Lunch box stick welders...

[Poonie]

Anyone besides me have one of those cheap little lunch box size stick welders?

I gotta say for the $100 I paid for mine off Amazon, it's probably the best thing I've bought from them. The brand is called Hone(undoubtedly Chinese). It's one of those inverter type welders. For small to medium jobs it works great. I've welded 1/4 inch steel with this thing on house current, and it does the job.

I just used it to weld a 2 inch hitch mount to my car hauler. It's going to be used to install the hitch mounted winch I recently bought. I primarily run 7018, 3/32 rods, but it can run 1/8 rods as well. It can even run on 220 volts, but I've had no reason to try it on that voltage. Well worth $100 I spent on it.

 

[Turkeyfoot]

Anyone besides me have one of those cheap little lunch box size stick welders?

I gotta say for the $100 I paid for mine off Amazon, it's probably the best thing I've bought from them. The brand is called Hone(undoubtedly Chinese). It's one of those inverter type welders. For small to medium jobs it works great. I've welded 1/4 inch steel with this thing on house current, and it does the job.

I just used it to weld a 2 inch hitch mount to my car hauler. It's going to be used to install the hitch mounted winch I recently bought. I primarily run 7018, 3/32 rods, but it can run 1/8 rods as well. It can even run on 220 volts, but I've had no reason to try it on that voltage. Well worth $100 I spent on it.

I bought one 10 years ago. It's great for small stuff. Had to replace stinger and fix cable ends, but I agree it's been useful. I mostly used 1/16 rods. 6013.

 

[bc]

I bot one 3 years ago. ARC-250 rated at 200 amps for a 100 bux. It was hotter rated than most I saw on Amazing but I bot it knowing most of those ads stretch the truth quite a bit. I must have bot the last one as they are no longer available. Have my big ac/dc welder in the garage but the barn only has 110 volts so I use it out there or on an 100' extension cord around the barn. Use 1/8" 7018 rod and it will burn rod and melt steel as good as my 220 welder. I welded a few rods in a row on half inch plate to see if I could find the end of its duty cycle and give up. After burning a rod or two I have to stop and check things anyway so duty cycle isn't an issue. I used it with the same rod burning through 1/4" plate cutting through like a cutting torch and it handled that. It has a limit with 3/16" rod but anything I weld at 1/4" to 3/8" thick stuff can be done with 1/8" rod. It's so easy to carry around that it is my go to welder and I don't claim to have great welding skill but once I get a bead going I can follow it and know when I'm getting the right penetration. It only has 5' leads but since it works with an extension cord that doesn't really matter as I can pick it up and carry it around. I previously had a craftsman 100v wire welder that all I could make it do was melt wire on top of steel. Bot one of those little HF 110v welders made for 1/16" rod and I couldn't get it to weld right either.

 

[Poonie]

I bot one 3 years ago. ARC-250 rated at 200 amps for a 100 bux. It was hotter rated than most I saw on Amazing but I bot it knowing most of those ads stretch the truth quite a bit. I must have bot the last one as they are no longer available. Have my big ac/dc welder in the garage but the barn only has 110 volts so I use it out there or on an 100' extension cord around the barn. Use 1/8" 7018 rod and it will burn rod and melt steel as good as my 220 welder. I welded a few rods in a row on half inch plate to see if I could find the end of its duty cycle and give up. After burning a rod or two I have to stop and check things anyway so duty cycle isn't an issue. I used it with the same rod burning through 1/4" plate cutting through like a cutting torch and it handled that. It has a limit with 3/16" rod but anything I weld at 1/4" to 3/8" thick stuff can be done with 1/8" rod. It's so easy to carry around that it is my go to welder and I don't claim to have great welding skill but once I get a bead going I can follow it and know when I'm getting the right penetration. It only has 5' leads but since it works with an extension cord that doesn't really matter as I can pick it up and carry it around. I previously had a craftsman 100v wire welder that all I could make it do was melt wire on top of steel. Bot one of those little HF 110v welders made for 1/16" rod and I couldn't get it to weld right either.

I think mine has a duty cycle of something like two minutes, but I've never had it stop on me. I've never run rod after rod without having to stop and check things or scrape slag etc, so even if it does have a low duty cycle, it's never been a problem.

Ive had this welder for going on 2 years, and have used it a bunch of times. So far it's never let me down. Just yestderay, I burned through 6 3/32 rods in about a half hour installing the hitch mount to my trailer. It worked perfectly.

 

[wp6529]

The little inverter units can be very handy and the portability is great. Not much of the type of welding folks on this forum would do needs a high duty cycle. I have a Synchrowave 250 which does have a 40%+ duty cycle and in the 29 years or so I've owned and used it I've only pushed it remotely hard once on some 3/4"+ aluminum. I recently got one of the Primeweld MIG180 units, I haven't had an opportunity to use it a lot yet other than initial tests, but those were good and at around 40# with a 10# spool of wire the portability sure beats the 450#+ Synchrowave. The included spool gun for AL is a nice plus as well.