TESTING The Cheapest Welder On AMAZON

welcome back friends to the shop so can a guy buy a welder for $100 it actually works today we're gonna find out the vivo home is pretty compact it's very heavy just as as you expect for a welder the build quality is actually not too bad I mean it's better than I expected controls are pretty simple of course we have right there they have a wire feed speed control that dial that controls the wire the instructions were a little bit vague I don't really understand what the 1 & 2 are it said that it automatically controlled wire feed speed so it looks like we just have a high and a low and off and on we've got a overheat light and then our 110 plug and then our grounding rod or grounding clamp the grounding clamp of course is not the highest quality it's kind of what you would expect from like a cheap pair of jumper cables the wire feed unit the Stinger or the trigger seems to be okay copper electrode one thing it has that my eSAB doesn't have is it's got a little clip on it which is kind of nice for hanging it on stuff so you don't drop it so overall it's pretty good this switches don't feel bad the dial feels pretty decent we've got the micro switch on the stinger itself nice clicky feel we can remove the shroud there we've got a solid copper electrode it looks very similar to on your more of you on your higher-end welders basically probably just a copy of that but we'll it well that's the question and here is the accessory pack everything a guy needs to become a fabricator now how about this we've got our combination slag hammer wire brush of course you know we've get slag under weld this has got a plastic thing with a little metal end on it for knocking the slag off and then brushing we've got a very small roll of what do we have here what size is this self shielded flux cored wire that there so if you're gonna do a lot of work you might want to order an extra one of these a couple electrodes fuses in the bag now this is what this is the thing that cracks me up the most this is actually the welding hood that came with the lens now which looks good enough this is a handle so apparently you just hold this so you we are gonna be welding with one hand it wouldn't be right for me to go get my nice airspeed you know what welding helmet I got it I got to use this one you know to get the whole effect so let's put this thing together and and then we'll start our first project in all honesty I'm not super impressed with the the welding hood but so we'll put this looks like we put this lens in there that seems to fit in there okay and then we like we Bend this around this gives us a little protection but what's better than nothing I mean I what do you expect would expect for $109 I mean really is it gonna work yeah it's gonna work not everyone maybe you just have a prop maybe you just need to do one thing maybe need to stick a couple pieces of metal together and you don't want to you know drop a month's wages on on a pro welder so you know I get that I totally get that so this is the handle and this must snap in here so that you can hang on to the thing that's a bit that's not the best having trouble getting that to fit in there primarily because I'm I'm getting old and I can't see anything anymore all right with the old readers on it go on the inside oh there we go goes on the inside that protects your hand okay [Laughter] well we'll see now we can close that up right there okay put the spring on it I don't know which way this Orient's I guess it doesn't matter we just need to keep a little bit of spring tension on that guy who knows there's no pit there's no one no rip there's not really any diagrams on the construction but I I guess that's it all right fair enough I have no doubt the Chinese guys have put this together or are good dudes but I don't always believe they have America's best interests at heart so there's a lot of voltage on this thing that's let's be safe alright guys it's time for us to enter the fabricating mode that's some Hollywood movie magic right there all right let's get to well be okay for our welding test I've got we'll just do something simple we'll just make a little piece we'll just take some flat bar here we'll just say we need to make a little angle bracket or something this is not very heavy I don't imagine that this welder would probably do much more than a pinch here and I think that's what I have here and it's a it is it's actually it's actually eight inch by one inch so let's put this up on the vise and then see what type of a bead we can run now I've never used this welder before so it's gonna take a little bit of playing around to get the wire speed and all that right so it might might be a little bit of a learning process but I think we'll find out what it can do anyway this grounding clamp is pretty light duty there we're gonna do a corner weld that's will try to join those two together right there and we'll see what we'll see think we're good to go guys we'll get all of our accessories together we've got of course our slag hammer and our I'd probably upgrade this thing if it were me keep our wire or our cable here as straight as possible if you bend these things too tight sometimes they'll have a little trouble pushing the wire through actually I never did push the wire through let's take this electrode off here like it oh there goes sure enough okay we'll cut that off there and I've got to get those snap-on cutters replace they don't hardly cut butter oh goodness gracious maximum axle as you probably gathered I'm not a I'm not a professional here you usually like to have two hands this this is kind of kind of a hassle I don't like this thing very well I can tell you that already all right let's see what we did it's really difficult one-handed there definitely is a slag on it that you don't get from I don't seem to notice from a wire feed with a weld or with a gas but it does definitely work I didn't get penetration there I need to hold it on there longer I'm used to having a more powerful welder I think and I know I know that you guys are in the comments or always do perfect welds every time but I you know like as I said I'm not a professional you know this is a one of those skills that diminishes over time if you don't use it and I don't agree if I don't use it very much let me put my welding hood on and try my best or so I can use two hands and run a bead across here and see what kind of penetration we can get looks like I overheated it cooked it it's dead views whole circuit breaker okay my bad apparently you need more than 20 amps for that on this second pass I held the I held the heat on there for quite a long time before I moved it and and the penetration is not super super great this is a little probably about the max as far as thickness on this welder I would assume but if a guy if you had if you weren't kicking the breaker off and you could put put it on there a little bit longer you could burn that down in there and I think you could join steel together here you know no problem I'm just talking about talking about pro level here we're just talking about a guy that needs to get you know stick a couple pieces of metal together and let's not forget guys that this is $109 welder right free shipping and this is pretty much kind of what I expected right there not a lot of penetration in there and that's primarily because I just couldn't there's not a lot of power in there I couldn't get a heat on there now if a guy if it if you had a bigger circuit breaker and it wasn't kicking off you could stick around there a little bit longer and burn that down in there and I think it would hold I mean I don't know that I would you know be looking at this for doing like professional work of course but you know just for the if you're just building stuff around the deals or around the shop or a trailer or something you know I mean it definitely will stick two pieces of metal together alright guys so what do we learn here well we learned that I have well I have plenty of room for practice right again it's a diminishing skill what I find personally mean to be just being a shade tree guy is that when I when I do want to weld something it takes me about 15 minutes to kind of get everything dialed in and then I can I can do something that's passable right but and I think the same thing goes for this this lack of penetration into this eighth inch steel which is probably on the very high end of its capabilities could be mitigated a little bit by staying putting a little bit more heat in there and moving a little bit slow or maybe increasing the decreasing the wire feed speed and I don't know but the reality of it is is that it's $109 welder and it works you could definitely stick theses together if you needed to build a workbench some shelf brackets a trailer it can be done and it's one tenth of the cost less than one tenth of the cost that I have spent on my ESOP is it the same thing no but again you know my dad and I were having this conversation the other day the other day when he was here and he made this statement he said I would rather have a full set full SHOP full of cheap tools then than just one expensive tool and you know and I was I was kind of on the other end you know I would like okay so what I've what my experience in life has been is that I have bought things two and three times because I bought cheap for first and then it was just not adequate and it wasn't up to the task and then I end up buying something medium grade and you know and then ultimately you end up buying it several times and ending up with the one that you want but he makes the argument that you know what what if you don't not going to use it all the time here yeah you you use use your stuff in the shop all the time and you need a good vice because you're beating on it pounding on it but a guy that's you know maybe he's an accountant or he does office work and he just wants to tinker in his shop there is a place for the lower end tools and I have to agree 100% I've done the same thing myself like I had to change some struts on a vehicle I had years ago and I needed a spring compressor do I go to snap-on and spend seven hundred eight hundred dollars on a pro level shop level spring compressor that I'm gonna use one time right do I go to Harbor Freight and do I get one for $39 that will do the job and with a fraction of the cost so you see where I'm going so it does it have a place the $109 welder of course it does yeah there's places to skimp and there's places not to skimp and you really have to ask yourself how much am I really gonna use this can I justify buying a miller for $1500 that I'm gonna use every once every three years you know maybe not so that's it that's the test hope you enjoyed it don't forget to click the thumbs up I've got a very exciting video series that I'm I'm stoked about that we're gonna start up here in a couple days day or two that I think you're really going to enjoy so stay tuned for that so thanks for watching and we'll see you guys on the next video [Music]

Channel: Wranglerstar

Views: 1,320,567

Keywords: Wranglerstar, youtube, harbor freight, lincoln electric, stick welder, portable welder, arc welder, welding (invention), flux core, how to, dc welder, mig welder, plasma cutter, cheap stick welder, gas metal arc welding, metal fab, do it yourself (hobby), welding helmet, how to weld, how-to weld, cheapest plasma cutter, do it yourself, harbor freight welder, lincoln electric 140 mig welder, lincoln electric handy mig welder, amazon welder, cheapest welder on amazon

Id: QtKcowTaTws

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 07 2019