Welding Tips and Tricks

Need some help deciding on a welder purchase...

I am new to welding, and keen to start with Mig. I will not be doing industrial heavy beam/plate/pipe welding, mostly farm, home, and some auto chassis work.

After much YouTubing, forums reading, and carefully figuring my budget, I have come to two choices for now: HTP's MIG 200i, and Canaweld's MIG 202/201. The main differences I have figured out is that Canaweld's can do stick, has a much higher power output and duty cycle, and can weld up to 1/2". HTP's has a very good reputation and supposedly a very nice arc, though will only weld up to 1/4" (which would be enough for 95% of the time, at least it is what I am thinking right now.). Canaweld states their arc is very stable, though not sure how it compares to HTPs. Neither machine has an inductance dial option. Both are about the same price at the moment, and this is about as much as I can afford.

I was wondering if some of you could share some opinions that may steer me to make a final decision. My take is that Canaweld's is more of an industrial welder, while HTP's is more of a finesse welder ?...

I would like to avoid purchasing a welder I may want to supersede soon. I do not plan to get into TIG (too old to put in the effort it would take), and while stick is good to have as an option, I would be OK without.

Cheers

Sorry to burst your bubble, but don't believe everything you read. You cannot MIG weld 1/2" steel nor aluminum with only 200A in a single-pass. 200A is 1/4" single-pass no matter what machine you look at. Maybe a teensy weensy bit more if you use gasless flux core 035 wire, because it is a hotter process at the same amperage, but not much more.

To weld 1/2" single-pass, reliably, you need 300-350A minimum.

Thank you for the comment Oscar, good to know. So that being the case, the points outstanding then are the differences in duty cycle, and arc quality. I've read your posts here before, being you are an HTP advocate, and so wondering if you can opine on arc quality, and whether HTP is the way to go. I realize you may not have experience with Canaweld. Would any difference be substantial and have a large impact on my being able to weld adequately ?

...likely my questions show I am new at this...

Honestly I would question any welder that claims such a high duty cycle near its top end. If they are misleading about the thickness capability how do you know they are not misleading the other specs? Most top-tier 200A MIGs I've seen, seem to have a 100% duty cycle around 130-150A. Not saying the canaweld specs are impossible, just improbable. My HTP MIGs are very nice, as I'm sure are other MIGs in their price bracket. No way I could comment on the arc quality of the canaweld units though. They seem to be nice units.

Yeah, I'm not buying the 1/2" claim on 200A either.

I've run both Millermatic 212 and 211 AutoSet machines (210A max output) and they show 3/8" steel as the max, but only with .045" wire and flux core going off memory....and that was probably pushing them pretty hard.

Thank you again for the feedback. I may opt for the HTP then, as it has other nice features the CanaWeld does not.
Cheers

Yes, I can confirm that 200 amps isn't nearly enough to get a full strength single pass weld on 1/2 plate. I've done a lot of testing with my 210 amp mig. Experimented with different gasses, flux core, etc. And I've found that it's absolute limit for a single pass weld seems to be around 5/16.