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The Renault Welding Thread

I have a 22 year old cebora and a 20 year old migatronic . Both still going strong . Migatronic do a cracking single phase machine unsure on its price . The Rtec stuff does look good value for money. Quietly looking myself . @Duncan Grier is right about gas it makes a big difference. Fire safe overalls are worth it .
 
Would be nice to get a full kit and pub bottle for a grand if its doable. Got to be domestic plug as no 3 phase in the garage, got a beefy supply set up ready, my sparkie done the electrics with welding in mind so can get some decent poke in that respect.

there are lots of rent free gas companies around now. you can get them from motor factors but are a bit more expensive than direct. some rental bottles actually work out cheaper.

the R tech stuff is good. my Tig has been spot on. you don't need an expensive mask, i recently bough one for £55 plus vat and it's great it actually has more colour rather than the green of old..
 
Jumping in on this one, as welding is something i have rarely done over the years. Been looking at the Extra, its still rock solid in the general scale of things, but i will need to get the knotted wheel on a few bits soon and get on top of it, which will reveal some small holes no doubt.

Looking at spending up to £1k on a mig setup that will last me basically forever, what would be a nice set to start with. Ive used the clarke sets in the past which were ok, but wondering what else is out there.
You won't beat the R-Tech MIG180 for the money. You've seen how it's helped my welding come along. I also wazzed it up to about 70% power the other week and welded 10mm plate no problems, it's quite versatile. Their website also has a stack of educational stuff. Definitely get an auto-dim mask, and decent welding gauntlets.

I did some kwik maffs and its cheaper to rent a bottle and get your refills from BOC if you use >1 bottle per year. Otherwise get the hobbyweld rent free one.

For context I have the BOC "Y" cylinder of argoshield lite (Argoshield Cylinder Sizes) which is 5 cubic metres (40kg!) and so far on the 21 in total I have used one and a half bottles.

Welcome to come and try mine if you're passing.
 
Can’t believe it went to use my cebora mig this morning and the wire feed gone for a knacker . It’s been a little troublesome but proper shit itself this time just looking into it . Just looked at a Kemppi machine so I can take it to site , 200amp inverter but is generator save as well and will run through 100m of cable all sounds to good to be true . About £900 plus the dreaded though
 
I was looking at the kemppi minarcmig evo 200 which had some nice features, also looked at the Jasic stuff (5yr warrenty) but for me in the end did not warrent the extra spend

I wish I had got the true colour auto dimm mask but one I got from rtec with larger screen spot on and does make my old non dimming one seem crap
 
There’s a lot of good deals on non air feed masks , HSE brought it that the fumes from welding mild steel are now harmful and requires an air feed for your employees £500 a pop . I have a Kemppi inverter arc welder on the van and that’s been fantastic. Ran a 3.2mm rod through 75m of cable no trouble .
 
You won't beat the R-Tech MIG180 for the money. You've seen how it's helped my welding come along. I also wazzed it up to about 70% power the other week and welded 10mm plate no problems

All sound advise Dave but there is no way that machine is capable of 10mm. Even with way more amps it would take some prep. That aside when playing did you get up in to some spray territory or still dip when doing that?
 
I had a go with a 170 inverter mig a few weeks back I would of been happy welding 10mm plate with that, the duty cycle wouldn’t let you do it continuously and surely you need 250- 300 amps to do it all day but in short burst I think you might be surprised how powerful these inverter machines are . I was .
 
Well you guys should let rtech know because they are selling themselves massively short in the specs they give lol.
On a more serious note I have a thermal arc 181,it would never do 10mm but at that point a lot of it is down to the prep of the joint so maybe you know stuff I don't. Don't get me wrong it will lay a nice looking weld on 10mm turned right up but it would not be a suitable weld for 10mm as the strength of the welds would be nothing compared to the strength of the metal which is what we are aiming for right? If not you wouldn't be using 10mm just for the sake of it.
 
Never looked at at the r tech spec before today I used a Kemppi . However the r tech site spec it is able to produce a 6mm fillet weld In one pass . Depending on the application this is considered to be a good enough weld in general mild steel construction to join 10mm plate on a fillet weld . A butt weld is a different story and you would need to vee the material and may three passes may be required with this size of welder . There’s loads on the internet to explain this better than me . But your right it’s all in the prep .
 
Well yes it will "join" it but call me old fashioned if it says it will do a 6mm fillet then it will probably be OK for 5mm or so and at 70% power maybe 4mm. There's doing and then there's doing with the required penetration and fusion to make the thickness of the metal worthwhile. Cut it in half and look at the penetration there instead of at the end where it has less of a heatsink
At the end of the day even people far more knowledgeable than any of us in this field happily debate the same thing as technique, prep and everything makes such an impact. I think when I was having to produce 6mm fillet it was just over 200amps to get the required. Regardless I just didn't want someone thinking oh it will do 10mm I will buy that as it will not just do 10mm.
Why someone would be looking here if they need to do 10mm would also be a good question but oh well lol, wouldn't be much to talk about if we let little things like that stand in our way.
 
These single phase machines are just about capable of joining 10 mm plate but I agree with what your saying , there not the machine for doing continuously .
I was impressed on how these inverter machine compares to my old 195 amp cebora that I run on a 30amp plug .
 
Interesting debate!

Well you guys should let rtech know because they are selling themselves massively short in the specs they give lol.
On a more serious note I have a thermal arc 181,it would never do 10mm but at that point a lot of it is down to the prep of the joint so maybe you know stuff I don't. Don't get me wrong it will lay a nice looking weld on 10mm turned right up but it would not be a suitable weld for 10mm as the strength of the welds would be nothing compared to the strength of the metal which is what we are aiming for right? If not you wouldn't be using 10mm just for the sake of it.

I get where you are coming from now, yes I agree that it wouldnt butt join 10mm plate for use in an application that demands 10mm plate, however, I had a big old bit of scrap hydraroll (pallet unloading machine thing) lying around that I got from work about 10 years ago and it seemed ideal to bodge up the last bit of my car trolley thing - it's massively overrated and 3 or 4mm would probably have done to make the wheel skate things, I was just using what I had around. It only needs to carry the bare car chassis. The wheels will collapse before the weld break as they're only rated to 130kg each. I guess when I said it welded 10mm plate I meant it's done it sufficiently for my application, I certainly wouldnt want to put an articulated lorry bed together with it or anything like that. Still, i'm impressed with its performance anyway!

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Been looking at tacky TIG machines, got a couple of few hour long fiddle jobs that'd pay for it, purely for playtime.........I know buy cheap, buy twice....
But scratting around looking for info, this vid on a ROHR mig backed up what I thought/heard, some interesting info...

 
Been looking at tacky TIG machines, got a couple of few hour long fiddle jobs that'd pay for it, purely for playtime.........I know buy cheap, buy twice....
But scratting around looking for info, this vid on a ROHR mig backed up what I thought/heard, some interesting info...


I've been looking for a while, I have so many small jobs that need doing I have been looking at ac dc tigs as I need to do alloy, but I think I am caught up in the pretty welds online and yhink I am going to be able to reproduce them straight away, whereas the reality is I know my welding is pretty, pretty shit that is and I will end up buying a tig and then realising I couldn't possibly show them to anyone and pay some one to do a tidy job as well!
If you find a good tacky tig let me know, would love to have one in the shed just for a play
 
That review has a very interesting part at the end where they inspect penetration of the 200amp invertor welder on 6mm fillet weld. I would suggest watching it as a good learning topic and continuation from our previous discussion.

The 3 in 1 welders all have the same problem including my one with Tig which is the touch or scratch start. Should be OK for what we are doing but in an ideal world you don't want that contamination.
 
Yes, that's why I posted it, it's all beyond my capabilities, I'm a better welder than most people at a bus stop....on a Sunday morning.
I'm not sure I've got the steadiest hand for tig, I just fancy a play about,so do I blast 600 on a mid range....or similar but not backed machine for half that or less?
I've nursed my old SIP mig for years....it fucks up , I fix it, it's earns its money......it was crap when I bought it to be fair, but I knew no better at the time.
I'll see......shouldn't have treated her to new vacuum, dust pan and brush still had bristles on....
 
I for Christmas bought myself a SIP 3 in 1 inverter welder, with euro torch, trolley, new mask, and a basic tig torch to have a go with. All machine mart, well under 1k spent including hobbyweld bottle and a regulator bought elsewhere.
And it’s green 👀

mig range of 20-180? Maybe amps.
Really very very nice to use and fine for what i wanted, welding thin car stuff mainly but powerful enough to manage anything I’ll want do do with it.
I did get a go with the tig although didn’t use it like I wanted to in the end. But I will.
I’m only running on a domestic plug also.
 
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