Esab migmaster 250

[Doolittle]

I welded with one of these in class the other day and was quite impressed. This thing will go into spray if you just look at it cross eyed. Its a tapped machine, but has plenty of adjustment for just about anything. Arc was very buttery.

I think it has some quirks worth mentioning here for anyone looking at one. It has this strange ability when doing overheads to allow a ball of metal to come down the wire and land right on the electrode when doing overhead. Havent experienced this with the miller or lincoln. Strange, and the gun trigger is bit stiff. There are no readouts, so its tune by ear. Also, this is the biggie for me, it sounds like a jet plane while your running it. Drove me nuts. So would I buy one? nope. But if someone wanted to give me one... well ok.:D

[jlmclean]

I'd be a little hesitant about giving the 250 a bum name. They are the type of welder that will still be going when we're dead and gone. They may make a lot of noise but that's because there's something there to get the job done. All welders operate just a little different, even if you weld with two identical machines, you'll notice there's usually some part of the weld that one machine will do a little different than the other one. If you were to weld enough with the 250 to become real comfortable with it then go to your Lincoln, you would probably see some things about it you wouldn't like. As for a readout on voltage and amps, they have an add-on panel that does that. I think it should be standard equiptment on the machine but I guess they left it off for cost reasons. A lot of the older machines didn't have gauges anyway. One of the best things about ESAB, call their tech support and you'll talk to someone that can actually speak good english. You can actually understand them and they have always been extremely willing to help. I've welded since I was about 14 years old (I'm 54 now) and am no professional by no means but I've put a lot of stuff together. I've have Miller and Hobart equiptment also but if I were to go buy another machine today, I'd buy ESAB.