Lincoln Electric MIG Pak Welder 140 Review

alright guys I just picked up a new toy new tool I guess I got this big pack 1:40 readily available at Home Depot and Canadian Tire this is a little bit higher end than some of the cheaper flux core or mig welders mind you it's not like a high-end Miller machine or maybe a Hobart or anything like that but it's pretty good you know for the home hobbies' for me it's going to be more than enough I've used previously some cheaper flux core wire fed machines and they don't really work really well but I was very pleasantly supply surprised with this machine how well the flux core worked on this probably because just got a little more power than some of those cheeping machines that I had in the past and they also didn't last very long so anyways this is a Lincoln so what came with it obviously the welding unit itself I have it on a on a cart which makes it really nice to move around I got that cart for about 70 bucks so I highly recommend getting a card if you get in a welding machine like this especially if you're going to get a gas bottle that I have and I'll talk about the gas bottle here in a second so it came with the machine came with the leads of course ground nice ground clamp I got the the gun here with an active trigger so what that what I mean by that I don't know if that's right word but some of the cheaper machines when you touch the metal that you're trying to weld with the wire it's going to arc right away what's nice about this one is it won't arc until you pull the trigger and then the wire starts feeding in it it turns it live a cheaper machine I had before you know sometimes you get some arc flash you touch the metal by accident the go to wire got a little long and you kind of tapped it give you a little zap anyways that's kind of nice that it won't do that with this one so this kit what it came with and I'll get to this Sutter stuff over here in a second I paid about 500 bucks for this machine on sale and it had a bonus kit with it too but what came with the actual machine without the bonus kit is it has also it has this gas hose manual of course to set it up gas regulator for mig welding you don't know what meg welding is the difference between mig welding and flux core welding look it up i'll try to show you the difference here in a bit anyway this is some extra contact tips and this extra tip here this nozzle I think for gas for gas MIG welding I have the flux core wire in the machine meaning you can weld without gas with this MIG welder it's kind of funny that most people call mig welders you know wire fed welders mig welders but they're not tip not technically a mig welder unless it uses gas because a MIG welder stands for I think metal inert gas welding something like that this wire here it came with two spools the one spools already in it it's got the flux core I mean it's got the shielding already built into the wire whereas this stuff here is unshielded and you have to use this wire with a bottle of gas anyways so this is a bonus kit came with it it was a promotion welding magnet it's this kind of nice if you don't have this stuff already I already have like the welding gloves chipping hammer and all that stuff but it's good to always have Morial for consumables so melting welding magnet to hold large pieces of metal one one magnet nice pair of gloves those are nice soapstone for marking steel chipping hammer and then two extra rolls wire one with the inner shield I think it's point O three five flux core so you don't need gas with this wire and then this stuff here is the Maguire that you need to use with gas so this is 0.025 both of these rules already came with the machine so that's kind of nice so you see there's a roll there and then I got the bonus rolls here so it's kind of nice a great deal really great deal and I've I've played with this machine a little bit and it works awesome like I'm really really happy with this you know for the home hobbyist probably probably one of the better machines for the price in my opinion I've used some other welding machines higher end ones you know my friends have and they work really well but this works of great for for home hobbyists so I'm going to show you the difference between the flux core set up and the mix set up which I should mention also the mix set up I picked up this bottle of gas here this is a tri mix that I got at Air Liquide I think they call this the Albee and what that means is I've purchased this bottle and it comes with a regular built a regulator built in so I bought this bottle and with them I can just exchange it I can take it in and get a new bottle filled so I own this bottle but what it means is I own I own the bottle I can take it in and just get a refill but they'll just give me another bottle I think is how it works because it's going to take me forever to go through a bottle this anyway so because I don't do a ton of welding but it will be really nice to use use a gas system for for welding alright I'm going to show you some welds and the setup and let's see how it goes so this is a setup with the flux core all it is is it just got a roll of wire so if you're interested in this welder there's two ways you can set up this welder just flux core and then there's MIG welding a lot of people think a MIG welder is just wire fed welder that's not the case it doesn't have to use gas it can use this wire here called flux core meaning this wire has the flux built into it and when you weld it shields the arc and you don't need a gas now MIG welding metal inert gas that uses a shielding gas instead of the flux to to shield the arc but it's a lot more expensive it's a little bit harder to set up just a little bit you know if you don't do a lot of welding it's probably not worth your time or your money to to setup that but what's nice about it is there's no flux to chip off unlike using flux-cored you have to chip off the off of the shielding material all right I'm going to weld some angle iron just to run some beads just to try out the flux core wire I got a speed setting of three with a power setting of D because it's 1/8 inch in learn so it's pretty thick let's see how this works [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so I ran a bead on some 1/8 inch angle iron and steel and it looks pretty good I'm not the best welder this is the first bead I've ran with a wire fed welder and over probably 10 years but it looks okay not really any undercut the power setting on the wire speed seemed okay I just need some practice but it looks like a good bead overall and the flux chipped off really easy so I have to say all I had before was a really cheap flux core welder this uh this welder which I'm using flux core wire right now that came with it works really really well so change the wire on this pretty simple this will go crazy if you let the tension go on the spool of wire just going to go Boing and it's just going to go everywhere so always keep a little tension on it and I'm just spooling this wire back all the way through after releasing this tensioner so all I do is just pull down on that and release and that lets go is the tensioner and I'm just feeding the wire back spooling it back onto the spool from the gun and there we go there's the end of it I'm going to release this and then I'm going to have to tie this or else it's going to go crazy everything I have to do is I have to switch this wheel this feeder wheel I have to flip this round there's one side one side of its point zero three five and the other side is 0.25 so I have to flip it around okay now I can turn it on and let it feed [Music] there we go now that I've switch this over to point point oh two five I have to change the contact tip on this so I got a point two five contact tip I've taken out the old one and then I have the metallic contact tip now or nozzle I should say and I'm going to put this guy on there we go we're set up for Meg now and now over here I have the gas bottle in place and because this has the built-in regulator I just hope the hose that came with it the gas hose directly into the bottle and then into the back of the machine and then I can just turn it on and off right here and then control the gas flow using that right there and I have a gauge on the side there so that's really handy with this type of bottle like that has the gauge built in all right now I got the setup for MIG I'm gonna try wire speed of five heat setting of C or D for just running a bead on a quarter one 1/8 inch angle steel [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so I went back and I did a little more practicing just to get a feel for actual MIG welding instead of the flux core so I just want to show you so here is the flux core I did earlier so these pieces these three pieces here are all flux core with the flux core wire the point 0.03 4 and you know it's not bad I'm not the best welder so you know don't necessarily judge me on that but I just wanted to show you that I was able to run an ok bead in the in a 90 here so this one here looks alright I didn't do so well in the flat here but that was the very first beat I ran with the welder here is not too bad but then this piece here this one here is looking decent I got the heat and the wire speed pretty good so I'm pretty happy with this one not too much splatter no undercut this one here looks great so that's what the flux core so I was getting the hang with the flux core then I switched over to the MIG and I ended up with my my first try with this guy here and this is using the point o2 5 wire but I think what I had wrong was the heat setting I didn't not use enough heat so I didn't have very good luck with this it just built up and maybe my wire speed was wrong - I think my wire speed was a little too fast not enough heat wire speed too fast so I got these little balls here built up so this piece no good then I just decide to go back and let's just start running some beads and I think I've already showed you guys these and I was able to get run some beads on some thinner thinner stock I think this is 14 gauge so not the best but I was starting at the hang of it and then I realized ok I obviously don't have enough heat and wires heat enough heat so I cranked up the heat a bit more and I was able to to start getting back to dwelling on one eighth angle it's not as good as the flux core and after doing some reading in the main you will this machine if I'm gonna well anything thick I can use flux core too well bad I get better penetration probably cuz the wires a little thicker so a little more heat but with the Ming I can weld thinner things however if I want a well thicker metal I need to I need to grind them out so I need to do multi pass so in other words I need to like notch out a V and then weld in so that's why I'm having problems with this it's not meant for welding material quite this thick right off the get-go I think but with the heat cranked up and a little practice it's getting there it's a lot better than what this was here so the other thing is you notice this piece of metal is a little more rusty you gotta have clean metal I noticed when welding with gas so I've got some lessons learned here so this machine so far works awesome but again it's the operator not the machine I'm going to go back play with some more but overall my impressions even just based on the flux core this machine works awesome so anyways I had to go practice some more and then kind of come back and just finish off this overview anyways if you liked this video give it a thumbs up consider subscribing I got all kinds of stuff on my channel thanks for watching and I'm gonna keep practicing and running more beads until I get the hang of this

Channel: Andrew W

Views: 368,064

Keywords: lincoln electric, Lincoln Electric MIG Pak Welder 140, lincoln welder, welding, metal working, blacksmithing, knife making, mig welding, flux core welding

Id: KFnDZvi9v44

Length: 18min 13sec (1093 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 02 2017