I waited about 3 months to review. Until I had 10 jobs with it under my belt. It just works, and works as well as my much more expensive unit. It is fast to adapt and adjust and easy to move around. It looks as good as it did when I first started using it which is expected of a durable heavy item.

My first job was to reweld a bike frame for a friend. It worked diamonds. I will be real with you, if you are looking at this and reviews you probably already know a lot about welding. This one works great and keeps up with me just fine. However if you are brand new to welding? I think this might be perfect for you. It does more than enough and isn't as costly if anything goes wrong. Definitely a great buy for beginners or pros.

I was hesitant on buying one of these. I’m not a welder by any means but I have done some welding in the past. But I wanted something that I could use on aluminum because we have 2 jet boats to build. This welder has performed past all expectations. I bought a bottle of Argon and I was welding aluminum in 20 minutes. I bought a 10lb spool of flux core wire and did my exhaust on my truck as well. Awesome product!

Great supportI received my welder quickly and in good condition. Unpacked and put it together. I put the mig torch in and had a little snag getting the wire to feed. Pulled the mig torch out to start the wire in and the o-ring for the gas got a little messed up. Contact tech support and they were right on it. They don’t stock the o rings so they sent me a complete new mig torch. Can’t ask for anything better than that. Very good company and the welder works amazing.

So I am writing this review as a novice / hobbyist welder. I already own a similar sized 5 year old Harbor Freight Flux / Gas MIG welding machine and see this unit as a huge upgrade to that.

Taking it out of the box, the first thing I noticed is the relatively high quality of the gas hose, ground lead & clamp, MMA (stick) welding lead and MIG hose / gun. When you handle them, they don’t feel cheap. The shielding gas line has threaded brass fittings on the ends to attach it directly to a regulator, as versus the junky vinyl tube that comes out of my 5 year old Harbor Freight welder. I did check and the terminals with a magnet and they all appear to be solid brass.

The thing I like about this welder is the computer interface. Unlike other welders which require more trade knowledge to configure, this model has you put in parameters such as metal type, metal thickness, wire diameter, etc and it sets the machine for you, not unlike choosing a preset cycle on a clothes washer. For a user with less welding knowledge & experience, this feature is a big plus.

I also liked the way you can easily switch polarity when changing between MIG Flux, MIG Gas, TIG & Stick welding. For MIG, there is a short lead at the front of the machine & you simply switch the lead between the two outputs to reverse polarity. This is much more convenient than having to change them by loosening a terminal nut inside the machine and moving a wire.

I like that the drive system accommodates 4 wire sizes. Also, the pulley wheels are super easy to switch out.

As far as actually welding goes, I have so far only used the machine with flux wire. Not unsurprisingly, the wire fed smoothly and the weld I could achieve was a vast improvement over my old machine. Given the improved quality of this welder over my other, I expect to eventually invest in a regulator & gas tank because, well, it is justified.

I have not done any TIG or Aluminum welding with the unit because it is more advanced and I don’t own the accessories yet. Still, it is nice to know that when the project that justifies buying them comes along, this welder is designed for the upgrades.

I was surprised to see it came with virtually no welding supplies. I get that it is not going to include things like a welding helmet but was surprised to see it did not include any welding wire or even a couple of different type welding rods. My guess is this is probably more of a liability thing than anything else. If they included supplies & you fired it up without proper eye protection, well, you know…….

One last thing I do want to address. The unit is fitted with a NEMA 6-50 (50 Amp) plug. This makes sense as it is a standard for larger welders and allows this unit to be plugged into that type outlet. Since I already had a 20 amp 220 volt outlet for my other welder, I had to change the outlet to accommodate this machine. This raised the concern of just how much amperage was this welder pulling?

Per the manual, at 220 volts, the Max Input Amperage for MIG is 17.1, Stick 22.1, and TIG is 16.2. This is to say that you could overload a 20 amp 220 volt circuit doing stick (MMA) but are probably safe with MIG & TIG. Likewise, using the adapter provided at 110 volts, MIG maxes at 18.8 Amps, Stick 23.3, and TIG is 13.9. Since 110 volt receptacles are typically rated at 15 or 20 amps, I would be careful using the adapter, choose my outlet carefully, and I would not plan on using thicker rods as versus the thinner MIG wire.

I gave this a try today after I finished changing the style of my 240 V welder plug on the wall.
I also tried it on 120 V.

It worked well and only gave me issues when using some 0.025"" wire.

The 0.6mm tip seemed to be a bit too loose, a 0.030 wire would fit through it.
I checked the markings on the tip under magnification, and it definitely said 0.6 .
This tip worked at first, but then I started having issues where the 0.025"" wire would just blow back and weld itself to the inside of the tip every time I tried to start a weld.
I changed it out with a 0.6mm/0.025"" tip for a Vulcan welder, and now it was working properly.
If adjusting the feed speed too low, and/or the voltage too low, the 0.025"" wire would have some difficulty and start spattering and popping, but keeping it over 16.5 Volts and at around 330 to 350 Inches per min, it would just sizzle.
I was using some 3/32"" scrap, so I don't know how well it would work on thinner sheet metal while turned down.
The max wire speed on 120 V is 354 In/Min.
It works well at 120 V with 0.025 wire, no need for 240 V.

With 0.030 and 0.035 wire, it worked flawlessly on 240 V.
It seemed a little under powered on 120 V, but 0.030 wire was still able to weld some 1/8 inch scrap together.
Running on 240 Volts, with 0.035 wire, it welded some 1/4"" plate together with no issues.

It also worked well with some 0.035 flux core wire to weld some of the 1/4"" plate together.

The gun/torch is compatible with the HF Vulcan gas nozzles, tips, and gas-less diffuser protector for use with flux core wire.
The tip style is 6mm threaded, 25mm long, like the Tweco style.
Some, not all of the tips that came with the unit were 23mm long, the others were 25mm long.

I did notice that the ground lead was made from Copper Clad Aluminum wire, so I replaced it with a 15 foot piece of #2 AWG copper welding cable I had. This did not seem to change the performance of the welder at the currents that I was using it at.
The stock ground lead is 10 feet of 20mm squared CCA cable.
The stick lead is the same CCA cable.

With 0.025 inch wire or on thicker metal this definitely works better than my 140A Vulcan.