Hi BillE-
I remember you also, hope that you and yours have been doing well to include the holiday season! Thank you for the well wishes. The Covid results came back negative today, so all is well that ends well.
The welder I used on this project? Oh boy, just pure, plain-Jane, bone-simple, nothing-fancy, get-er-done stuff. The Century FC 90 Flux Core:
- fc 90.jpg (155.05 KiB) Viewed 15578 times
I use it on most every project that lies outside the shop, with the exception of the gantry crane build, which of course required heavy-duty SMAW. The reason that the FC 90 has become my go-to is due in part to the fact that my shop welding cart is on wheels that won't allow it to function outside the concrete shop environment. Modification of that cart to be a 4-wheeler (if you will) has been one of the side-jobs that I have been meaning to tackle for a while now, but I digress. Complicating matters a bit is that we utilize our workshop in double duty fashion as a storage unit for spare automotive parts for our vehicles, so there isn't much room to maneuver. Thus any work that needs to be done at the front of the workshop requires me to hand-carry one of our welders from the back (where the 220V plug resides) to the front and bust out the heavy-gauge cable to run to it. This was true for the aforementioned gantry crane project, for which I hauled the Everlast forward and back each session. However not many of my projects needed that kind of horsepower. And they of course didn't need the TIG capability of the PrimeWeld. With that in mind I began thinking: if I don't need that much or that type of capability for these outside jobs, why not source a low-budget alternative that would be lighter and easier to carry? And that I wouldn't be so worried about damaging? Granted, it'd have to work and be reliable. Hmmmmmmm....so I looked around for while, did some research. Settled on the FC 90. But I'm getting off into the weeds a bit here with my commentary.
For my use-case scenarios, the FC 90 fits the bill quite nicely because:
1) It was cheap
2) It would be cheap to replace if need be
3) It hasn't needed replacement in the 2 years plus or so that I've had it
4) My outdoor use-cases don't require shielding gas
5) Spare parts are available if needed
6) It weighs nothing and can be carried wherever whenever
7) Runs on only 110, so plug it in anywhere
8) My outdoor use-cases don't require high-amperage welding, generally speaking
9) It has been rugged in my experience, though if you really beat it up enough, I suppose it would fail, just like any welder, but see #1 and #2 above
10) Uses industry-standard materials (0.035" wire/tips are typically used, can use 0.030")
11) It has worked every time I have needed it
The downsides (IMHO) are:
1) It's cheap
2) I'm not a fan of the grounding clamp but it works, also never failed
3) It only runs off of 110, so no high-amperage stuff (but I don't need it in most use-cases)
4) The shoulder carrying strap works and has never broken, frayed or come apart/off. However I would prefer some type of carrying handle that would swivel about the longitudinal axis and that was both expandable and collapse-able like a roll-aboard suitcase. However, see #1 of both lists.
5) 0.035" max wire size (sufficient for my use-cases)
6) You don't set voltage and wire feed numerically (19.0V/250IPM) but rather you use that letter/number scale system stuff, which I definitely don't prefer (see #1 in above lists I suppose)
7) Gun cord seemed flimsy at first; my question was "how is this a-gonna hold up over time?" ... but it has done just fine, no issues
The short version is that I would recommend it to anyone, provided that their use case scenarios fit within its capabilities. Durability has been good for me, but I don't use it every day admittedly, only about once or twice per week. On occasion though I have used it enough to go-through an entire spool of 0.035" wire in one session. It pulled through that session and has worked afterwards, no issue. So over the course of a couple-of-years-plus, I'd say that it was worth the investment.
My $.02.
Thanks! Let me know what you decide.
