When Martin and I were discussing what type of welder he needed there were obviously a number of things that he needed to consider and also a number of changes he had to make to his work space. As I’ve discussed already Martin wanted to purchase a MIG welder so he could work on some of his new ideas for sculpting. It is an absolutely amazingly talented guy and some of his work is displayed in some public areas and their local town. He has even sold many of these pieces in other countries and he is simply exploring a new idea getting away from the standards he’s been using for all his life and looking at using metal hence his idea of purchasing a welder.
There are many places that have welders for sale but before we got into that he first needed to decide what type you need. I also need to discuss the safety aspect also because as he has always worked with other material he has never needed to worry about safety. Simple things like molten is extremely hot and also the UV light that is produced from welding coming quite strong is essential that he has cotton overalls and welding gauntlets are a must. It’s also essential that he had a welding mask, I told him that most hobby welders come with handheld masks but they are quite useless so this was essential that he invested in a full face mask which could be adjusted to fit his head properly and expect to pay from $80 oak works for one of these.
He also needed to consider their torch on the welder, every welder comes with one of these of course but there are a couple of differences that needed to be considered. Depending on how much use they get this need to be replaced during the life of any welding equipment. We look at the option of using a eurotorch because these have something called a universal quick release connection which is on the front of the welder and they are reasonably priced and readily available in most stores. The problem with a torch that is built into the welder means that you had to purchase parts directly from the manufacturer and can sometimes work out more expensive than the eurotorch.
As you can see there are a number of things that need to be considered when thinking of purchasing a MIG welder and although I’m not an expert we also done a little bit of research on the Internet from various other users to ensure that we were going to make the right decision.