Guidance on a welder please :) | MIG Welding Forum

Hello good people,

Brand new here and already found your lovely website very useful, especially the buying guide. I may have found the machine for me but have some questions that I’m having trouble answering.

Here’s the unit in question: MIG 140A IGBT Inverter DC Welder 2-in-1 MMA Gas GASLESS Wire ARC Welding Machine
Though I’ll buy from the manufacturers website.

I recently finished an intro to welding course so I’m very green as a hobby welder and will only be doing gasless Mig & stick. I know I need to get the voltage (plus speed) right with Mig to not blow through my metal and that model looks perfect except it doesn’t appear to show the voltage on the display.

My questions:

- Do I need to see the voltage as a figure on the display panel to get the correct setting for my metal thickness?
- What voltage increments do you think the 1-10 setting gives? And,
- Does anyone have this model and can give advise on it.

There is a more expensive model that shows both but has lots of feature I’ll never use.

Much appreciated in advance.
Regards Matt I'm not an experienced welders, but I'd think the actual voltage doesn't matter - you'll end up just working out what settings for voltage position & wire speed works for what you are doing by using the 1-10 numbers just the same.

In fact, I went from a machine that displayed voltage and wire-speed in metres/min to an Oxford Transformer Mig with 6 voltage positions - and find the simpler Oxford easier to use. Hello.
as above, knowing the actual voltage doesn't really help or matter. you'll need to fiddle with wire speed for a given voltage setting to get the perfect balance.
For me, the link dunt work.
The increments are theoretically infinite but you'll probably mentally divide the range into 5, for thin, thicker, thicker, thicker and thickest. For each, practice and get a feel for wire speed. That's a Static Arc machine. As a supplier, they have a fairly good reputation on this Forum.
Similar imported MIG plus Arc inverter welders are also available from BlackLine and Uptime.
There are reviews and discussion threads on all of the above, use the Search box above.
The Uptime:

Uptime MIG160 MIG WELDER MACHINE 160 AMP (IGBT) with 13A Plug Torch and Accessories

MMA/MIG-160(IGBT) INVERTER Control Technology MIG welding high quality MIG welder. High performance, wide range of working piece, comes complete with Accessories and Torch Packing List Uptime MIG 160A Torch Gun Cable Assembly Earth Clamp Clamp Set Ha ...

Review - Uprtime Mig160 IGBT 160 amp Mig welder MMA, Euro Torch.

Hi everybody so i been wanting a more powerful mig now for some time, I have a 25-115amp draper mig not great. And i had seen this on ebay and many others like it, But this was the cheapest £159.99 including postage. Once i had seen it for days this little man in my head said buy it, i couldn't... has 20 Amps more power, a metal rather than plastic wirefeed assembly, takes a 5kg wire spool, has a detachable Euro torch, and is £10 cheaper. The uptime is not conventional regarding constant voltage.it appears to modulate the period of complex waveform to provide a proportional DC supply. Suffice to say the current knob goes from 0 to 10 which is 0 to 100% full power. You don't actually know what the voltage is; it's a pwm signal.

I had an uptime 160 and it worked really well with gas and 0.8 wire. Build quality was a bit poor out the box, but nothing that couldn't be fixed.