So my ears have pricked up with this thread, and I'll also watch with interest. But my question is, is Mig much easier to weld with than a stick? I don't weld a lot and when I do it's just random little jobs in the shed. I've only ever used a little Cigweld stick welder that came from BigW 25 years ago. But ever since the little migs have become available I've often thought about it, but never really looked into it?
I spent about 10 years on stick welders and only used wire feed units for really big stuff (think 100mm thick stick steel plate, double V butt welds), so my opinion is a little biased.
I have all 3 options on my welding trolley in the shed.
If I want it stuck and I need to know it’s stuck, I grab the stick every time.
If I want it to look pretty I grab the mig.
If it’s shiny or really thin I grab the tig.
Yes, you can sometimes have battles with slag inclusion with the stick. But once you get your eye in and learn to see what’s happening in the weld pool that should become less of an issue. But even when it does happen, it’s pretty easy to chip it out, give a little hit with the grinder or wire brush and reweld the slagged bit.
I use a lot of low hydrogen rods. They are a bit of a bitch to get started if you don’t know how, but they give a much nicer finish, especially with vertical welds.
Stick would have been my choice to do your pipe sculptures.
Actually, I go stick for anything galvanized, it’s just heaps cleaner.
Migs are much easier to use, but also much easier to stuff up.
You can lay down a beautiful looking mig weld that has absolutely no penetration or just below the surface is full of porosity and that beautiful looking weld is destined for failure.
You can use a stick welder anywhere, but conditions need to be just right to use a mig outside of the shed.
If you do give a mig welder a go, it’s worth going with a proper setup with gas. I’m not a fan of flux cored wire, unless you up in the bigger diameters.
And just on the tig.
Mine is a fancy high frequency pulse tig, with all sorts of cool knobs and dials, that never get touched.
Any half decent inverter DC tig would do 95% of the work I do with a tig in my shed. I expect most people would be the same.
It’s nice to have all of those extra options and settings for the 5% of jobs, but I could get by without them if I had to.
All of your brand name units (cig, boc, essab, unimig, wia, etc) should serve any home handyman just fine.
Cheaper no name stick welders can also be fine, there’s not a hell of a lot to them. But as others mentioned cheaper migs and tigs will be using poor quality components on key parts, like the drive gears on the wire feed.
And finally, I’m old school and always prefer analog controls on things like welders.
Digital dials and touch pads look cool and all, but I’ll take flicking a switch or turning a dial every day.
