Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors. Please consider supporting us by whitelisting our website.

Finding The Right Welding Equipment

By

Now the time has come again!

Something needs to be repaired again and you urgently need a good welding machine to do the job. This of course raises the question of which welding equipment is to be recommended at the moment and how you can tell if you have good welding equipment in your sights.

After all, one does not want to experience a catastrophe after the purchase, as is often unfortunately the case. A welding machine is quickly selected and when it comes to welding, you notice that it does not fit at the top and bottom.

In order to spare you this, we will show you here how to recognise good welding equipment and which things you should generally pay attention to. We also show you where you can find good welding equipment and some other useful information that is important for choosing good welding equipment.

Loading...

After this article, nothing can actually go wrong with the selection. Let’s go!

Small reminder : There are different types of welding machines available.

Before we go into more detail about the search for good welding equipment, we would like to point out that there are different types of welding equipment available on the market.

If you are not yet familiar with these and you do not know to what extent they differ, then you will find a small crash course on the homepage with a brief explanation of the various welding machines.

Why even really good welding equipment can be bad for you.

This may sound confusing at first, but on closer inspection it immediately makes sense. It is very important to know which welding equipment is best suited for your field of activity.

Loading...

For example, you can buy a TIG welding machine, no matter how good, but if you mainly weld outside, you will still get bad results. A TIG welding machine is not suitable for outdoor use.

It is the same with all other welding equipment. Therefore, you should first clarify exactly what you want to weld and then see which type of welding equipment suits you best.

Our pages under the tab Welding Equipment in Test, such as Cored Wire Welding Equipment Test or Electrode Welding Equipment Test, will help you here.

Properties that good welding equipment should have.

Now you will learn what to look out for and what features we expect from a good welding machine. Certainly, everyone has his own ideas, but on these things we are sure to agree.

Loading...

It should be possible to connect the welding equipment to a normal 16 A fused 230 V socket. If connection to a three-phase alternating current, also known as three-phase current, is also available, then the appropriate adapter should be included.

The welding current and wire feed must be variable. The more possibilities are offered here, the better. Ideally, both parameters are infinitely variable. If the welding current can be adjusted in several steps, this is still ok for ” good welding machines “.

The duty cycle should be specified. Ideally not only in the operating instructions and on the nameplate, but also in the product description. The duty cycle indicates the welding time after which a pause must be made. More about this

Preferably no permanently connected hose packages. Although they are firmly attached to the connections, they cannot be replaced in the second case. Therefore we prefer exchangeable ones.

Loading...

Long cables with a good performance cross section. Ideally, these are 2 m long and have a Euro central connection, so that they can be changed easily in case of doubt. 1.5 m should be the minimum length, everything else is too short.

Also the cables should be flexible and not made of cheap PVC. Good welding equipment with rigid and disturbing cables? That does not match.

Good cooling and thermal overload protection. When searching for good welding equipment, pay attention to the given cooling in the product description. A forced fan cooling or other mentioned cooling in the description gives security.

The thermal overload protection is important so that the welder automatically switches off to cool down if the temperature is too high. Both should be given with a good welding machine. If you do not find any information on this, please ask.

Loading...

Carrying handle and wheels. Good welding equipment should offer a certain standard of carrying comfort. Smaller welding machines should have a handle and larger machines should have castors including a handle as a handle.

Finally : An appropriate open circuit voltage, amperage and duty cycle.

This is because a low open-circuit voltage makes it difficult to ignite the arc, low power prevents welding with greater material thicknesses and a low value for the duty cycle forces you to wait too long.

All well and good you think, but how high should these values at least be? More on this in the next section.

Loading...

What exact values should you look for when looking for good welding equipment?

First of all, it should be said that it is not possible to determine this so precisely for everyone. It depends very much on what type of welding equipment you want to use and what exactly you intend to weld. For example, one needs less power than the other, etc.

Nevertheless, we will try to give you some minimum values, according to which you can make your choice.

Good welding equipment should offer at least a power range up to 80 A and an open circuit voltage from 48 V. This should be sufficient to carry out even smaller repairs. Values below that are a reason for scepticism for us.

The duty cycle should be above 30% for normal power requirements. At maximum power consumption the value may be lower. We would not be satisfied with less.

Loading...
The percentage of the duty cycle indicates how long you can weld within an interval of 10 minutes. 30% would mean that you can weld for 3 minutes and then have to take a 7 minute break.

Heads up! You should know that the current trend is more towards inverter welding machines. If in doubt, it is better to choose an inverter instead of a transformer. Where the difference between the two is and which generator offers more advantages, you can read under Inverter welding equipment test.

Which welding equipment is recommended and where can I find good welding equipment?

Now you know what characteristics good welding equipment has and that there are different versions available. Above we have also shown you the relevant links where you can get a short explanation of the different welding machines and find out which welding machine is best suited for you.

The only question that remains is which welding equipment is particularly recommended and where you can find good welding equipment for comparison. We would like to help you here as well. We have compared and evaluated numerous offers here at Schweißgerät Test. You can see the results in the menu “Welding equipment in test” above, as well as in the tab “Other”.

There we present you the best possible models for each type of welding machine at a glance. You will find a test report with subsequent evaluation for each welding machine.

Loading...

So you have numerous good welding machines at a glance and can select more precisely.

Finally, we wish you a lot of fun with your choice of welding.

Leave a Comment