Harbor Freight - Titanium Unlimited 200 Welder - Junk or Jewel?

[Music] hey youtube ed here with jack of all trades welcome to another video so today we're gonna do a review uh we're quite obviously going to review the harbor freight titanium uh unlimited 200 welder but before we get into that please if you like this channel and you like this content and you like what you see here uh hit that subscribe button give me a thumbs up hit me with some comments ding that notification bell so you can make sure that you don't miss out any other videos and and that's all i'm ever asking for for support is for subscribers i'm not asking for money or anything like that i just i would like to build up my subscriber base i see i'm now at a little over 700 subscribers yay which is kind of a bit of a milestone you know break 700 as soon as i hit a thousand subscribers we're gonna do some kind of fun little giveaway i don't know what it's gonna be yet but we'll do something so let's let's talk about the welder a little bit actually i'm gonna do two products here i've got the welder and i bought the inexpensive welding cart to go with it so we're going to kind of cover both of them today but primarily we're going to be focusing the welder so it's the it's the titanium unlimited 200. it's a multi-process machine a multi-process machine will do basically all of the welding processes that are most common it will do mig or wire feed welding it will do stick welding it will do spool gun welding for aluminum and it will also do tig welding so it'll do all of those processes which was a selling point for me because i haven't tig welded since i was in high school and i wanted to kind of get back into it again i've welded professionally for the better portion of my life i've been a fabricator for many many years i've built things like industrial staircasing and ladding ladders and catwalking i've built bridge abutments i have made those those big interstate sign trusses that you see that holds the signs that say the next town is so many miles away as you're coming out of big cities and the rest next rest stop is so many miles away i've built those big overhead sign trusses i've built a large roller style gates i've built spiral tear scare staircases uh i've built trailers i've been i've been welding and fabricating for the better part of my life so i've used some welders i've used everything from uh millermatic 190s and 200s to the shopmaster 300 to the 400 and 450 industrial machines and pulse machines i've used lincoln's i've used esob i've used millers i've used a lot of machines and i think i have a pretty good foundation now admittedly i'm a little bit out of practice i haven't been working as a welder for quite a few years now i kind of got out of that game but i still do my own home welding and i'm i'm not as good as i used to be i don't have those robotic beads anymore take that into account when you're when you're watching my welding i am it's a pr it's a perishable skill and you have to practice if you don't keep up on it you're gonna lose it so let's let's move the camera down here let's talk about some of the forms and the functions and what comes with the machine and then we'll get into my overall impressions of it and i'll try and do i cut up some scrap i'll try and do a little bit of welding for you today too all right so let's talk a little bit first about uh general fit and finish and appearance uh overall other than the hideous lime green color which is actually kind of growing on me a little bit fit and finish of the welder and the actual construction and build of the welder it's not bad it's no better or worse than and then the lincoln's or the millers or the esobs and i've looked at the lincolns and the millers and the esops before i bought this one trying to justify the extra money and i couldn't do it but you know fit and finish and polish of this thing it's not horrible for a 700 welder i really don't have anything to complain about this handle is metal these plastic covers on the front and the back are plastic quite obviously and that's kind of the sign of the times a lot of things are plastic now and that's just the way they're building things these days uh if we look over here on this side we can see we've got some plastic hinges up here i'm not a big fan of plastic hinges but these look like they're pretty well built and they're pretty beefy uh relatively impressed with how heavy these hinges are and they they seem like they're going to last they are just hinges for the cover door and it's not like i'm going to be setting anything heavy on this thing it's and as long as you're as long as you're not stupid with it they should last i don't see any reason why not go down here and let's this is your typical pull-up slide latch to to open the door to get you into your wire feeder and your rollers uh again the the latch is plastic one thing kind of impressive to me is that this door it's actually some fairly stout material i mean it's it's still got some wiggle to it but you know for what it is it's a door and it it's it'll function just fine they actually took the time to put a a rolled edge on this and bend it three ways to give it some more strength and some rigidity they put this one extra little bend in here and that helps out quite a bit so overall the the fit and finish of the machine it's i'd say above par for what you would expect for a 700 welder uh it's it's it's it's just not bad it's it's perfectly adequate and i'm very very satisfied with it nice little touch they put a preliminary settings chart in here uh these are by no means set in stone any these are just starting points but to be honest with you they're pretty close they're not bad i've i've played with just using exactly the settings that they give you and they and they well just fine and there's some fine tuning and some tweaking you can do but the settings are actually from what i found pretty doggone close and you could if you don't know welding real well or you don't have a ton of welding experience you can completely get away with going with just their recommended settings and getting the job done i'm fairly impressed with the accuracy thus far of the machine's setup chart now i've only had this machine a little over a month so i haven't obviously been through the whole chart but from what i've been using it's pretty doggone close nice little touch that they add there and it's in a spot that you're not going to lose it it's not on a separate cart or anything like that that's going to get thrown away so but i do see that the the decal looks like it's starting to bubble up here actually that's not even the decal bubbling up huh look what i did i didn't peel off the little protective film wow you guys are going to get to be the first oh how satisfying [Music] should we do it on the other side let's do it on the other side satisfaction alert look out here it comes oh there you go how satisfying was that so yes the uh the fit and finish of the machine is it's it's like i said i would say it's above standard for what you'd expect for a 700 welder front panel on this machine is exactly what i would want it's simple there's not a lot of stupid stuff that you have to do in this you don't have to go into any sub menus or sub programs to get anything done you've got three knobs and two switches up here that's all you need to get it done it's it's you don't need to be a rocket science to use this machine you've got a wire feed you've got your voltage you've got your inductance you've got your mode switch down is for mig or wire feeding center is for tig and up is for stick doesn't get any simpler than that uh you've got 2t4t here 2t and 4t if you don't know what 2t and 4t is 2t your mig welding this is only for mig welding 2t squeeze the trigger and hold it you're going to weld you release the trigger you're stopping welding switch it to 40 you squeeze the trigger to start welding and then you release it it's going to keep welding and then you weld away weld away weld away and then you get done with your bead you squeeze it and release it again it's going to stop welding i don't know why they have that function on this machine if this was an industrial machine where you were welding long beads and when i say long beads i'm talking feet worth of beads in a continuous pass i can see this being useful for the average garage home guy not seeing it but it's there and it's a function they probably didn't have to put in and it is it is there you got three leds here you got a power led an alarm led and a work led i don't exactly know what the work led does to be honest with you i've never even noticed it if it's on or off or whatever very very simple you got a digital readout display here which is uh very easy to read and it's there's no buttons to push to get into sub menus none of that kind of crap it's just straightforward dumb guy welding and i'm a dumb guy and this is the kind of machine that i need uh the only the only complaint i would have about the knobs is that it doesn't take a whole lot of movement on these knobs to get those numbers to move uh and if you're if you're one of these type a people and you want that thing to be at 16.3 i you just bump it a little bit and you're running past it's like trying to stop on the zeros on the gas pump it's a little it's a little tough to do but that's a it's not a barn burner get over it it's close enough and it and they and they work really really well uh what do we got on the back okay on the back pretty simple not much here you've got your power cord you've got your gas input you've got your 120 or 240 selection switch uh this is one thing that the vulcan doesn't have it has the vulcan welder if you plug it into 110 it automatically senses that you're in 110 and it it just switches it internally this one's actually got a physical tactile switch that you have to flip it wasn't worth an extra three hundred dollars to me to have that auto switching function and your on and off switch very very simple very very basic nothing much back here with the machine you get the power quarter power cord converter to let you get from 110 to or from 220 to 110 you get a ground clamp obviously i don't know of anybody that sells a welder without a ground clamp you get your you get your your mig torch for mig welding you get a you get a stick welding torch or stinger lead whatever you want to call it and you also get your tig torch this is a very inexpensive tig torch you can see i haven't even taken this out of the box yet so i haven't started taking with this yet that'll be a later video this machine will not run a high frequency start torch you will need the only option you have is for scratch start uh what else do you get you also get the regulator admittedly this is not the greatest regulator in the world one thing i've noticed with the regulator is no matter where you set your regulated pressure after a period of time a welding at least in my case on this particular machine you have to go back and recheck it because it will steadily climb up on you for example if i had it set at about 15 and then i go and i weld a whole bunch of welds and then i come back and i check it it seems to have climbed up to about 20 22 or even 25 so for some reason this regulator wants to cascade and climb on you a little bit i don't know why that is but it is a cheap regulator and it will it'll get you going i'll replace it eventually but there's no point in in fixing something that isn't really truly broke it's just a little bit of an annoyance not a great regulator but it's there and it will get you started if i have to make a gripe and a the regulator is not the greatest but it'll get you going it certainly isn't certainly isn't worth basing your buying decision on and that's pretty much what you get with your machine you you also get your instruction book which that's usually where those instruction books go but one thing that's actually kind of handy is this quick start card it tells you how to hook up the various leads for the different processes and it gives you a little quick start guide on on some basic stuff on how to run the machine so that's kind of nice and handy to have but it is what it is okay let's look inside the uh the wire house here so you've got a you've got a roller set of rollers your power rollers for your wire feeding uh honestly this is a pretty nice setup it's all it's all metal i think it's cast it's probably cast aluminum if i had to wager a guest but it's it's all cast so it's metal the rollers are actually pretty doggone nice here's a roller over here these aren't some kind of cheap plastic roller they're actually metal rollers they're very well labeled i i see no problem with them uh the the roller roller setup itself seems to be very very positive very easy to control very easy to work uh very solidly built and i've had zero problems with this uh something you need to know if you are going to run a spool gun there's a switch inside here for let me see make sure i get that on frame there's a switch inside here for running your spool gun or for running mig running mig you got to have it in a down setting for running the spool gun you got to have it up make sure you're aware of that if you're going to run a spool gun and this will run a spool gun i haven't bought it that is the one thing you don't get with the welder is the spool gun uh but you don't get it with the vulcan either so um all everything fit together really nice it went together really easy the connectors for the ground clamp their their half turn system uh they they go in you turn them and lock them into place and they they snug down and it's really well positively seated same with the with the uh positive side for the spool gun or the uh the stinger for stick welding if you tig weld you put your ground on the positive and then you put your tig torch in the negative uh but all these connections are really nice the the rubber coating on here is a little thin and chintzy it's not super great but again we're not talking this is not a machine for an industrial setting this is a machine for the home garage guy the guy that wants to do some light stuff or maybe a light job shop very very light or maybe uh maybe as a portable machine on a side note i have run this machine using my predator 6500 watt generator the same generator i keep on hand for storm emergencies and stuff like this and it actually welds on the generator pretty doggone nicely so this thing can be extremely portable you can take that generator with you this this whole unit only weighs 40 pounds and you could take it pretty much anywhere you wanted to fire up the welder and weld anywhere you like with the use of a generator so that's another nice option and you really only need the 110 outlet to get it done so yeah i have that's kind of a side note i digress a little bit i have run this off my predator predator generator and it's granted it's the big one it's it's the big generator the damn thing will run my whole house it will it will weld on it just fine so overall impressions of the machine i like it i like the simplicity of it i like the fit and finish of it i like the construction of it it seems like it's very very well built for what it is and it's a 700 multi-process welder so let's let's talk a little bit about this cart this is the this is the harbor freight cart it's the less expensive one i didn't see the need to buy the the 120 dollar multi-drawer cart i just don't have a use for that it's not that important to me so i bought the 40 cart this let me tell you you are not gonna build this cart for 40 bucks there's no chance in hell you cannot do it you can't buy the casters all the metal and your time is worth something you can't build this cart for 40 bucks and for 40 bucks this is i would go so far as to say this is probably one of the better deals at harbor freight if you are looking for a very basic welding cart to set your welder on you you i'll say it again you can't build this cart for 40 bucks between your time and the materials and the fasteners and the casters it's just not going to happen it's got a shelf of course it's got a lower shelf and it's got an upper shelf to hold the welder now you will see right there i welded a piece of angle iron onto here because the titanium welder is a little too big for the cart this this cart was basically designed for one of the chicago electric scrap iron chinese garbage welders god whatever you do don't buy one of those please don't buy one of those i've been there done that got the t-shirt it's a bunch of crap don't buy one hate them this welder is legit spend the extra scratch and at least get the titanium wire welder but i like this one anyway i digress the titanium welder doesn't fit on this on the top shelf very well so i had to well the first thing i did this used to be a lip that was bent down i straightened it out to to extend the shelf a little bit i just took a hammer a couple of hammers and i just banged it out straight it's kind of rough it's kind of ugly but you know what it gets the job done i don't care sue me so the first thing i did was i took this lip that was bent down here and all it was was a little grab handle for you to be able to grab so you could pull it around a little easier i bent it up then i welded this piece of angle iron on here to capture the welder so it didn't want to slide off all the time and then of course i had two by two angle is all i had so then i had to cut a bunch of divots in here to make room for for these three sockets a little bit of grinder work is all that was and now i have this cart set up to fit the titanium so if you're going to buy them both understand right now the titanium welder does not fit the chicago electric cheap ass welding cart it's a little too big i i rolled it around like that for the better part of two weeks and then i finally said enough and i i fixed it up just a little bit it it's actually a pretty well constructed cart i it'll probably last my lifetime other than that uh the i i would high i would recommend it if you want to get a cart it's worth the 40 bucks so i would venture to say that this little cheap ass welding cart they've got is probably one of the best buys in the store because it's you just you just simply cannot produce this for 40 bucks on your own you can't hardly buy the metal for that it's it is what it is it assembles fairly easy i assembled it in about 20 minutes there's lots of nuts and bolts and i just i used a power gun to put it all together and it the one thing i will say about the cart is the instructions absolutely suck you're going to swear at the instructions a little bit but have a beer suck it up and drive on and put your cart together so i guess now proof is in the pudding let's uh i've got some scraps over here let's let's let's weld some stuff together and let's let's see how this thing welds i'm plugged into 110 here first off in let me let me say this i've been using nothing but 110 i haven't used 220 at all i don't have 220 all in my garage so 110 is what what i've got to use i haven't tripped the circuit breaker i haven't tripped the gfi i haven't hit the duty cycle on this thing and i've got no complaints with how it's welding on 110. get that out of the way uh you can very this is a very functional machine on 110 voltage it works very very well fan is a little loud on this thing admittedly it's it's not the quietest fan it's obviously moving quite a bit of air so it's it's not the quietest fan in the world we'll just say that so we're gonna run we're gonna run on their settings and we're gonna run it as if we were working 11 gauge steel which on their settings is 180 180 on the wire speed and an 18 180 on the wire speed and an 18 on the voltage and then inductance they say anywhere from five to ten uh i'm not going to get into inductance today you you do your own research on inductance all right i've got some scrap here so let's just uh let's just do a let's just do a butt weld we're just gonna butt weld this together let's get attack on it this thing actually tacks pretty nice those are those aren't some bad tacks tacks pretty good so let's just do a butt weld on this thing not a bad weld whelpers if you don't have whelpers get yourself a set of whelpers like i said i'm a little out of practice so don't criticize me too much i got a little undercut right there but we've got really good penetration good heat it's got a good sound i'm actually going to turn my inductance up a little bit not a bad weld certainly plenty adequate for somebody who's doing some garage welding so let me grab a couple of pieces of this and let's just do a basic fillet weld for you again we'll tack it okay so now we'll just do a basic fill it weld for you make sure that's in frame we're going to do this one on a slight drag we're going to do a drag weld on this one and i'm gonna stop before i hit the tack here because i want you to see how well it's melting there is nothing wrong whatsoever with that weld nothing wrong with that at all is that in frame yes okay so let's take another two pieces of that same scrap and now i'm gonna i'm gonna do a push weld now same thing i'm gonna do a fill it but i'm gonna push it instead of dragging so again there is nothing wrong with that weld at all let's try a plug weld let's just see what a plug how this will plug weld see no problem whatsoever with a plug weld let's do uh let's do a fillet weld on a on a narrow pro narrower profile i mean really this is 316 steel i've got good heat transfer through so i know i'm penetrating nothing wrong with that weld whatsoever so just for grins let's see what it'll do on a vertical down there's a vertical down for you hope you can see that and boy i haven't done a vertical up for a long time that's a whole new kind of thing let's see what i can do let's see if i can get a vertical up done like i said i haven't done it up for quite a while see if i can get that done yeah not my best work but you can see i got a little i got a little inclusion right there that's that's on me that's not the welder it vertical ups just fine apparently i am way out of practice so don't blame the welder for my inadequacies i am really out of practice so the wire the mig welding the wire welding aspect of it the machine works very very well very very well i have zero complaints with it whatsoever i am going to try and take the camera off and i'm going to try and shine it through my helmet so you can see the arc uh let's see how this goes all right let's see if i can get this done so i'm holding my helmet my phone in my hour my yeah my phone in my helmet and i'm one handing this so let's see if i can get this done so turned out pretty better than i thought it would nothing wrong with that weld so all in all weld's pretty good very impressed with it uh one thing i didn't touch was the gun quality um admittedly this is not a twinkle gun it's a little little light it's plastic the trigger seems very positive and it uses the smaller style cones but all these things are sourceable at harbor freight also the same cones that happen to be used by hobart's the lincoln's so the parts are common and they're easy to find the gun is a little on the small side now i've got big sausage finger meat hooks so the the gun quality i mean the gun could be a little bigger could be a little more robust but again we are not talking about a machine here that we're going to be using in an industrial welding setting we are talking about a machine that you and me and joe snuffy and every other guy in the country who wants to weld some stuff in their garage or do some little projects or build their kit a go-kart like i'm doing or whatever this is going to be plenty adequate you're not watching this video to buy a machine that you are going to use in an industrial welding setting the machine tacks well it welds well it holds a stable arc it's got good penetration and considering you know i'm running i'm running eighth inch material here or 11 gauge while this stuff's this is heavier than 11 gauge that's i think that's 3 16. and and this stuff is 3 16. i know that is it's it's it's doing really good on 110 and i'm sure if i had it on 220 and i wanted to pump it up i could get 100 penetration all day long on this thing with 316 steel and not have an issue so i'm running on 110 and i'm trying to keep the voltages down so i don't trip circuit breakers and stuff but there again i've never tripped a circuit breaker with this thing and i've been welding with it a lot well there it is the the harbor freight ultimate 200 multi-process welder i'm sorry i didn't wasn't able to show you some tig and i'm sorry i wasn't able to show you stick welding i'm not going to stick weld inside my shop because it'll smoke the shop up something fierce and i have do not have pure argon and i haven't set up the tig machine yet when i get to tiggin on this thing i'll do a follow-up review on how the tigging is working and if i can maybe get out and do some stick welding and remember the video and i have stick weld with it already i just haven't i just didn't even think to videotape it i was helping a buddy out so that was more important overall impressions of the machine for a 700 welder it's above and beyond my expectations for fit and finish it performs very very well i've only run it on 110 and the welding on the 110 is smooth it's crisp it makes great beads it lays them down i get good penetration very very happy with the overall performance if i have to make a gripe i would say the regulator is a bit on the hokey side the gun itself a little bit light duty but again we're not in an industrial setting here if you're looking for an industrial welder this is not an industrial welder it's just not it's it's not what it was designed for this is a home welder or garage welder they they may call it a professional series it welds like professional but it is not an industrial setting machine i can very easily see this machine at an auto mechanic shop where you maybe need to weld something up i can see this machine on a farm i can see this machine on or in somebody's garage for what i'm doing for light project work or just fun project work i could see this machine being used as a portable rig but it's very portable it's very lightweight it will run off of a generator but this is primarily going to be for the home guy the hobbyist or the light commercial settings such as automotive maybe even a small engine shop something of that effect would i buy it again absolutely would i recommend it to a friend it depends on what my friend wants to use it for if he's a guy like me and he's doing the kind of stuff i'm doing please i'll i'll drive you there and i'll help you get it i mean it's i'm that confident in it it works really really well and i'm very very happy with it now ask me this in a year will it last we will find out i bought the two year warranty on it so if it takes a crap on me i'm taking it back and i'll get another one but so far very very happy with it ed here with jack of all trades thank you for riding along hope you enjoyed this video i hope it helps you make a decision on whether or not this is a machine that you want and i will see you on the next video you

Channel: Jack of all Trades

Views: 76,629

Rating: 4.9017367 out of 5

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Id: yOKeopNbE9o

Length: 36min 18sec (2178 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 08 2021