mustange70
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2015
- Messages
- 121
Welp, after almost falling for that miller 211 ebay scam and then doing some searching for looking on who was selling welders locally I stumbled across a well known shop advertising the above machine for $714 cdn after gst. Link to said machine:
http://www.weldking.com/pdf/Flier-MAG255.pdf
Consider this a review thread for the machine and anything else Weld King related. I am not expecting a Miller 250 quality machine, but more so of the 180 amp machine variety quality with more duty cycle.
Machine only came with the bare bones (no regulator or gas bottle, no filler metal, just the welder, gun,, ground cable & clamp, & bracket for a bottle) to get going. After quizing them about it, found out that the consumables are all common off the shelf parts, and the reason for the low price was the fact they brought them in for the industrial shops in Calgary, and just weren't working out because the machines were not up to the task of a heavy industrial shop welding 8 hours a day, and are more of an automotive/garage capacity machine, think of your typical Lincoln 180 design with a 100% duty cycle when working with 1/4'' material. I thought about it and figured this would work for me, as my little hobart 175 was running into duty cycle limits on a few things, and I needed something bigger.
Anyway I bought it, grabbed a regulator and new bottle of C25 and got to setting it up and trying it out. Which is where I'm at now. Overall the fit and finish is very nice, a lot better then I expected for such an inexpensive machine. The gun is a Bernard gun and so far is very good, the ground seems ok, fairly heavy, but time will tell how it holds up. There's lots of room in the wire feeder to hold large spools of wire, and the wire feeder seems pretty heavy duty. The machine itself has some heft (two guys to lift it) as well. The controls are infinite adjustable with digital readouts as well.
The bit of welding I'm doing so far as not been the easiest, as I've used self shielded flux core or stick for the most part up to now, so there is that transition to make, plus I'm having issues getting the parameters set just right which is leading me to believe I might have wire feeder issues (in-consistent wire feed speed when turned all the way up, and also it has a crater fill feature that doesn't want to turn off it seems). But I found some new information this morning (a recommended parameter chart, and updated manual) that I will tryout and see if it helps. If not I'll take it back to the vendor and tell them to fix it (I have a 1 year warranty on it, plus the vendor is the area service center for the brand).
That said I'm away for work for a few days and when I get back I will get pictures of the welding and try out some more thing before crying wolf. Also if anyone else is interested in picking this machine up send me a PM and give you the contact information.
The shop:
http://www.kristian.ca/
The flyer:
http://media.wix.com/ugd/778b26_d75c3a57a3854fb49ebc7046c64a4e00.pdf
My welder:
http://www.weldking.com/pdf/Flier-MAG255.pdf
Consider this a review thread for the machine and anything else Weld King related. I am not expecting a Miller 250 quality machine, but more so of the 180 amp machine variety quality with more duty cycle.
Machine only came with the bare bones (no regulator or gas bottle, no filler metal, just the welder, gun,, ground cable & clamp, & bracket for a bottle) to get going. After quizing them about it, found out that the consumables are all common off the shelf parts, and the reason for the low price was the fact they brought them in for the industrial shops in Calgary, and just weren't working out because the machines were not up to the task of a heavy industrial shop welding 8 hours a day, and are more of an automotive/garage capacity machine, think of your typical Lincoln 180 design with a 100% duty cycle when working with 1/4'' material. I thought about it and figured this would work for me, as my little hobart 175 was running into duty cycle limits on a few things, and I needed something bigger.
Anyway I bought it, grabbed a regulator and new bottle of C25 and got to setting it up and trying it out. Which is where I'm at now. Overall the fit and finish is very nice, a lot better then I expected for such an inexpensive machine. The gun is a Bernard gun and so far is very good, the ground seems ok, fairly heavy, but time will tell how it holds up. There's lots of room in the wire feeder to hold large spools of wire, and the wire feeder seems pretty heavy duty. The machine itself has some heft (two guys to lift it) as well. The controls are infinite adjustable with digital readouts as well.
The bit of welding I'm doing so far as not been the easiest, as I've used self shielded flux core or stick for the most part up to now, so there is that transition to make, plus I'm having issues getting the parameters set just right which is leading me to believe I might have wire feeder issues (in-consistent wire feed speed when turned all the way up, and also it has a crater fill feature that doesn't want to turn off it seems). But I found some new information this morning (a recommended parameter chart, and updated manual) that I will tryout and see if it helps. If not I'll take it back to the vendor and tell them to fix it (I have a 1 year warranty on it, plus the vendor is the area service center for the brand).
That said I'm away for work for a few days and when I get back I will get pictures of the welding and try out some more thing before crying wolf. Also if anyone else is interested in picking this machine up send me a PM and give you the contact information.
The shop:
http://www.kristian.ca/
The flyer:
http://media.wix.com/ugd/778b26_d75c3a57a3854fb49ebc7046c64a4e00.pdf
My welder: