What's a decent welder to buy if I wanted to teach myself welding?

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I bought the cheapest mig welder from Harbor Freight and it's crap.

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damn I came in here to recommend one of the lil green Titanium welders

Mine has been fine for light duty stuff.

Stick welder can weld anything.

Did you have gas hooked up to that mig welder?

Do yourself a favor and take a welding course at a trade school. I took a couple courses at the Hammond trade school and it was well worth it.

When I was fresh out of welding school, I took a welding job with a company that was not a welding company, but needed someone to weld a lot of unistrut for them. This was the machine they provided me. 8-12 hours a day, sometimes 7 days a week, and it never missed a beat. If I had a need for a machine, I’d buy one of these for sure. You can find good deals on them on marketplace too.

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Far as a beginner rig, a $4000 multi process miller or lincon is a good option. They have exceptional resale value.

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Not exactly "beginner" at $4,000 when an Esab Rebel is $2,000, Baker's has this whole package for $2,500 that is everything but the tank & gas. This would be the buy-once-cry-once option for the OP.

Esab Rebel 215 multi-process


Esab also has an inverter stick machine kit that can run on Dewalt FlexVolt batteries, that would be a little money-maker around here, lot of people asking about minor welding repairs.

That cheap rig you bought will indeed weld plenty well enough to handle the task you listed and more. Welding takes practice and then more practice. You won't automatically weld well with any rig right off the bat as a beginner. Some are of course easier than others;however,none are easy just starting out. I've owned one of the cheap rigs for years and I've had a lot of success with it. I find a MIG unit with gas is easier but that's not under 500,00.
I don't mean to be a jackass but I think your trouble is just inexperience. You can overcome that! Good luck!

That was sarcastic. I dont think lincon and Miller are anywhere near worth the premium they command, even for most commercial applications. They are super nice to use but man the price is high high high.

This Hobart @ ~ $1,600 doesnt need much else for OP to learn how to do basically everything.

LINK

The little multiprocess machines are pretty great these days, and Hobart stuff is a really good value. Its pretty close to being a miller with a Grey paint job.

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Not exactly "beginner" at $4,000 when an Esab Rebel is $2,000, Baker's has this whole package for $2,500 . . .

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I learned a long time ago not to try to save money on tools. If it is worth having a welder, it is worth having a good one. This recommendation is for a very good one but whether you need a welder like this depends on what you envision yourself making/repairing with it. Will it get a lot of use? What thickness metal do you need/want to weld? Will you be using it outside, inside a shop, both? Are you wired for 240 and, if not, are you willing to wire a 60 amp, 240 volt outlet for a welder? Do you want to fool with gas bottles? Do you need to haul it around and fix things on a farm? Do you want a particular process, i.e., Mig, Tig, Stick?

Nobody can really tell you what kind of welder you need without knowing these things and you will most likely buy the wrong one if you don't answer those questions for yourself.

All that said, a good quality, multi-process welder like that Esab isn't cheap. But it also retains a good resale value if you take care of it and you can take it (or a Lincoln or Miller) to your local welding supply store for a repair if anything goes wrong. Check with Harbor Freight to see what to do with a three-year-old welder that quits working (and let us know, because their welders look like a good deal). If you aren't sure about welding and are really just experimenting, a Hobart 140 mig welder is good choice that will work with a 120 outlet and let you stick together up to 3/16" steel.

I started as a hobby welder with a lincoln 180 mig box using flux core wire. Did that for a year or so then got shielding gas and it is incredible what a difference 75/25 gas makes. You'll question why you fought flux core for any amount of time. Im comfortable welding up to quarter inch steel with the lincoln. My original interest was building furniture with 14 ga steel. Never realized how much id be welding in life 20 years later. I now have a miller engine drive welder that sits in my truck most of the time now.

If youre going to mostly be welding in a garage and in a controlled environment where 6 or 7 foot of lead is enough, a mig welder is easier to get a good aesthetic bead. If youre welding structural thicker steel in the elements further away from the welding unit, a stick welder is the way to go.

I dont know about harbor freight welders, but my welder has a feed wheel with a slot for .025 wire and a slot for .035 wire. If the machine is struggling to feed, check the feed wheel size with the wire size. Anymore I run .030 wire with a .035 tip and on the .025 feed wheel. Seems to be the happy medium for my welder.

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Ill add that once you learn how to stick weld, using a good MIG setup is like using a glue gun. Not that stuck welding is horribly difficult but being decent at it makes you better at everything else. Its also the most useful for general purpose repair work IMO.

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MiG welding feels like cheating these days. It’s pretty much all I use in the shop now. I got a stick rig for my house just because I didn’t want to fool with gas.

I can not wrap my head around TIG welding though. I’ve tried several times and I just can’t do it.