Thanks for this mate. I only use steel wire for welding so I'll order a couple of steel liners like you say.
This is the kit I bought
https://ebay.us/JEYfI3
I might have to make some mods to the welder to make it fit but hopefully it shouldn't be too bad. I think the earth clamp I have is a tad rubbish so have one of those on order too.
I guess it's common sense to keep the torch umbilical as straight as possible but always good to be reminded about it. The new one will be longer so I'll keep an eye on it.
You're not fricking about there Ali, that's a properly good setup for that torch conversion kit, that torch is the MB25, I tend to use its wee cousin the MB17 with a flexi neck on it for car body stuff and the MB25 for structural / heavier welding, the good news is both torches can get heavy duty nozzles which do last longer, than the hobbyist slender ones, never put standard nozzles on this torch as you'd be hamstringing it, aye use the slightly more expensive heavy duty ones and it will be a much much much better welding experience.
It's not that hard to install such a kit, the trick for happy weldering with such a modded welder is to ensure the pick up tube is dead on in the path of the wire coming out of the spooler as any deflection in the path of the wire from the spooler to the torch socket's pick up tube will encourage the wire to kink and thus birdsnest. Birds nesting being where the wire gets stuck and the spooler keeps pushing it out of the drum and it ends up in a tangled mess like a birds nest between the spooler and the torch liner. See what the biggest drill bit you can get inside the pick up tube is and see if you can get some rod or wire of similar diameter, such as a piece of tig wire, then put the wire into the pickup tube, and slide the socket to a position where the tigwire can rest on the groove(s) on the rollers in your spooler, then lock down the position of the socket.
Even with the euro torch upgrade installed, the same advice about keeping the umbilical as straight as possible applies, if your torch is too long for the shed, pay it out straight from the machine, past you, and put a gentle sweeping bend to turn the torch back to you. Also remember to leave yourself enough "stick out" on the wire coming out of the nozzle, if you get those welding pliers they are designed such that the cutters are in a position where if you up the other side of the pliers against the shroud as you cut the wire, the amount of wire left sticking out will be in the ballpark of where you need it to be, there is some correlation between the thickness of wire and the thickness of the base metal which dictates the wire speed to calculate the optimum, but since neither of us are building Elon Musk's Starship SN17, in the ball park is good enough.
I'm thinking I might have to upgrade my old welder now, although a new replacement isn't that much more expensive than upgrading my old one.
I'll see, I don't use it much, but I will need to replace quite a few panels on my Avenger GT, so it might be worth my making the investment.
Depends on the mig itself John, if it's an old 80s / 90s first generation mig, such as the ubiquitous battleship grey SIP migmate 80/100/120, or similar, I'd say replace it rather than upgrade it. You don't need to spend a jazillion squiddelies on a new miller synergic mig, even Lidl's "parkside" branded mig's are going to be a significant improvement on such a machine. The only cavaet I'd say to buying a cheap mig is there are now some bargain basement migs on the market that can only run gasless flux cored wire, they are simply a spooler, inverter and a super simple torch, whereas the slightly more expensive migs tend to have the gas circuitry with the ability to change the parameters from gas to gasless. So I'd advise you to so make sure you get a "proper" mig rather than a "gasless" one, as the former will give you plenty of options, but the latter will hamstring you .Dinnae get me wrong, I like flux cored wire, but it's not without it's draw backs and a lot of professional welders I know literally crinkle their nose at the mere mention of the stuff.
The good news is that depending on what mig you currently have, brand snobbery might work in your favour here, as even an old Snap-On (rebranded Cebora) mig will fetch a couple of hundred sheckles, or an old basic SIP will snag 80-120 sheckles, depending on model and condition, on the likes of gumtree and eBay. On the other hand, a brand new, modern, inverter rather than transformer based, far more advanced and better in every way "off brand" mig will be in a similar sort of price range, so you could get a lot of improvement for not a lot of outlay. Although if your buying a new mig I'd say it's worth spending just a little bit more, even if shopping for a cheap modern mig, and the points that warrant the extra outlay would be the following four things:
- make sure it's gas and gasless rather than purely gasless
- make sure the one you buy has a fitting / port / socket for the gas hose to connect to rather than a nylon drinking straw like 80s migs had
- the drinking straw design tends to be locked into the special regulator for the disposable bottles
- disposable bottles are money pits if you haven't already done so, get a real gas bottle
- you don't need to open an account with BOC or the likes and pick up rental charges, get a rent free refillable bottle form adams gas or hobbyweld
- if it's not too much more money, try and get one that will use 5kg drums rather than 0.5kg drums, the saving in the price of the much less expensive per mass of wire over a typical project will more than pay for an inexpensive mig
- Mig wire is ~£6 for a small <1kg reel, vs ~£15 for a 5kg reel so metre for metre the wire is 2x as expensive
- every time you "run out of wire you lose 3 or 4 metres that's trapped in the torch,
- for every 5kg of wire used a 5kg machine will discard 4 metres of inexpensive wire
- for every 5kg of wire used a <1kg machine will discard 40 metres of wire that cost twice as much per metre as the 5kg machine's - twenty times as expensive wastage costs
- with a <1kg machine, any time you get into a groove, the damned thing needs a new reel, with a 5kg machine you can weld for days on one drum
- get a mig with a euro connector for the torch rather than the "hardwired" variety, it just makes life easier
- you can change the torch for different situations, for example see my comments about using an MB17 with flexi neck above
- it's easier to replace a worn / clogged torch liner
- the torches are standardised so you can get replacement parts a lot easier
EDIT: Just a quick update to say I've had a swatch on eBay for a machine such as what I've prescribed in this post, to see if they are still available in this current global shortage of everything (computer components, particularly graphics cards are super rare and mega pricey just now changing hands for ~2.5x RRP) and found this little beauty for £240 posted:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284272687655
So if you take it as a euro kit like Ali bought costing £85 and a hundred or so for your current mig for less than a hundred sheckles extra you get tig and stick functionality as well, although I don't know if that mahcine takes the 5kg drums or just the little ones?
Another likely candidate was this mig for similar money that definitely ticks all the boxes in the list above:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/384215053165
