I have the same unit, from circa 1988 or so. I love it. Absolutely love it. I can most directly compare with a Millermatic 185, which I both used at one shop for five years or so, then bought new in 1999 when I started my own shop. I had my own Miller for almost twelve years-sold it to my brother when I did not need a second welder. The Linde I bought about three years ago from a guy for whom I worked. He bought it new, and took obsessively good care of it. It looked about three weeks old when I got it, but was more than twenty.
I have used both back-to-back and have more time with the Miller.
My curriculum Vitae: Restoring cars for 20 years, ten years as my only source of income. Used Migs on restoration as well as tool/workbench/jig/car cart construction.
My impressions: Linde had more consistent arc starting, fewer bad starts (e.g. wire hit metal with no arc like I forgot to ground the work)
Linde has less spatter.
Linde has better ability to make welds that should be left exposed/unfinished look better. Example: for stitch welding a race car shell, I can easily make welds from the Linde look like tig welds with no "dot" in the middle where the wire pulled out)
Better ability to lay little seam welds (half inch or so) on thin (20-gauge) steel when overlapped without eroding the top metal. This particular project was for an old Porsche SCRS rally car where I had to absolutely, positively duplicate welds from 1985.
Detriment: Heavier torch. I am used to it at this point.
Detriment: I feel like I need the amperage turned up more to get similar penetration on the same gauge/thickness metal.
Detriment: Linde seems sensitive to wire variations of the sort I cannot be certain: I use .023 wire for sheet metal work and it just seemed not to like this one spool of wire I fed it. The wire kept burning back into the tip. I blamed tips, drive wheel tension, wire speed, gas flow, my wife, and every other thing before trading wire spools for my spare. Spare made it work fine, mic-ing the wire turned up no real difference in diameter. It may be some other factor, but changing the spool cured it. Never fed the offending spool to the Miller so a true comparison may be impossible.
Caveat: In the ten years I had been without the Linde, which were the ten years when I had not worked for the guy where I used it till when I bought it from him, I had romanticized the machine in my mind, which may have given me more patience to learn the nuance of the machine.
I do, however think the Linde to be an excellent machine. The Porsche I did the welds on is on the short list for Amelia Island Concours in 2013.
