any welding guru's out there?
 

Hi there, any welder boilermakers out there? I have a mig welder and I'm pretty sick of paying the yearly rental for the argo shield bottle, I rarely use the welder but don't want to sell it as it can be a handy thing to have around when you got two Jeeps and two trucks to play with. What I want to know is there an alternative to BOC and argo shield??

you could use gasless wire
you could aquire a bottle and fill it on a mates account
you can actually buy a bottle, but then your up for testing every 10 years

is CO2 any cheaper

or you could lump it like I do, I'm paying $129.23 per year for e2 size argoshield 54

Yeah the gasless wire is the go subject to the conditions you will be welding in. If you are doing most of it in the workshop or sheilded by weld screens then it works a treat. It may take some geting used too but have found the results to be similar.

We are using gasless on site due to the mine restrictions on welding in confined spaces and so on and experienced welders do get similar results and the weld qualfications test passed alright.

Take a look at www.wtia.com.au for welding info.

JTO

gassless welding ====well with the size machine you are talking about forget it as this is not a very good type of weld
this is also known as inner sheid can work ok on larger machines
i have seen small cylinders at bunnings that yuo can buy
the mig process is far better
due to how the current flows
glenn send me a email and i will go into the details for you
i am a qualified boiler maker 1st class welder by trade
30 years experence

thanks guys, my mig is a cig 250amp, i think, it's the biggest I could get that would run on single fase power. I used to do a fair bit of welding when I was off road racing and I had farm machinery to work on also, but now days its just the odd job on a trailer or Jeep, I have gone over a year without using it which is why I get the shits paying BOC for nothing, maybe I'm a tight arse haha
I considered gasless wire but been told its not so good, thought also it would be messy like stick welding, wouldn't you be constantly tapping off flux? not to mention the wire is three times the price, tight arse again. Will have to check out bottles at Bunnings, thanks Murray

Gasless MiG welding is not intended for sheet metal and chassis type automotive welding which I will assume you wish to do.

The cost of bottle rental is a common issue but you will be pleased to know that with the recent sale of BOC AU to LINDE I think, but do not quote me, I might be wrong, they are now doing great and competitive deals. I renegotiated our gas deal with BOC last month and they have really come to the party.

It would be fair to say however that obviously they will look after those who consume more rather than less; but they do deals now better than they used to.

You will most likely be looking for ArgoShield Light for the work you describe.

CHeers!

yeah bit hard to know what to do, was thinking of trying a small reel of gasless wire and see what it's like, does it have a build up of slag like stick welding rods? but if its not suitable for sheet metal and light steel fab then sounds like a waste of time anyway.