Welder suggestions

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Phoney

Well-Known Member
Joined
29/12/08
Messages
2,187
Reaction score
234
Location
Sydney, Innerwestside
I've got a little project I'm planning, and it involves slapping bits of steel flat bar together to form the under carriage of a recycled timber table for my deck out the back. Recycled timber tables made from railway sleepers retail for over $1200 in the shops, so I'm thinking about building it myself and the plan is to try to come in at about half that.

I was quoted $550 from a local steel supplier to supply, cut, pre-drill and fabricate it for me. Or they can supply, cut and pre-drill the steel for me for $200 and I do the rest. I've always wanted to re-learn how to weld, so this may well just be that oppurtunity to dive in there and give it a go.

The problem is that I don't own a welder, and I havent welded since I was a teenager (I used an Arc welder and from memory I was very sloppy at it).

My original design which was based on a table I saw & measured up elsewhere, was to use 8mm x 130mm flat bar as the legs, which formed a very sturdy base and gave it a bold industrial look, and thats what I was quoted for above. But after looking around at welders I see that most DIY welders are only made for welding up to 5mm thick steel, so if I have to scale that down, so be it. Can I weld 8mm steel? Bare in mind I dont have a 15A plug anywhere in my house.

I've done a lot of reading over Easter and from what I've gathered, MIG welding is the easiest to learn on. Followed by ARC then TIG. But then there's inverter welders (what's that?)... Back in my day, MIG welders were $2000 and up and just about everyone used Arc, but now all that has changed. I also see that there are now ones that can do both, or all three!

I dont really want to spend over $400, happy to look at second hand options, but want something that will last and is versatile for any other projects that may come up one day. But there are so many bloody options out there, and so much jargon I have NFI where to start. I have a few mates who know how to weld, so arranging one of them come over to teach me is not a problem. But I just need to be pointed in the right direction other than speaking to salesmen & being given contradictory advice...

TL;DR

I need some suggestions on an all-round welder for a beginner, welding 5mm thick steel, 8mm if possible. What do I need? Mig or Arc? How many amps?


Any other tips?

Cheers
 
Someone will give you better advice but when I went to tafe to learn a bit of tig welding he also showed us mig welding and it was so ridiculously easy.
When doing butt welds - two metal plates right up to each other or at 90 degrees to each other I found tig fairly easy and effective.

Then saw a mate do a spot of arc welding on a car trailer and it can't be simpler.

Inverters are simply the thing that turns the ac current into doc for the welding, all of them need one - it is the main machine. Heavy structural work, reckon mig or arc are it. You can make tig work as long as there aren't big gaps to fill in the work you are welding, best of it it'd be handy to weld ss brew vessels later :)
 
There are cheap gas less migs on the market, buy one off eBay, do the job and if you don't think you will need it again sell it on eBay, that would be your cheapest option Tig is not so easy to learn especially for a beginner.
Another option is to gas weld (bronze) very easy and cheap to do, but I am curious to know why you are going to do a combination of metal and timber for your table?
 
^Steel frame, timber top? Mig is easy as but with a little practice you can do a decent job with an arc

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk
 
Yea, true that. We also got a go on the gas ones, think that'd take more learning. Saw the welder at work weld up a staircase and a whole store building, it was definitely simpler than tig. I remember trying to do a fillet weld with the tig and it was fairly shit to do for a beginner, but then again, where there is a will there is a way, drill the hole larger and shove the pipe up flush to the sheet and make a butt weld. Like I said, I think it's more versatile. Last time I was salivating over them at the shop I noticed a fair few said the inverters were good for attaching tig torches to if required. So, arc or mig welder and later get tig torch if required... Obviously I don't have the space for more tools or I'd give better informed advice through use.
 
For $550 I could make the undercarriage for a car, come on Phoney show us a diagram of what you have in mind, I have made two long tables one in American oak and one in Tassie oak, as you are using recycled timber it isn't going to warp or move.
 
OK so here are the PDF plans and a quick sketchup in mspaint. The table legs I was going to use 5mm (originally 8mm) x 130mm flat bar. The two strips connecting the two leg pieces would probably be 50mm x 3mm flat bar. So 12 weld's in total. The two strips were an after thought to add for a bit of stability, the table I'm copying didnt have them.


from reading around, it looks my biggest limiting factor is that I dont have a 15a wall outlet. Seems some say just file down the plug of a 15a extension lead, some say don't!

I appreciate your help with this guys :)

table.png


View attachment Table side view.pdf

View attachment table top view.pdf
 
Depends on the thickness of metal ( and type ) you want to weld. MIG good for sheet metal...ARC better for thicker steel...

TIG is not for you.....yet...
 
Phoney without a strut coming from the bottom of the legs to the centre of the table the table will not be stable, I would be forgetting about the metal frame and make your undercarriage out of timber, if you have access to some recycled timber laminate some pieces together for the legs get them machined (100 mm x 100 mm) run some 100 mm x 50 mm around the underside of the table leaving a gap at the 4 corners for the leg to slot into and get table brackets from Bunnings and fit the legs, most commercial tables are made this way so you can check them out.
It will be a lot more stable than with the metal and will be cheaper.
 
Phoney said:
from reading around, it looks my biggest limiting factor is that I dont have a 15a wall outlet. Seems some say just file down the plug of a 15a extension lead, some say don't!
You can get got 10A welders. Generally, the thicker the steel the more current ( Amps ) your going to draw.

As for for taking a file to your earth pin....um...well...no. Very naughty.

Your house wiring can handle a 15A load...but as long as only 1 Appliance is being used... And a 15A cct is a dedicated cct to a single GPO.

Running a 15A welder on your normal power cct causes the wirring to heat up....along with any joints etc...
 
wide eyed and legless said:
Phoney without a strut coming from the bottom of the legs to the centre of the table the table will not be stable, I would be forgetting about the metal frame and make your undercarriage out of timber, if you have access to some recycled timber laminate some pieces together for the legs get them machined (100 mm x 100 mm) run some 100 mm x 50 mm around the underside of the table leaving a gap at the 4 corners for the leg to slot into and get table brackets from Bunnings and fit the legs, most commercial tables are made this way so you can check them out.
It will be a lot more stable than with the metal and will be cheaper.
Fair enough. That was my very first plan, but then I saw the table below in a shop, and it seemed solid & stable as, and I liked the look of it. Check it out:
IMG_07361.jpg
This table was bigger and longer than what I have in mind. No good?
 
Looks good Phoney but that is more than 3 mm thk, and knowing the cost of steel you are getting duped on the price if you really want to go that way get the thickness that was on the table and width, did the legs angle outwards?
If you have enough room for legs underneath still put a strut up the centre when you get a few people leaning on it there could still be lateral movement.
 
Yes, as I said at first that was 8mm thick. The quote to fabricate was using 8mm as per what I am copying. Then I contemplated making my own using 5mm, with 3mm thick runners adjoining the two leg pieces.

A 6m length of 130mm x 8mm from those guys was $140. Or $275 for it cut and pre-drilled. That does seem a rip off. 5 x 130 will obviously be a bit cheaper. My table will only be 800 x 1600 so unfortunately I'll be a bit limited for space underneath when I want to have 4 people sitting at it. What about two bars along the bottom and two along the top (or even just one in the centre)?

From memory the legs went straight down @ 90deg. I might pop over there on Saturday and take another look, and get quotes from elsewhere.
 
This place is a wholesaler that is closest to me (link), but there's plenty more further afield. I'll get onto them tomorrow, cheers.
 
I've got an older 200amp AC welder that runs on a 15 amp plug but I had a short extension lead to step it down to 10amp. Not the best practice admittedly but it worked for me in my old workshed. These can be had pretty cheap now and have plenty of guts but are a little trickier to start than the new inverter type. I also have a smaller 120 amp air cooled arc which was very portable but the overheat function cuts in pretty quickly.
If you go down the arc inverter route try to get something around 200 amps as you'll want decent penetration for those fillet welds on 8mm steel. Better to have the extra amps if you need them.
 
Back
Top