what do yall think of this welder as one to start with. drawbacks, benefits.

lincoln welder

Mig welders are cool, they allow you to weld really thin metal. I prefer mig over arc/stick when welding thin sheet metal.

The drawback to this model is the wire feed is at the base of the unit itself. I personally would look at getting one with the wire feed at the gun itself. Reason being less for the wire to travel before reaching the material you are welding. Which means less chances for the wire to kink up. I've used ones with the wire spool at the base of the unit and dust/dirt or a sharp bend in the gun cable would always kink the wire and you would have to refeed the wire again.

Nice thing about that unit is you could hook it up to a standard outlet.

Hey, I just bought one of those. I'm getting tired of the cost and inconvenience of going someplace every time I need a welding job. So, I'm going to pick this little guy up tomorrow and hopefully play with it this weekend.

FIY, this welder is intended for light duty jobs and won't weld steel thicker than 1/4" You probably already know that though.

As far as brands go, Lincoln is generally my second choice. I'm a Miller man at heart (mostly because they come with Tregasskis guns) but the price was right and I can pick it up across from my office tomorrow.

All in all I think it's a good deal for a compact welder and the warranty is good.

Ivan, I have this exact welder with the mig conversion.

Pros:
Extremely easy to weld with.
Very reliable. (never have had a feed jam after welding 10 spools of wire.)
Can use 10lb spools for flux core wire.
Easily converts to mig / flux core.
110v
Price / affordability

Cons:
Need to use flux core when welding thicker metals like 1/8" and 3/16" as it's limited on it's power.
Need to have it plugged in to a 20amp breaker or better (since my garage only has 15 amp circuits, I run a heavy duty extension cord from my laundry room that has a 20 amp breaker)
Duty cycle won't allow you to continuously weld 3/16" for more than about 15 minutes before it pops the internal breaker to allow the unit to cool down.

For the price, you can't beat it. If you were to build a dozen sets of sliders, I would go with a bigger unit. For your basic do it yourself projects it's perfect.

You've seen some of my projects such as my safari rack, front sway bar quick disconnects, 3 sets of rock sliders, an idler arm brace, a jig for my drill press, a welding cart for the welder and have several other projects on my to do list. Mine has been paid for several times over with the labor savings on these projects.

If you haven't done much welding, pick up a welding book and some scrap metal of various thickness to practice prior to diving into a project. Good welds are critical and not knowing what to look for in your welds is only asking for failure of the welds down the road. Thin tubing is much easier to weld with the mig gas, but the thick steel requires the flux core wire. Still easy to weld, just have to chip the welds so they don't come out quite as pretty. (But hell that's what a grinder is for.)

Sorry for all the detail, I'm totally wired on coffee.

I had a flux core welder also. It was decent for small stuff up to 1/8" but anything past that you really should be doing multiple passes... For $219.00 Lowes sells a Lincoln AC225amp Stick welder that you can pretty much weld anything with. Some prefer mig over stick, I happen to be better with a stick for some reason..... Anyway, the lincoln weldpak 100 is a decent welder for anything up to 1/8 - 3/16"...... and it's a lincoln, they last forever or so i'm told..

I find it hard to weld stainless or aluminum with a stick welder. The versatility to do various metals along with the added benefit of a perfectly clean weld without chipping and grinding(if using co2/argon mix) and the ability to weld VERY THIN sheet metal is what separates the migs from stick welders. IMHO

I agree on the stainless and aluminum. I found that on my stick, if I crank it all the way down to 40amps and do small lengths at a time, I can get a pretty decent weld. I agree that mig is much better for this application though. I have a better go at the thicker stuff 1/8 - 1/2" with the stick though....

They say it's easier to learn on a mig/fluxcore, but I found that I picked up stick a lot quicker. I've always been ass backwards though