I am the president of a small mining company and we are trying to get up and running after a forest fire burned us out last year. So somebody decided in their wisdom that we would no longer need a welder and stole the welder and leads. I had to come up with a welder fast and this weekend it happened. The 'help us' call.
I had purchased a cheap Chink welder for 200 bucks,
based on this review, just to get us by til we could get a real welding machine. I just had this welder delivered by Amazon yesterday and got the call this morning. I told them I would crack open the box and test it and send it to them or send it back.
So after I stopped laughing at it, I pulled the plug out through the plastic and plugged in and turned it on. I used my own leads as I was sure I would ship it back.
I have to say, for something that weighs less than a six pack of beer, it's a keeper. Good OCV, 78 volts, so it lights a 1/8" 7018 very well. I found I had to turn up the amperage higher than on my rig, I run 1/8" at 105 amps and this is at 125. I ran beads using my own settings and they were good, slag peeled on its own, and then I tried out their SYN setting, it's sort of a setting for the don't know crowd, and tried it out. It seemed to dig a little deeper but the bead was smooth and the slag peeled, which means there was no undercutting. You can still turn up the power more after the machine has set the SYN settings. I didn't try any 5/32 rod, I was in a hurry, as I was expecting to run to the airport with it, but no body would open for freight on the destination end. They are all off celebrating a country limping and hopping along like Terry Fox.
So, if you risk the
$200 on Amazon, I would say you will not be disappointed, this is a nice little unit with a 60% duty cycle, and way better than your dads buzz box.
Negatives are that you don't have arc force and hot start settings that I could find. I did not read the manual due to the panic situation, but I know some of the cheesier units this type do have these settings. The machine sets them for you and seems to do ok. Maybe I'm old, but I like to fine tune for what I'm doing.