Aldi Welder

[Lakesailor]

One way to overcome this is to use a scrap piece of steel connected to the earth lead and strike your rods down it to warm them up, once heated they run easier.

A proper oil-cooled transformer doesn't have those problems.
Don't keep your rods in the garage. Keep them in a warm environment, in the house. Damp rods are buggered.
I realise that a proper welding transfomer is more than most people want to spend, but you have to accept pigeon-shit welds otherwise.

 

[Fire99]

All I would add is that if you are a novice welder, learning on a 'cheap as cheap' welder can be a pain in the backside as you lack controllability.

As already stated, for thin sheet you need to be able to get the power down which is a major flaw with the real budget kit.

Not knocking the Aldi kit as it may be ok but no point spending money on something that won't do what you want.

Before spending your cash, worth checking out:
http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/

some useful info on there.

 

[Lakesailor]

Nothing as satisfying as gas welding though. That's the real deal.

 

[Bobobolinsky]

For £100 you can get an inverter from one of the Ebay sellers. You can use it on little power from a long extension. The DC is more stable arc and is easier to control

 

[higler]

Best bet if your thinking of an inverter, which is costly, put your money on a mig you then have the benefit of being able to use light gauge steel, stainless steel, and ali. I tried lots of ways to use both mig and arc, and in my opinion migs the way to go. The first one I bought was at a boot sale, £40 and still have it today and still working fine. I have a much bigger model as well but then thats a lot more money, but moral being cheap and cheerful can pay dividends.

 

[davidpbo]

but moral being cheap and cheerful can pay dividends.

Flip side of the coin is "Some you win, some you lose". #

Going ot the boat. Sadly no wind but interested to see whether my mooring has been sorted.

 

[PaulJS]

unfortunately cannot stick weld aluminium

I've stick welded with aluminium rods before, admittedly using a professional, but very old welding machine. As I recall it was easy enough and made a tidy enough weld, but I had to feed the rod in at a surprisingly fast rate.

 

[Conachair]

Slight hijack, soz, I'm in a similar situation, have maybe £250 for an arc welder. Invertor? Needs to be small to live on the boat. Any suggestions of a make or model?

 

[tyce]

I have the very same welder and i paid 40 quid for it from aldi, i run it of a 13 amp plug never had any problems with it, only time i did have a problem was when i plugged it into one of the wind up extension leads which i never unwound, it got very warm between the coils.

 

[Niander]

i didn't know you could get aluminium rods??
tell me hes wrong
I'm lucky i am a trained welder therefore pigeon **** welds
would be impossible for me...using any welding set......
ive only got an old italian stick welding set at home...but thats probably better than the cheap modern ones!

 

[TQA]

Yup you can get ali stick welding rods now.

See http://www.zena.net/htdocs/welders/Rods/Aluminum.shtml

I found it works best with some preheating of the workpiece and I did not have much success with anything less than 1/8 th inch and that was difficult. 1/4 in. plate and up is easy to do.