Welder

Anybody tried one of these?

m.sakerplus.com/products/sakerportable-w...t=868513185949884427

Seen them popping up on FB and Youtube and for sale on Temu, Ali express and Amazon etc. .
Nothing more than a gimmicky chinese stick welder with a likely lifespan of a couple of weeks if it doesn't electrocute you first.
Personally i'd steer clear and buy a "normal" welder that isn't as awkward and bulky in your hand. ..

If I steer clear, I might miss a shockingly good time 

Hand held flux capacitor?   Doc Brown is still at it...

I use a 130amp MIG I bought 25 years ago still works fine (not a vogue brand so reasonable money)

Everything I know about welding might fill a thimble. I do have some experience with soft and hard soldering with acetylene, but that ain't welding.
I was having a hard time imagining how that hand held device could generate sufficient amperage without weighing too much to be practical. Also, for motorcycle frames and parts, stick welding seems to have gone out of fashion, superseded by wire feed, inert gas welding.

I bought a cheapish stick welder off Amazon last year, figuring it would be suitable to help me learn, and build a stand for my lathe.  Well, I learned, but mostly I struggled.  I still don't know if the problem is me or the machine.  More specifically, it's really hard to start.  I stuck the stick more times than I laid beads.  Very frustrating.  

Nessism wrote:

I bought a cheapish stick welder off Amazon last year, figuring it would be suitable to help me learn, and build a stand for my lathe.  Well, I learned, but mostly I struggled.  I still don't know if the problem is me or the machine.  More specifically, it's really hard to start.  I stuck the stick more times than I laid beads.  Very frustrating.  

I think you have to hover until it starts. Once it starts keep going. The one I have does the same thing. Far from the Lincoln welder I learned on. "You want cheap you get cheap." (Carl Eckert)

Nessism wrote:

I bought a cheapish stick welder off Amazon last year, figuring it would be suitable to help me learn, and build a stand for my lathe.  Well, I learned, but mostly I struggled.  I still don't know if the problem is me or the machine.  More specifically, it's really hard to start.  I stuck the stick more times than I laid beads.  Very frustrating.  

Turn up your heat, not enough amps to start melting the base metal and filler rod.
The higher the tensile strength the more heat/amps that are needed.
I.E.
60,000lbs- 6010,6011,6013
70,000lbs- 7014,7018
80,000lbs- 8018


.

Something to ALWAYS consider with electrode welding, is the condition on the rods. (electrodes)
The slightest moisture contamination in the flux (around the electrode) will cause the arc to initiate from the flux (which will be conductive because of the moisture) and cause "sticking" and generally bad welds.

Before welding, put the electrodes in the oven at 100°C for an hour or more.
I guarantee much better performance from a simple  "stick" welder.

Store the rods in an airtight container. 

H.

Turning up the amps does help with the start, but it also increases risk of burn through.

What I had to do is to clean the rod and base metal down to shinny clean. removing all oxidation.  That helps the spark to jump.  It's a major pain to do that with every start, though.  

After doing some reading 8-10 years ago, I decided on the basic Harbor Freight wire-feed welder as a learning tool. The main recommendation I saw was to throw the included HF wire as far away as possible and replace it with the proper size wire from a good quality brand, so that's what I did.

It runs on a 120V outlet, which is nice, through strictly speaking it's supposed to be on a 20-amp circuit rather than the more common 15-amp. Running it on 15 requires a shorter duty cycle (welding for a few seconds, then waiting a bit) but it hasn't tripped the breaker yet.

You can get the HF model for under $100 when it's on sale, and the ad will not be full of badly-Photoshopped pictures.