Thread: Weld Pak 180 HD

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This is one of those Chevy vs Ford type discussions...........some people are going to love Lincoln and some are going to love their Millers, or Hobarts. Personally, we love Miller equipment. We have a Miller 210 Mig and a Synchrowave 200 Tig. The Tig is basically unused much yet, but the Mig has welded literally miles and miles of flawless welds for the past 6 or more years. It gets ridden hard and put away wet a lot.

We just ran into Millers booth at the Tampa Street Rod Nats and stopped in to tell them how much we like their stuff, and also to order a trigger switch for the Mig torch, that had gotten broken (maybe from dropping or whatever). They asked for our address and offered to send a new switch at no charge, even though we told them the unit was over 6 years old. We got the new switch last week, as promised.

So, blue gets our vote for sure.

Don

If I was in the market for a MIG machine (when are any of us NOT in the market for something or another?) I would favor Miller. That said, I just don't do MIG very well, not enough practice, I suppose; I do pretty well with gas, stick, and TIG. But one thing Miller has in some of their smaller machines, under 250A, that is great for a novice, I think, is their "Autoset" feature - just dial in your metal and thickness, and the machine does the hard work of figuring out the settings for wire feed and amperage; as you learn, you can start fine tuning to your own preferences. In addition, the manual adjustments are finer, as has already been noted. As to brand, all of the major name brands seem to be quite durable, and very similar in layout and such, and I doubt you would miss much of anything with one over the other. I would stay away from the Harbor Freight stuff, though; lots of folks say it is pretty good, but I have my reservations - personal preference, I guess.