a proficient welder. Mostly, have fun! Don't get discouraged.

 

[Old Irish]

I just put this in another thread response, weldingtipsandtricks.com and weld.com, I prefer welding tips and tricks but weld.com is really good as well. they both allow you start with basics and move up when you are ready. you can't go wrong with either but the most important thing is take what you learn and practice as much as possible. as for equipment I would highly recommend a Lincoln MP210, it will give you a lot of options in one machine, and options are good to have because if you get hooked on this I can nearly guarantee you that you will want to learn to tig weld and while most folks prefer high frequency start I really don't have a big bias for it, I started using scratch start because I wasn't able to work a pedal between my knees while laying on my side and a scratch rig was way cheaper than a thumb control and now the only time I use my square wave is if I am on the bench. If you want to start really cheap, and I mean cheap I have a welder that I bought of of amazon strictly out of curiosity that I like so far, I say so far because I just don't have many hours on it because I don't do much mig welding. It is a YES WELDER, mig 205 if I remember right, it welds fine and the only problem that I have had with it is that it is smarter than me so it took a minute to figure out the inductance settings and I trimmed the nozzle to short and had to order more. I also bought a 165 amp DC stick welder of the same brand with hard start and arc force function, reason one to help me to improve my overhead welding and reason two because both of my grandsons were having a hard time getting a arc started without sticking the rod. I absolutely love this little machine, it weighs nothing, welds smooth as butter and runs scratch start tig very well. both of the machines by yes welder will run on 120 or 240 and if I remember correctly the mig was 210 $$ with a amazon coupon and the stick machine was 102 $$ with the coupon. If money is no object the Lincoln garage pack is a proven set up with the square wave 200 and the 210MP. I am not a professional welder,but I have made nearly every mistake that can be made and I do weld as part of my job from time to time and since I have a friend who is a manager for one of the bigger welding supply companies I get to demo a lot of equipment and I just really haven't seen any justification for the price difference between Lincoln and the blue and yellow machines and I don't know if you still can but I called Lincoln on a Saturday morning 3 or 4 years ago and got a real person on the other end and got my questions answered.
Don't try to save money on a hood, I made that mistake for years. I have a bunch of hoods as result. For an economy hood I like the arc-one carerra with a 1000cfc filter or the vulcan hood at HF. I use a pancake hood a lot because it blocks all back light and glare and in my opinion the Esab Sentinal would be hard to beat but it is pricey at 300 bucks.

My apologies for the unsolicited novel but I am out of work due to the corona deal and my wife has no interest in welding, motorcycles, tractors, power tools or any of the other things that make life so much more fun. I am Old and Irish

 

[mr_puddles]

Buy a stick welder and learn stick first. It will make every other process easier. The youtube channels listed above are good for learning. Practice striking an arc, then stringer beads, then padding beads on a plate. Learn to use 6010 and 7018 rods. Old transformer stick welders are fine, cheap, and last for decades. Once you master stick, you can get set up with a scratch-start tig rig and learn tig on the same machine.

 

[Auminer]

Hey Keith, I'm about in the same boat as you being retired and wanting to learn. I've had a body shop and mostly used a torch and spot welder, but that is long gone. Many doings between then and now anything from mining to over the road truckin'. Tig welding has always intrigued me since watching an inlaw in Texas building race cars frame up from scratch. Researched and found something I could almost afford, bought a Primeweld Tig225 and couldn't refuse the plasma cutter to go with it. Jumped on youtube and found Jody @ weldingtipsandtricks.com as mentioned by Old Irish above. Still getting off to a rough start, but then seems as if that is the way I learn...by doing. My biggest problem is finding steel/metal up here, all being rusty or unaffordable as it has to be shipped in.

 

[Old Irish]

Hey Keith, I'm about in the same boat as you being retired and wanting to learn. I've had a body shop and mostly used a torch and spot welder, but that is long gone. Many doings between then and now anything from mining to over the road truckin'. Tig welding has always intrigued me since watching an inlaw in Texas building race cars frame up from scratch. Researched and found something I could almost afford, bought a Primeweld Tig225 and couldn't refuse the plasma cutter to go with it. Jumped on youtube and found Jody @ weldingtipsandtricks.com as mentioned by Old Irish above. Still getting off to a rough start, but then seems as if that is the way I learn...by doing. My biggest problem is finding steel/metal up here, all being rusty or unaffordable as it has to be shipped in.

Tig is a little bit of a pain to learn sometime and being a process that likes clean everything I know you must be spending a lot of time with a grinder. I am by no means a master but I will share a couple of things that helped me, 1- start each session by sharpening all your tungstens I don't know why but it seems to relax me, and 2 when you have a time when you just cant seem to keep the tungsten out of the puddle just lay it down and move on to something else before you get frustrated.

 

[Calsdad]

Greetings, First post so please be kind. How do I get started?

An old retired guy here wanting to learn how to weld. It would be all hobby stuff and possibly some hay equipment fixes, I know Miller has some dual voltage mig equipment.- But here is a problem - where to get training? The closest is a college 2 hours away. Are there good training videos available? As for power available my garage is on a 100 amp circuit and I am fairly good at wiring a new circuit.

Any help appreciated

Thanks
Keith

I "learned" how to weld way back in the early 1990's when I bought an HTP MIG welder because I had a car restoration I was working on and needed a way to weld on repair panels.

I basically pulled the thing out of the box, grabbed some steel - and started figuring out how to get the thing to work the way I wanted it to. The manual was pretty good and the rest I picked up from some welding books. There was no internet back then.

Then a few years later I picked up a Miller EconoTig TIG welder - because I wanted to weld up a rollcage. I took some scrap steel and sat down and started welding until I got to what I thought was sufficiently good looking welds to move forward with the rollcage.

There's a lot more resources available online now - I can't say it's always a good idea to purely use internet videos (because a lot of it is based on opinion), but then again if you go to a class - you're subject to the teacher's opinions there as well.

If it was me - I would pick up a welder and some steel scraps, and just sit down and see what you can do. If things aren't working - go research what the problem might be and see if the solutions offered up fix the issue. That's at least a good place to start.

IMHO in person schooling is probably good for having the teacher "see" what you might be doing wrong with torch angle, technique , setup ..... things like that. But other more technical issues can probably be solved just as effectively by researching on the internet.

Probably local technical schools would probably be the best place to check first for welding classes.

 

[Frank Lyons]

I just joined site. I've wanted to learn to weld for a while. I appreciate the recommendations for what type of welder to buy. Between this site and youtube videos I should be welding soon.

 

[welding seabee]

I just joined site. I've wanted to learn to weld for a while. I appreciate the recommendations for what type of welder to buy. Between this site and youtube videos I should be welding soon.

Remember we are here to help you so ask questions. Ron

 

[axeman79]

Greetings, First post so please be kind. How do I get started?

An old retired guy here wanting to learn how to weld. It would be all hobby stuff and possibly some hay equipment fixes, I know Miller has some dual voltage mig equipment.- But here is a problem - where to get training? The closest is a college 2 hours away. Are there good training videos available? As for power available my garage is on a 100 amp circuit and I am fairly good at wiring a new circuit.

Any help appreciated

Thanks
Keith

Consider a multi process welder. I have a Miller Multimatic 215 that does stick and MIG. With the right add-ons I can do TIG and aluminum spool gun. the unit is 38 pounds and I can run it off 110/15A, 110/20A, and 220/40A.

 

[PILOON]

You will become a proficient grinder before you become a proficient welder.
LOL, so true!

 

[Forger]

Wall mountain welding videos. You will be welding like a pro. I've talked to the guy a few times and he really knows his stuff plus the quality of the welding close ups are just amazing.

 

[Gary Fowler]

I cant offer much more than what has been posted other than if possible, get some one on one training from a competent welder. 10 minutes of coaching by a professional will be worth more than 10 hours of "practice welding". Sometimes it is just the little things that are holding you back and wont be obvious until someone watches you work.
Stick welding should be the first thing you do. Master the minimum of striking an arc and running a bead flat, then horizontal and finally uphill. Overhead can wait till you are proficient at the other 3 positions. Remember overhead welding is really just flat welding upside down. Just crank up the machine 10-15 amps and go at it. A good set of leather sleeve is a must for overhead welding.
If buying your first machine, if budget allows, get one that will do STICK and MIG/FCAW. It will cost you more but then you will be able to do just about any thing you want. A machine that will stick weld with also TIG weld with additional equipment (TIG torch, flowmeter, Argon bottle and consumables like tungsten, collet body and collet plus assorted ceramic cups. One word of advice, dont attempt TIG welding unless you have a steady hand and you really need to be ambidextrous so you can work the torch with one hand and feed the wire with the other.