In march Hot Rod eastwood has a tig welder plasma cutter combo for $999.00 Has anybody here bought tools from eastwood and are they any good?
I’m not a welding expert by any means. I bought an Eastwood 135 when it was on sale with free shipping. Prior to that, I rented a Millermatic 140 to weld in my subframe connectors and I took a class were we used Lincoln 255XT welders. Since the Lincoln is not even in the same league, I’ll compare the Eastwood to the Miller.
The Miller has an auto setting, but it didn’t work at all for the subframe connectors. The Eastwood welder is definitely cheaper quality on the inside although it looks great on the outside. Here’s on example. The Miller uses a spring and a nice threaded knob to mount the spool. The Eastwood has a little piece plastic doughnut and a standard 50 cent wing nut. The wing nut that came with the Eastwood was metric. The spool spindle was standard thread. Not a sign of great quality control, but not a big deal. I just had to pick one up at Home Depot. It was a lot easier to mount the spool on the Miller. I did it on my first try. On the Eastwood, it unwound twice. I added a spring I had laying around to make it easier to set the tension. The plastic spacer makes it easy to set it too loose or too tight. The guns, ground clamps and regulators are the same quality if not identical. The welds were exactly the same.
In summary, go for the Eastwood for half the price. Replace the wing nut and install a spring to tension the spool.
I do quite a bit of welding. I have never used an Eastwood. What I would tell you is to look at the duty cycle of the combo unit. If your duty cycle is long 80-100 you can weld longer between cool down periods. If the unit has a low duty cycle it can overheat and shut down. For light work (mig) I use a Miller-Matic 140 on steel, Miller-Matic 135 with spool gun attachment for aluminum (mig), Esab multi Master 260 for everything else that is heavy steel (mig,tig,stick). I use a Esab Pro-Cut 650 plasma (great unit) for cutting. A combo unit is good if you are doing small amounts of work. Check and make sure nozzles, tips, electrodes and swirl baffles come with the unit. You can blow them out easy at first and if you don’t have spares you have to stop working. Hope this helps.
Steven
yep on the miller, I have a miller 135 and welded some things I thought would be too much but with good prep it smoked it, no porousity or cracks. guess you get what you pay for . It looked like a good deal on paper. thanks
Your welcome glad to help.
Steven
Yeah that’s it, better to go for a better known brand.
Not only that… but a machine such as the one in question, that is designed to do the work of two machines, tells me that it’s not going to be good at either one.
I have an eastwood mig 135, welds flawless, on sheet metal, and have a miller tig diverson 165, hardly use it at all for sheet metal so far, eastwoods 135, buy one, excellent for the value
I absolutely agree. I’ve been having a lot of fun with my 135. I’ve had no problems with it at all.
Yes, to all the doubters out there about Eastwood’s 135 cheapo, import mig, you may be suprised like I am for quality work it does, rock solid, for the money, and yes miller is king along with Hobart etc, I agree, but the Mig 135 Eastwood for sheet metal has been working for me because of the infinate settings to really dial it in for delicate sheet metal , oh by the way thanks for posting and I am off to weld with the 135 now, Thx Tim