[TheForge] Which is the better Mig. Miller or Hobart. Does Tig beat em all?

[Ries Niemi]

Miller vs Hobart vs Lincoln used to be just like ford vs chevy vs dodge-
rabid opinions on all sides, with all three actually being perfectly 
good machines.
But now miller has purchased hobart, and so they are virtually the same 
machine.

As far as the spool gun goes- if you think you may ever have a good 
sized aluminum project, then you ought to get the machine that will 
take the spool gun, but I wouldnt buy a spool gun til the deposit check 
clears for the project you need it for. Spool guns are a sloppy 
solution to a very difficult problem. They work, I have welded 
thousands of feet of weld with one, but they are big and clunky and jam 
a lot, and the wire is expensive in those little spools, and runs out 
quickly.
When I had a really big aluminum job, I splurged on a push pull, which 
takes a full size spool of wire, and has two motors- one at the spool, 
one in the much smaller gun. They work much better than a spool gun, 
and you can put regular size spools of any wire in em. Miller, Lincoln, 
and Cobramatic all make em.

Personally, I couldnt  see being without both tig and mig.
I tend to use my mig welder for quick and dirty projects, like a jig or 
a fixture, or for big jobs that dont need to be real pretty- steel 
racks, shop carts, square tubing fences and the like. Even when you get 
em dialed in just right, there is a fair amount of spatter, which you 
have to chisel, wire brush, or grind off to get a good looking joint. 
But they are easy to learn, immediate to use, and awful handy.
My tig, on the other hand, gets used a lot more on actual product- 
things I am going to sell to other people. If you practice with it, you 
can do welds that will require only the lightest of sanding to 
disappear. You can weld really thin sheet metal without even using a 
filler rod, you can weld stainless steel, aluminum, and best of all, 
you can tig braze. This is using a silicon bronze filler rod. You can 
tig braze dissimilar metals together, patch cast iron, and it is great 
for putting really thick things together with really thin things. I 
used to have a production candlestick that we would make 50 at a time, 
that I used a stamped steel 24ga candle cup, tig brazed to 3/8" round 
bar. Nothing else would have put those babies together without blowing 
big holes in em, but tig brazing did it quick and clean.

So for my shop, I would go for tig first, then mig. But I tend to make 
a lot of ornamental ironwork and furniture, where final finish is 
really important, and I can charge enough to take the time to tig weld.

your mileage, as they say, may vary

ries