iMig 140E First Impressions
I bought a Power iMIG 140E in November. At the time Amazon was having a screaming deal, and then, if you sign up for their credit card, you take another $40 off. It turned out to be about $300 delivered. Couldn't pass that up.
Welder arrived in good condition, but sat in box until I got a "round toit." Just the other day, 12/26, I needed to make some brackets out of 3/16" hot rolled steel for hanging a sliding barn door. I looked at my PowerPro 256, and I looked at the unopened box from Everlast. Then I looked at the 240V/50A plug on the wall behind the lathe, which was behind some boxes of Christmas decorations and thought I really didn't want to wrestle with all that. So I unboxed the iMIG 140, connected it up to my argon/CO2 tank, transferred the remains of a roll of crappy HF 0.030 wire from my old Campbell-Hausfeld 120V/70A welder, which I converted to MIG, and tried a couple of beads on a scrap of 1/4" plate. Got some irregular arc, some BBs, so I adjusted the voltage and the gas and the weld settled down. So I went ahead with the brackets.
I've got to say, that welder does a nice job. The thing has absolutely no problem welding 3/16" hot rolled steel. It wasn't even maxxed out. Just took my time and kept weaving back and forth, tracing the edge of the puddle and it laid a nice bead. The 5 second delay before gas shut off is a nice touch, too. And I really like not having the wire hot until I squeeze the trigger. The bead looked just like that from a 240V welder. Was connected directly to a 20A wall plug in my groj. No issues with lack of power.
I had heard it said that the heat you get out of an inverter welder is more than for a similar sized transformer welder, but I had no idea the difference was that great. I do mostly projects involving 11ga or 16 ga tubing. Sometimes larger, but I have the PP256 for that. The iMIG 140E really makes having another 240V welder unnecessary for me.
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