- What’s in the box?
The welder, negative lead, negative clamp, 1 small roll of Hobart flux core wire, a nozzle, 3 tips, and a stinger. Destruction manual. - Assembly: You’ll need to assemble the negative clamp onto the cable, the nozzle and tips onto the stinger. You will also want to verify polarity of the cables before you turn on the machine. Wire will also need to be fed through the machine properly and tension will need to be set. All of these procedures are in the manual that is in the box.
- Getting started is a piece of cake if you have welding experience and know how to set the machine up. It’s also a piece of cake if you haven’t and need to read the manual. I have a lot of welding experience and I read the manual too.
- What do I need to upgrade?
The ground clamp is something I upgraded. The one that comes with it is okay, like the world’s okayest ground clamp. I replaced it with a magnetic clamp and replaced the attachment hardware with copper washers and 1/4-20 bolt/nut.
The small spool is okay if you’re doing small jobs and carrying it around. If you’re doing a big/long term job like these floors and panels on this car, and truck stuff, you want to switch to a big spool of wire. That means you need the keeper and nut/spring parts from Hobart. They sell it as a kit for about 10 bucks. Then you can fit a big spool on it and never look back.
The Good:
Two main things I wanted in a welder were metal drives, to push the filler metal (wire) through the welder, and an internal gas valve to allow me to use flux core or MIG with one machine. This machine gives you that. It also gives you a drive disc that is dual patterned so you can run different thicknesses of wire without having to buy new parts. I bought the right diameter solid wire and a bottle of gas, a regulator, and some gas hose, along with the right tips, and I was all set to use it for MIG.
It’s also light. The carrying handle on the top makes it easy to move around without a rolling stand. Great for throwing into a jeep for overlanding or wheeling repairs or using on a farm for cattle gates and whatnot.
The Bad:
If you don’t have a great circuit set up for this welder, forget about it doing nice welds. It dimmed my entire shop and house until I rewired the shop circuit to handle it. It needs 20 amps on a dedicated circuit. If you have daydreams of running a drop cord 100 feet from your house to weld something, I really feel like you should reconsider that whole idea.
What are the welds like?
It lays down great welds with MIG and does great welds with flux core, if you have the outlet amps and the machine dialed in. It doesn’t take long to dial in and will do some nice stitch welds. It doesn’t have an extremely long duty cycle, so taking your time on sheet metal works out perfectly for it. I also did some bumper mounts for my truck with it that were 3/16 inch material and they welded on great with pretty good penetration for that thickness. If you have no experience welding, take some time welding scrap metal to get the hang of it. This welder isn’t very forgiving. But it’s a great tool once you get up to speed with your skills. As you can see here, with the poor power circuit I was getting varying results that just weren’t good enough.
As you can see here, the tacks I did for this patch are getting good penetration without burning through. So, the welder can be dialed in to do butt welds and lap joints equally well. I’ll update with more pics as I continue to use it.
