Buy the big rolls of wire and spool them onto the small spindles. I picked up a huge spool at my local supply shop for dirt cheap since it had been opened. I just spool it out onto my small spindles every time they run out.

Like toolgEEk I’ve found there is a huge difference in wire quality. The first few rolls I bought with the welder were really tough to get a decent weld with. The next rolls I bought were from Lincoln and the ease of use and weld quality was like night and day in comparison. I changed over mid job and the difference was obvious. Looking at the job a couple days later you could tell which was welded with the no-name wire and which with the Lincoln wire.

My only real gripe is it only takes the small spools of wire which are 50-100% more expensive and require more changes than the large spools.

This welder works great for me; just doing little stuff around the garage. I get less splatter, and better welds running Miller or Lincoln brand wire in the welder, as opposed to the cheap Harbor Freight wire that comes with the machine. I would recommend tossing the wire that comes with the machine and get some better quality stuff from the day you set the machine up.

If you are going to do a lot of welding, get a gas one, if it is for little jobs, here and there stuff… pick up this one. Works nice for me. I had to weld a plate back into t ametal exterior door. 4 tack welds and it saved me from buying a new door. the entire setup paid for its self there. now its all gravey! (today welded an ikea chair back together, great!) Oh and its 120v! 15A

Rick

This unit has trouble penetrating thick material, and spatters like hell. Even a really experienced welder is going to make ugly welds with this.

But you know what? Your welds don’t always need to be pretty, and on many projects, spatter doesn’t matter a bit. This little welder is very handy and cheap, and sometimes that’s exactly what you need for a project. If you are building a project that just needs to hold together, you can make strong welds with this thing if you are careful. It’s also quick and easy since it runs off of 110v. I built the legs for a frame jig using one of these. Since it was just made from rusty angle iron, appearance wasn’t important; I used a flap-disc to clean the rust off where the welds would go and zapped it together with this. Held up just fine.

Also, there have been times when I needed to weld something, and just couldn’t hold it in the right postion easily, so I’d throw a quick tack on it with this thing, then weld it solid with a different welder.

Like most cheap tools, it has it’s limits, but there are uses where it can come in handy.

This is a conservative estimate, but welding with gas is about a billion times nicer than flux core. No spatter, and more importantly the weld isn’t surrounded in a giant cloud of smoke, so you can actually see what you are doing. Comparing the gas/flux welds on my project, it’s not even a competition.

You can make good welds with flux core, don;t get me wrong. But it’s a whole lot nicer with the gas.